the long-running radio show & video podcast
Here are skits and sketches that were performed on Dave’s Gone By over the years. Enjoy!
For this week’s StoryTime segment on Dave’s Gone By, Rabbi Sol Solomon reads Suzy Ultman’s “I Like Your Chutzpah”
This segment aired Aug. 1, 2026 as part of episode #1043 of the “Dave’s Gone By” video podcast program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz. Full episodes also available on youtube, Facebook (davesgoneby), and on DavesGoneBy.com.
All content (c)2026 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
Dave’s Gone By Skit (7/25/2026): STORYTIME – Rabbi Sol Solomon reads “Have You Filled a Bucket Today?”
For this week’s StoryTime segment on Dave’s Gone By, Rabbi Sol Solomon reads Carol McCloud’s “Have You Filled a Bucket Today?”
This segment aired July 25, 2026 as part of episode #1042 of the “Dave’s Gone By” video podcast program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz. Full episodes also available on youtube, Facebook (davesgoneby), and on DavesGoneBy.com.
All content (c)2026 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
Subject: Rabbi Sol reflects on what we can learn from a viral raccoon.
This Rabbinical Reflection first aired July 25, 2026 on the “Dave’s Gone By” video podcast program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.
Rabbi Sol’s Rabbinical Reflections air on the long-running Dave’s Gone By program (davesgoneby.com) and are also archived on the Rebbe’s blog, Shalomdammit.com.
Rabbi Sol is also the creator of the stage shows, “Shalom Dammit! An Evening with Rabbi Sol Solomon” and “Hate Speech…With Love: Another Evening with Rabbi Sol Solomon.”
© 2026 TotalTheater Productions. All Rights