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Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #91 (2/9/2014): SodaStream and ScarJo

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #91 (2/9/2014): SodaStream and ScarJo

aired Feb. 8, 2014 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/rxtEvftNrTU

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of February 8th, 2014.

So many times in my Rabbinical Reflections, I am forced to take celebrities over my metaphorical knee and spank them for their misdeeds and maladjustments. Justin Bieber, Charlie Sheen, Ryan Dunn, Lance Armstrong – the list is an embarrassment of Richie Riches. I am delighted, therefore, to offer something different this week: a Hollywood star with a good head on her shoulders. She also has good shoulders and a great rack. But I come to praise Scarlett Johansson – not for the bubbles on her chest, but for the bubbles in her glass. She is the spokesperson for SodaStream, a company that helps you carbonate your own water, so you can make your own soft drinks.

Half-Jewish on her mother’s side – which makes her all-Jewish to me – Scarlett Johannson is one of the most glamorous actresses in Hollywood. She’s so hot, Woody Allen actually looked away from a 10-year-old to make her his muse. And she’s so in-demand, she can pick and choose what she wishes to advertise or promote. Her latest choice? Seltzer. What could be more Jewish than that? Only, it isn’t called “seltzer” anymore. It’s called “sparkling water” or, if you’re a lower tax bracket, “soda.” Back in the day, we used to call it “two cents plain,” but now nothing’s plain when you’re trying to sell it, and the only thing you can buy for two cents these days is one penny.

Anyhoo, in 1991, Peter Wiseburgh, a nice Jewish boy from Israel, bought SodaStream from Cadbury-Schweppes and made it the biggest purveyor of shpritz in the world. You don’t want to pay two dollars for a liter of Coca Cola? You don’t want all the caffeine and sugar of Pepsi? Can’t bring yourself to try that Mexican pineapple soda because, well, it’s Mexican pineapple soda? You buy a machine that looks like a mixer, then you get these canisters of carbon dioxide. In goes the glass of water, in goes the syrup, mix it up and voila – in three minutes you have a glass of soda … that would have taken you ten seconds to pour from a Coke can, but nevertheless. With Sodastream, you can control the level of carbonation and the amount of goo. Plus, you’re not opening a giant cola bottle that in three days goes flatter than Debra Messing in a sports bra.

So there is much to recommend in the home-made soda idea and the Sodastream company, which has factories all over the world, including three in Israel. And ay, there’s the rub. Two of the factories are in parts of Israel that the Arabs don’t think belong to Israel. Granted, the Arabs don’t think any of Israel belongs to Israel, but in this case, they’re specifically talking about the so-called “occupied territories” – land that Israel won, fair and square, in wars fought decades ago. I know I sound like a broken record – and for you kids out there, a record is a round vinyl thing with a hole in it that your grandparents used to play music on. Look it up. Anyhoo, I’ve said time and again that the Palestinians have millions of other miles they can live on, so if they feel oppressed in a Jewish state, they can get themselves a two-hump U-haul and move.

Still, they bitch and moan about Israel occupying land – it’s not “occupied,” shitheads, it’s annexed. And if you want Israel to bulldoze homes and let go of it, you damn well better give us peace in return. And maybe a few of those 70 virgins you’re always talking about, just to sweeten the deal.

One organization taking up the misguided cause against Israel is something called Oxfam. No, that’s not Gabourey Sidibe’s parents, it’s a non-profit initially formed to fight the war against poverty all over the world. Somehow, alas, the honorable mandate to feed the hungry morphed into a more vague “human-rightsy” sort of a thing, which slid into a political agenda and has now warped into anti-Israel propaganda. Oxfam wants people to boycott Sodastream because the factories are making beverages on land where the Palestinians should rightfully be making bombs. Defenders of Sodastream say the hundreds of Arabs who work at the company are well-treated, make a decent wage and have a life they could never aspire to beforehand.

So where does Scarlet Johansson belong in all this? Well, in my bedroom, if life were fair – but no, the actress was caught up in the controversy because she was an ambassador for Oxfam. I say “was” because last week she handed in her resignation. Why? Because ScarJo is also the spokeswoman for Sodastream. She even did a sexy commercial for them that debuted during the Super Bowl! She’s wearing a bathrobe and sucking on a straw. You don’t have to be Freud to know what’s really going on…she’s thirsty! For soda!

When the Oxfammished begged her to drop the company, Scarlet Johansson dropped them, citing, quote, “a fundamental difference of opinion,” unquote. That’s legalspeak for: “I’m Jewish, you’re idiots, the West Bank is part of Israel, Israel is a Jewish homeland, Sodastream are the good guys, and in the interest of international peace, I really should tweet more homemade nude photos on the internet.” Okay, I added that last part, but you know what I’m saying.

Ironically, the Scarlett Johansson Sodastream ad was nearly censored from the Super Bowl. Not by Oxfam or for any political reason, but because she mentioned Coke and Pepsi, and CBS crapped itself worrying that those monster advertisers would pull out if they heard their product being disparaged by the actress who played Natasha in “The Avengers.” The ad stayed, but the line was cut. I guess we know who has the real political power in this country…

But Scarlett Johansson, for being a mensch and standing your ground – that ground being the holy sand of Eretz Yisroel — I toast you holding a glass brimming with Sodastream. Mmmmmm good. Actually, it’s Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray, don’t tell anybody.

Thank you ScarJo. This has been RebSolSol coming to you from TempSoBi, Great Neck, NeeYo.

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27843

Dave’s Gone By Skit (2/8/2014): BOB DYLAN FOR WAXVAC

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An advertisement: Bob Dylan for WaxVac ear cleaner.

Segment aired Feb. 8, 2014, as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

Please Note: Segments extracted from “Dave’s Gone By” may have music and other elements removed for timing and media re-posting considerations. For the full show with all elements, please visit the audio of the complete original broadcast: Full Episode

All content (c)2014 TotalTheater Productions.
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Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #90 (2/1/2014): Justin Bieber

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #90 (2/1/2014): Justin Bieber

aired Feb. 1, 2014 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/GFDVqqkxzg8

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of February 2nd, 2014.

This may come as a shock to some of you, but I am not a Belieber. Oh yes, I am a believer in God, in the Torah, in chicken soup when you’re sick – but I am not a Justin Bieber belieber. I don’t listen to his music, since I’m more of a Moishe Koussevitzky fan, and his exploits do not interest me.

If Justin Bieber gets a tattoo, or shtups a model, or posts a selfie from the hood of his Lambo, more power to him for living the high life. When I was 19 years old, I was in Yeshiva studying Talmud, I was suffering through clarinet lessons, I was in bed sleeping by 10pm…because I didn’t have a girlfriend.

If I had $20 million at that age, would I have done things differently? You’re damn right I would have! My God, I would have bought the Streits Matzoh factory and had chocolate-covered matzoh every day of the year. I’d have tricked out my Volvo with curtains and a practice bimah. I’d have bribed ushers for backstage passes to every Yaffa Yarkoni concert in the tri-State area. Would I have gotten tattoos? No, that’s a religious no-no. Plus, how would I really feel about a tramp stamp of Marvin Hamlisch when I’m 50?

But with that kind of money, sure, I might get a little meshiggeh. And having young girls clawing at me and screaming – and not screaming `rape!’ – of course that would go to my head, and I would sample the pleasures of the flesh and the fleshures of the plesh. I do not begrudge Justin Bieber any of these sybaritic activities that he has earned by making music that pushes teenage girls right past puberty into menopause.

However, this past week, little Justin crossed the line. He was arrested in Miami Beach for DUI, drag racing, driving without a license and mouthing off to cops. When he was yanked, bleary-eyed from his yellow Lamborghini, he said, “Why do you have to search me? What is this about?” And two seconds later he told the police, “Oh, by the way, I’m high, I’ve been drinking, and I’m on a couple of prescription medications.” Somewhere a prosecuting attorney is on his knees in shul saying, “Thank you, God. Sometimes you send them to us gift-wrapped.”

Now, much as I hate giving anyone who sings songs with titles like “Beauty and a Beat,” “Baby” and “Eenie Meenie” the benefit of the doubt, if Justin Bieber wasn’t impaired that night, then this is just another case of the media looking to crash the monster it created. Yes, Bieber was a putz for mouthing off at the cops. If he’d been poor and black, he’d still be searching for his teeth on the sidewalk. But if he wasn’t drunk or high and was just driving a little too fast, give the guy a ticket, get his autograph for your kids, and be done with it.

However, if Justin Bieber was driving under even a mild, chemically induced goofiness, then throw the book at him – not because he’s famous, but because he’s a danger to others. In one of my early Rabbinical Reflections, I took some heat for kicking Ryan Dunn’s corpse before it was even cold. Who was Ryan Dunn? He was one of the “Jackass” crew on TV – men who would do crazy, stupid, dangerous things to each other for poops and giggles. These were consenting friends under controlled circumstances; who am I to say, “what the hell is wrong with you?” Especially when they’re funny. But nobody was laughing when Ryan Dunn poured himself into his Porsche and zoomed into a tree. Not only he died, but the guy in the passenger seat died, too. As Roger Ebert tweeted at the time, “Friends don’t let jackasses drive drunk.”

I have no sympathy for Dunn, or Paul Walker, or Justin Bieber if he put himself in the same situation. When I’m tootling down the highway in my 1996 Ford Fiesta, I wanna know that every other person on the road is being as neurotically careful as I am. At 50 miles per hour, a car is just a gun with wheels; point it in the wrong direction, and you’ve committed suicide and/or murder and/or skyrocketing insurance premiums.

Figuratively speaking, many have said that Justin Bieber is on a crash course, speeding out of control towards a Lohanesque junk-heap. I wish him no harm so long as he does no harm to others. Remember, this is the boy who said that if Anne Frank were still alive, she would be a Belieber – meaning, in his obnoxious, self-absorbed way – that she’d be a typical teenage girl with posters on the wall, bubblegum music on her iPod, and, presumably, 200 stuffed animals on her bed. Of course, this is a ridiculous statement. First of all, if Anne Frank were truly alive today…she’d be kicking and pounding at the lid of her coffin. Also, she’d be 85 years old, which means her musical tastes would have settled somewhere between Glenn Miller and Chubby Checker. The only posters on her wall would be a reminder for her medications and a calendar from the nearest Jewish funeral home. As far as liking Justin Bieber’s music, for gosh sakes, this woman lost her mother and her sister in the Holocaust and coughed herself to death in a concentration camp at age 15. Didn’t she suffer enough?

People who hate Justin Bieber just for being Justin Bieber, are saying he should be deported. We should send him back to Canada. Why? So he can spend all his millions across the border and let Canadian strippers, casinos and car dealers reap the benefits? I say, give the teeny-botcher the benefit of a doubt; let him stay – unless they prove he was drunk or stoned in that car. If he was, handcuff him and put him in the first trolley heading to Quebec. Oh, and just for fun, make David Cassidy drive.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27848

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #89 (1/26/2014): Hiroo Onoda

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aired Jan. 26, 2014 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/U7eFyMWo1A8

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of January 26th, 2014.

Old soldiers never die, they just – well, no, old soldiers do die. They die all the time. Just try looking for World War I veterans.

Eisenhower died, Sherman died, Patton died, and two weeks ago, Israel’s Ariel Sharon died. And now, Japan’s Hiroo Onoda has died. He fought in World War II from 1941 through 1974. As Lewis Black would say: let me repeat that: Hiroo Onoda fought the Second World War for 33 years, approximately 29 years after World War II ended for everybody else.

Yes, this is the guy they made fun of on “Gilligan’s Island.” He’s the crazy loon living in the jungle so cut off from the world, no one’s told him about color TV, liquid paper, hula hoops or the end of armed military hostility between eastern and western civilization. Hey, it happens.

Ironically, Hiroo Onoda was an intelligence officer. Well, what was it George Carlin said about military intelligence? Anyhoo, at age 22, Onoda was stationed in the Philippines and told under no circumstances to surrender. Not even if they torture him with paddles and cigarette butts and Barbra Streisand movies. Being a good little soldier, Onoda followed his orders to the letter. And since Japanese letters are weird symbolic shapey things, I guess he never figured out that the Emperor surrendered.

Onoda didn’t even give up when the allies scattered leaflets over the Philippines reading, “Come out, come out wherever you are. There’s free barbecue. Or, as we like to call it, Hiroshima.” This loyal-to-a-fault yutz didn’t believe the authenticity of the leaflets, so he and his band of stragglers kept on fighting and killing and living off coconuts.

In 1974, a Japanese hippie – who apparently didn’t realize that hippies were over in 1971 – this hippie tourist visits the island, finds Onoda and gives him the bad news that the land of the rising sun sank in 1945. Onoda sort-of believed him but still wouldn’t surrender until he got official notification from higher up. His old Major had to fly to the island and officially relieve him of duty. Heh heh…I said “duty.”

Even though he murdered people in the jungle, Onoda was pardoned by Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos – I guess he didn’t want to be the pot calling the kettle – and Mr. What-Year-Is-This actually came home to Japan something of a national hero. After all, that level of devotion and honor is pretty rare in people. Granted, that’s because most people are sane, but still…

Hiroo Onoda actually didn’t like all the attention – even the adulation – possibly because the more people inquired into his activities during his three decades on Lubang Island, the more skeletons were dug up – literal ones. Onoda started spending half the year in Brazil, presumably because he liked to be surrounded by sexy women, Jacaranda trees and fellow war criminals.

On January 16th of this year, at age 91, Hiroo Onoda succumbed to pneumonia – the first time he surrendered to anything. Well, that’s arguable; he was married, after all. And while there is something to admire about his willingness to sacrifice everything for his country, including common sense, let’s not make too much of this loser. He was part of the army and the nation that attacked us for no reason in 1941. He fought against American soldiers and may have killed a couple before he went off to pineappleville. Try asking anyone who survived Okinawa or Iwo Jima how amusing they find Hiroo Onoda or the Nipponese mindset that made him. Ask them to think of anything nice to say, and they might ponder for a moment and then say, “I give up. Too bad Hiroo Onoda didn’t.”

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27852

—> https://wp.me/pzvIo-28p

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #88 (1/19/2014): Ariel Sharon

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #88 (1/19/2014): Ariel Sharon

aired Jan. 19, 2014 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USb-IKF3eU8

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of January 19th, 2014.

It is with a sad heart that we bid farewell to Ariel Sharon, the former Prime Minister of Israel who died last Saturday at age 85. The end was a blessing because he’d been in a coma for the past eight years. Imagine, eight years without any kind of physical activity. Sort of like a Jewish marriage.

But seriously, Ariel Sharon was a war hero and a statesman and the kind of leader Israel needed again and again in its battles with the Arab world. In the 1948 war for independence, he was wounded but survived and came back strong. He was aggressive and rude and cocky – honestly, you’d never know he was Jewish. But he sure was, and in the 1950’s, he fought constantly against terrorism – sometimes killing civilians, which isn’t nice, and sometimes killing murderers, which is very nice. In 1967, as a general, Sharon took on Egypt and beat them in a war that lasted all of six days. I can’t get a passport in six days, this guy wins a whole freakin’ war.

And then in 1973, when the Jews were attacked on Yom Kippur – our holiest day of the year (if you don’t count Barbra Streisand concerts) – with Egypt’s Third Army massing against us, Ariel Sharon led 5,000 tanks over the Suez Canal and turned the tide of the war. Ariel Sharon was our Patton, our Sherman, our sword of vengeance and great protector.

Yes, he was a hawk, but kicking Egypt’s ass on Yom Kipper helped bring on the Sadat peace talks. And Sharon was willing to compromise for peace a lot more than other hawks around him. For years, he encouraged Jewish settlements in the so-called “occupied territories” – and why not? Gaza, the West Bank – those are places that Israel won, fair and square, in wars. What’s the point of conquering enemy territory if you’re not gonna build a Starbucks on it?

However, when Israel began negotiating with the Palestinians – or at least tried to – and settlements were standing in the way of progress, Ariel Sharon went in there and started pulling Jewish families out of their homes. Their land was then given over to Palestinian rule, and the Arabs were so grateful, they started sending rockets over with little red bows and thank-you notes. Oh well. The whole land-for-peace thing is a crock, but you can’t say Sharon didn’t try.

Now, no question, this man had blood on his hands. One time, he blew up an Arab village that he swore he thought was abandoned. It wasn’t. Well, it was when he got through with it. Another time, Sharon had the army surround a refugee camp and then allowed the Lebanese Christian militia to go in and look for terrorists. They may have found some, but it’s hard to tell, since the Phalangists wound up slaughtering all the refugees. So much for Christian charity.

But if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a trillion times: Israel is a safety net for the Jewish people. New York is over-crowded, and Miami has too many flying bugs, so Jews need the teeny-tiny country of Israel as their homeland. Arabs have all the rest of the Middle East and North Africa to call their own. All you need is a turban and a Koran, and you have eight-and-a-half million miles at your disposal. By comparison, Israel is the size of a King Soopers – and not even one of those big King Soopers that has furniture and garden supplies.

Ariel Sharon was our security guard. He was so feared and hated by our enemy that his mere visit to the Temple Mount set off a wave of Arab riots. I haven’t seen that kind of negative reaction to a personal appearance since John Tesh played Bonnaroo.

A big man with big appetites, Sharon paid for his high living with a stroke that put him on life support for nearly a decade. No one knows if he saw, heard or understood anything that was going on around him. Kind of like Chris Christie. But if those tragic eight years – plus the deaths of two wives and his only son – were payback for the bad things Ariel Sharon did, let the next thousand millennia in heaven reward him for his courage, his tenacity, and his devotion to Eretz Yisroel. Thank you, bulldozer.

Yisgadal veyisgadash shmei rabba. Beʻalma di vra khir’useh, veyamlikh malkhuseh, beḥayekhon uvyomekhon, uv’cḥaye d’chol bet yisrael, b’agalah uvizman kariv, v’yimeru amen.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #086 (12/29/2013): New Year 2014

click above to listen (audio file)

aired Dec 29, 2013 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/kCb-wFiJvIQ

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of December 29th, 2013.

Boy, this year really bit the big one, didn’t it? You had the bombing at the Boston Marathon, flooding in Colorado, civil war in Egypt and Syria, the spying nonsense with Edward Snowdon… And let’s not forget the whole government shutting down because Republicans are Machiavellian and miserable, and Democrats are stubborn and stupid.

2013 wasn’t a terrible year. It wasn’t 1941 or 2001 or the year I had my gallstones out.

Still, everyone I know had a lousy time of it. Deaths in the family, illnesses, accidents, bad luck and bad news. The good part is: it’s over, and we’re still here. No matter how crappy and ignominious your year was, you still came out better than Peter O’Toole, Lou Reed and Nelson Mandela.

And, of course, there’s always the hope that next year will be better. At Passover, we all say, “Next year in Jerusalem!” Or, more realistically, Boca Raton. “L’Shana Haba’ah B’Yerushalayim” doesn’t just mean we’d rather be in the Holy Land than Weehawken, New Jersey. It means we hope that a year from now, we’ll find ourselves in a better place where we’ll be happier. Yes, that’s as likely as the Jets winning another Super Bowl, but we hope anyway.

For the Jewish New Year, we dip an apple in honey to represent sweeter times ahead, and we blow the ram’s horn because in ancient times, they didn’t have saxophones. All these things are meant to signal a new beginning, a clearing out of the dust and schmutz of the previous year, and starting the next annum with fresh breath and a snazzy hat. Or snazzy breath and a fresh hat; your choice.

For this Western New Year, crazy people will stand for hours in Times Square to usher in 2014. This, I don’t understand. If I want to see a ball drop, I’ll look in the mirror when I take off my underpants. But there’s something to be said for a communal, brotherhoody way to exit one train and hop another. And if standing around, drinking Coors Light from a sack, huddling for warmth and peeing into your Depends works for some folks, who am I to say no?

Me? I’ll be home with my dear wife, Miriam Libby, our 21 ½ beautiful children, my TV fixed on the “Honeymooners” channel, and my wine glass full of schnapps and Metamucil. I look forward to greeting you all next year, same time, same place, different grievances. L’Shana Haba’ah B’Radio, B’Youtube, B’Twitter and B’Wildered.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.

–>https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27905

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Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #085 (12/22/2013): Passings in 2013

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #085 (12/22/2013): Passings in 2013

Aired Dec 22, 2013 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/-XJcnuKO1O0

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of December 22nd, 2013.

My friends, this is that time of year, between Chanukah and Tu Bishvat, when we become reflective, we take stock, when we look towards a new year with a sense of hope that the previous year has nearly crushed out of us.

But before we move forward, it is good to look back and remember some of the special people that we lost over the past twelve months – or 13, if you’re counting in Hebrew time. People who made their mark on our lives and were, therefore, bigger than life. Although, obviously, not bigger than death, because they died.

So farewell, to some major humor beings. People like Nelson Mandela, the first black president of South Africa who could have spent his time in power going, “Hmm, how many white people can I get back at?” Instead, he forgave and included. If that doesn’t sound like a big deal, just compare it to the way Moses and the Israelites left Egypt: plagues, bloody water, frogs, death of the first born. Not as if the Afrikaaners didn’t deserve the occasional boil outbreak or locust infestation. But Nelson Mandela was above that – which makes me jealous, because I’m not.

Another thing I’m not is psychic. And neither was Sylvia Browne, that woman you saw on Montel Williams telling everybody their future, except she knew less about the future than air-traffic controllers on September 10th. It pains me to speak ill of the dead – well, no it doesn’t. And in this case, I think psychics should have the same credo as doctors: first, do no harm. You wanna make people feel better about their dead loved ones looking down from above – or up from below? – fine. But Sylvia Browne served as a paranormal consultant on police murder cases, giving families false optimism and getting virtually everything wrong. Meanwhile, she predicted her own death at 88. And she got THAT wrong, by 11 years. I predict a few years in limbo for this charlatanette.

In 2013, we also lost Roger Ebert, a Pulitzer Prize winner who made talking about the movies even more fun than going to the movies. I didn’t always agree with his thumbs down, but I liked the way he kept his chin up. Well, his original chin, anyway.

Jonathan Winters died this year, a man whose comedy paved the way for Robin Williams, Gallagher and Carrot Top. So Jonathan may be doing some hell time. We also bade farewell to Esther Williams, who could dance in a swimming pool for hours and still look glamorous. If I’m in water more than two minutes, my face looks like a carp, and my body could double for Eubie Blake. And speaking of bodies, farewell to Harry Reems, the porn star of “Deep Throat.” Born Herbert Streicher, Harry Reems was blessed in a way most Jewish men are not, and he used it in a way most Jewish men aren’t capable of. Reems later had a drug problem and then converted to Christianity, but I’d prefer to remember him as a risk-taking Jew who worked hard. Sometimes rock hard. Which brings us to Al Goldstein, the man who founded Screw magazine and for 30 years hosted “Midnight Blue” on cable television. He was known for giving the middle finger to anyone and everything that he felt impinged upon his God-given freedoms, and for that, I hope God gives him five fingers in a hearty handshake. Oh, and we wouldn’t even have sex in this country if not for the late Virginia E. Johnson. In Masters & Johnson, she was the Johnson. And he had the Johnson.

In 2013, we lost Dr. Joyce Brothers, the psychiatrist and advice columnist who, because she was Jewish, was usually right. Late in the year, we lost Peter O’Toole, who played a crazy Arab sympathizer in “Lawrence of Arabia” but made up for it by schmoozing with Brooklyn Jews in “My Favorite Year.” 2013 was also the year we saw the wonderful Jean Stapleton stifled, and the passing of Mouseketeer Annette Funicello, who taught so many young boys about courtesy, good manners and tight sweaters. We lost Tom Clancy – the writer, not the Clancy Brother; and Joan Fontaine, the actress who wishes she could trade places with her sister.

Some Jewish notables taken from us in 2013 included Bonnie Franklin, who used her acting skills to play an Italian single mother, and Ed Koch, who used his acting skills to play a heterosexual mayor. Koch had great charisma, and his sexual preferences were his own business, except his fear of being “out”ed kept him on the sidelines during the AIDS crisis. I can just see Mayor Koch reaching heaven and asking HaShem, “So, how was I doin’?” And God saying, “Well, Ed, there’s a few thousand faigeles who want to answer that question for you. Now bend over.”

2013 also took from us another politician with a questionable legacy, Margaret Thatcher, who was pro-America and pro-Israel but furiously anti-union. I hope she doesn’t have too much trouble with Archangels Guild 603. On the other side of the spectrum, there was Helen Thomas, the big-mouth White House correspondent who thought she was queen of the Nile because she got a front-row seat to ask presidents a question. What a meeskeit of a woman, physically and every other way – screaming at politicians, in her dotage, that Jews should get the hell out of Israel. Finally, God said to Helen Thomas, “Get the hell out of planet earth.” At least he gave her a long illness before he knocked the bitch off.

To be fair, I’m sure Helen Thomas was just bitter because she was so mind-bendingly fugly. Oh, ladies and gentlemen, sex-wise, Helen Thomas was a three-bagger. One bag for her head. The second bag for her head in case the first bag broke. And the third bag for your vomit in case the first two bags broke. Helen Thomas was so ugly, at press conferences, they’d put a microphone in front of her face, and it would droop. She once asked Bill Clinton if he wore boxers or briefs, and he said, “With you? Armor.” Helen Thomas was so ugly, her coffin requested a blindfold. If you put a black wig on Popeye, fattened him with chemotherapy drugs and hit him in the face with a rake, he’d still look like a GQ model next to Helen Thomas.

But enough of that; let’s talk music. Slim Whitman died this year, which brings yodeling one step closer to blessed extinction. Ripped from the book of life was Patti Page. And The Doors’ Ray Manzarek died, so we can finally forgive him for that endless, boring middle part of “Light My Fire.” We forgive George Jones for all of his excesses, not because he was a great country star but because he seemed like a nice guy underneath. Well, underneath 6,000 pounds of cocaine and 12 million bottles of vermouth.

And I guess we forgive Lou Reed, too. Can you separate the man from the music? The genius who gave us “Berlin” and “Transformer” and “Ecstasy” and The Velvet Underground and “Walk on the Wild Side” versus the tush-hole who walked on the nasty side with almost anyone who tried to have a conversation with him. For years, Lou the jerk was inextricable from Lou the drugged and debauched artiste. Even after he sobered up, he was still a dick half the time, so art is no excuse. However, Lou wouldn’t be the first artist who turned messes into masterworks. Look what God did with Noah’s Ark: horrible event, great book chapter. So if the recorded legacy of Lou Reed, who, by the way, wrote a song bashing Kurt Waldheim, Jesse Jackson and the PLO – outlives the man’s pettiness, that’s all right by me.

Oh, by the way, my heart goes out to John Cale. He’s very much alive, but with the death of Lou Reed and the no-relation JJ Cale, I’ll bet he unplugged his phone for a few weeks. Speaking of unplugged, farewell to folkie Richie Havens. One of the few entertainers who had a voice even more gravelly than mine. At Woodstock, he was supposed to do a couple of songs and clear out before The Who started breaking things. When he was asked to extend his set and keep playing, he vamped and improvised and created “Freedom,” one of the most thrilling live performances of all time. Up there with Elvis on Ed Sullivan, Dylan in Manchester and Sharon, Lois and Bram at the Wantagh Performing Arts Center.

And when it comes to live performances, let us not forget Sid Bernstein, who brought the Beatles to Shea Stadium, where no one could hear them, and Israeli songstress Yaffa Yarkoni to Carnegie Hall, where I saw her three times. It was only one concert, but I was wearing bad glasses.

Let us raise our good glasses, however, in a toast to those who left us this year. Honor their memories; celebrate their legacies. L’chaim.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27910

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #84 (12/8/2013): Ronnie Smith in Benghazi

click above to listen (audio file)

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #84 (12/8/2013): Ronnie Smith in Benghazi

aired Dec 7, 2013 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/T291vu3Z7CY

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of December 8th, 2013.

This-past Thursday, Ronnie Smith, a science teacher, was shot and killed while going for a jog. No, this didn’t happen in Chicago, or Detroit, or the Bronx, it happened in Benghazi, Libya, where Smith had emigrated with his family to spread the gospel and help children there get an education.

Okay, many things to consider in this senseless act of violence. First of all, Benghazi is the place rebels took when they ousted dictator Muammar Khadaffi from power. Now, Khadaffi was no sweetheart. He was an Islamic fundamentalist – which means, he was fundamentally crazy. Also, you could have run a small city for ten years on the energy he expended hating Israel. He funded Jihad and even the Black September terrorists of the Munich Olympics. Bad guy. Not someone I’d want at my pizza party – unless I could take the molten cheese and smear it over his ugly face, and watch the grease droplets melt into all those little pockmarks on his godforsaken punim. But I digress.

Out went Khadaffi and his Shariya law, in went rebel forces and a bunch of moderate Muslims supposedly carried along on the happy rainbow of the so-called Arab spring. All went swimmingly for, oh, a month or two, until Islamic militants attacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, killing our diplomat there. Since then, Libya has not exactly been St. Maarten’s for American visitors.

And yet this guy, Ronnie Smith, he’s on a mission. He thinks God wants him in the middle of Libya, doing good works and maybe spreading some gospel to the heathen. So he brings over his wife and kid, and he’s at the International School teaching chemistry. Does it occur to him that he’s teaching chemistry to a bunch of teenagers who will use that information to make bombs and chemical weapons? For his troubles, and his kindness, and his humanitarian beliefs, Ronnie Smith was shot down like a dog on the street. Allah works in mysterious ways.

So I feel sorry for his family – who were already back in America for the holidays when this happened. And I hope the Libyan government – a phrase which may be an oxymoron at this point – I hope they pay more than lip service to hunting down the Muslim madmen who keep doing, well, what Muslim madmen do.

But let’s be honest: what was this idiot doing in Libya? Really. Who asked him? America’s got public schools that are one step removed from penitentiaries, but this guy has a calling to go help our enemies overseas. And what’s more, the main argument that liberals and “We-are-the-World” types make that can even remotely come close to defending events like 9/11 and the Boston Marathon, is that America sticks its nose in where it doesn’t belong. We go scavenging for oil and scamming for capitalism in any country we can get our grubby red, white and blue hands on. Some of these countries – in Latin America, in North Africa – they don’t want our help. They don’t need our processed foods, our politics, our pornography – but they’re getting it.

In a statement, Smith’s widow, Anita Smith, said, quote, “Ronnie’s greatest desire was for the people of Libya to have the joy of knowing God through Christ,” unquote. Anita, darling, they don’t want your Jesus any more than they want my Jews. And it’s the one prerogative they really are entitled to; if they think the Koran’s gonna get them some virgins, who are we to force our equally crazy religions down their ululating throats?

The death of Ronnie Smith was tragic, but he was in the wrong place at the wrong time for what he fantasized were the right reasons. He knew the risks and admitted as much, but that’s cold comfort to his son, who’s getting a dead father under his Christmas tree. When the American government issues a warning that it’s not safe for white-looking western people to go jogging where they hate us, maybe Jesus, instead of telling his followers, “Go, spread my truth,” should say, “You’re in a war zone, schmuck! Get your tuchas out of there, and go teach at MIT.”

With all due respect to the late Mr. Smith, if you’re a homeless person in London, you can choose to sleep on a bench in Trafalgar Square. But if you wake up covered in pigeon poop, literally and figuratively, that’s on you.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27948

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #83 (12/1/2013): Thanksgiving Meets Chanukah

click above to listen (audio file)

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #83 (12/1/2013): Thanksgiving Meets Chanukah

aired Nov. 30, 2013 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/0tnyNRjxP5M

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of December 1st, 2013.

When the moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars – who gives a shit? I don’t follow astrology. But when two happy holidays intersect, that can be a time of much joy and reflection.

Now, all too often, Christmas and Chanukah fall around the same time. This has been hell on Jews, because the media conflates the two festivals into one big secular holiday, which it is not. There’s no such thing as Chrismukkah. Judah Maccabee did not find the baby Jesus in the Syrian temple, and Christ was not crucified on the shamash of a giant wooden menorah.

And yet, the proximity of Yuletide and Chanukah made for an uneasy coexistence. Jewish children would see their goyishe friends on Christmas Day riding new bicycles, playing X-box, unwrapping a new drum set. Then the Yiddishe children would come home, light a candle, sing a song, and then hold out their hands for a big present. Wow! Two ounces of chocolate money. A day-glo dreidel. Next door, the blonde kid gets a Vespa; in the Jewish house, “happy Chanukah, here’s a dollar. Give half to charity.” Is it any wonder the yidlach would look longingly at outside culture and say, “I want to go to there!”?

So Jewish families started playing catch-up. It wasn’t enough to put a menorah in the window. Now we have to decorate, just like the goyim. And the first night of Chanukah is meant to approximate Christmas Eve, so the kid gets a half decent gift. That way, the Jewish child can go next door and say, “Ha ha! Sure, you got all that stuff from Santa. But at 12:01am on Christmas Day, you’re done. No more presents. I got an iPad tonight, and there are seven more days of presents to come. Good stuff like chocolate or money, or chocolate that looks like money. Have fun cleaning up pine needles for a month, you foreskin-totin’ suckaah!”

Even so, the drawbacks of an omnipresent Christian holiday overshadowing a
Jewish one can be oppressive. It’s like people who have their birthday on Christmas. You get screwed, because not everyone double-gifts. You receive a single present, and it’s marginally better than the two items you would have scored had your parents shtupped in February instead of April.

But sometimes, holiday alignment isn’t a bad thing. This year has a rare occurrence of Chanukah falling at the same time as Thanksgiving. Wednesday night we light the first candle, and Thursday is turkey day, with Chankuah continuing all through Thanksgiving weekend.

We can draw parallels between the two festivals. First of all, they both call for gratitude. On Thanksgiving, Americans are grateful that the Indians were trusting and outmatched in warfare, so the Pilgrims could take advantage of them, give them smallpox and take their land. Thanks Pocahontas, pass the giblets. In the Chanukah story, Jews had to fight against Hellenism. I don’t know what they had against girls named Helen, but there you go.

After decades of treating the Jews fairly, the Syrians changed their tune to a song of anti-Semitism. They killed and pillaged, they made Judaism illegal, and they defiled the Hebrew temple in Jerusalem. This caused a number of Jewish families to revolt – and God knows, I’ve met some revolting Jewish families. But you had Mattathias and his son, Judah Maccabee, who fought the Syrians of the Greek empire and drove them out of Judea. They Hebrews and re-dedicated the temple, so we’re grateful to them and to HaShem for saving the Jewish people from conversion, death and unidentifiable gyro meat.

Chanukah and Thanksgiving have other things in common, as well. They’re both pretty secular. Chanukah is post-bible; it’s a cultural tradition rather than a top-down mandate. And Thanksgiving is for anyone happy to be living in the good ol’ USA. Both holidays also share special foods associated with each. Chanukah, you have potato latkes and jelly donuts. Thanksgiving, you have turkey and Dunkin’ donuts. Sports are also a part of both holidays. Thanksgiving, you sit in your armchair and you watch people who aren’t fat and lazy play football. Chanukah, children sit on the floor with a dreidel and learn the basics of gambling. You start with a pot of money, and then try to take money from everyone else. Is it any wonder Jewish children grow up to be bankers?

Chanukah is the festival of lights; Thanksgiving is a feast of lite beer. Both holidays also incorporate fire. Thanksgiving, we recall the way our ancestors burned down Indian teepees and villages. Chanukah, we stand at a menorah holding a colored candle while molten wax runs down our hands. You’d think after 5,000 years they could invent a candle that doesn’t make you look like the accident guy on “Dancing with the Stars.”

Most of all, both holidays are about spending time with family and friends. They’re about women arguing in the kitchen, men falling asleep during halftime, children getting loaded up on snacks and then being forced to eat cranberry sauce – does anybody enjoy eating cranberry sauce? Chanukah and Thanksgiving are about expressing our appreciation to HaShem for keeping us alive, either by letting us defeat empires or giving us delicious crops to harvest. Either way, it’s something worth singing about:

“Over the river and through the woods to Bubbie’s apartment we shlep;

It takes quite a while, and she’s kind of senile
And the baby comes home with strep.

Out of the tunnel, across the bridge and through the old neighborhood
The latkes were yucky, the presents were sucky
And yet, and yet, life’s good.”

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #82 (11/19/2013): Crystal Spa

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #82 (11/19/2013): Crystal Spa

Aired Nov. 16, 2013 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/uoM7W0ecZKg. https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27958

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of November 17th, 2013.

I’m not exactly a spa kind of guy. Relaxation frightens me, and if you’re gonna put me on a massage table, you better have huge boobs and a latex glove because I ain’t leaving without my money’s worth. If I were the spa type, however, one place I would hesitate to visit is the Crystal Sauna Wellness Park in Thuringia, Germany. By all accounts, it’s a lovely place: gourmet food, heated pool, sauna, live entertainment, cozy rooms. They really should promote the place more.

Or maybe they shouldn’t. An advertising agency came up with a print ad for Crystal Park that went on the spa’s website. The copywriter wanted to marry the theme of romance and relaxation with the name of the venue. Something that said, “spend a memorable evening here at the Crystal Spa.” However, those were not the words they used. Instead they said – and I’m not making this up – quote, “Enjoy the evening hours in candlelight and relax, in a long, romantic Kristall-Nacht.”

You’d think a German would know that putting the words “Kristall” and “nacht” together is the opposite of romantic. It’s like a cruise ship promoting itself by saying, “Come with us on a journey of titanic proportions!”

An employee of the spa said the advertisement was, quote, “a misunderstanding,” one that stemmed from the park’s name, Crystal. It certainly had nothing to do with the beginnings of the Holocaust. But all we can wonder is how a German ad exec could not know that November 9th, 1938 was the beginning of Hitler’s final solution. That was the night of the broken glass – “crystal night” – when German-Jewish store owners were beaten, their windows smashed, ethnic slurs painted on their bricks – the first wave of the Holocaust. Most importantly, it proved to the Nazi regime that they could get away with state-sanctioned brutality without anyone trying to stop it.

It’s like when the first West Coast rapper said, “Hey, the album is a little short. Maybe I’ll do a duet with someone else on the label. How bad could it be?” He tries it, and two years later, every other song on a rap CD has a guest appearance. Yes, the scale of the tragedy is different, but the principle is the same.

Even as we move into the 21st century, 80 years and three generations since the Nazis took power, Germany remains a prickly pear. Grandchildren carry the moral burden for something completely alien to them, and yet some of those guilty grandparents still walk the earth. It’s illegal to be a white supremacist there, or to own or display Nazi memorabilia or even give the “Heil Hitler” salute. Which is probably as it should be. There are silly aspects to the censorship, but consider this: in 1945, the world would have had every right to set off 25 atom bombs over Germany. So even allowing that country to survive – not to mention letting them reunite – is an act of mercy for which they should be abundantly grateful.

Sure, the Holocaust is taught over there, relentlessly, I hear. So there are people who say, “it’s enough. The country can’t move forward if you grind everyone’s soul into the past.” But the reply to that is, well, this Park-Spa ad. Some product of the German school system, who went into advertising, didn’t hear the alarm bell go off in his head. He saw “Kristall,” he thought of “nacht,” and he had no compunction about slamming them together. This is why there can never be too much Holocaust education – especially over there. And the same goes for any act of savagery that we never want to see again.

I would hate to think that 60 years from now, in Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan, or Syria, there’d be a commercial on TV going, “Come to Achlabad for your bedding needs. On-sale now, our heavenly mattress and box spring – twin towers of comfort.” Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to a blooper reel.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.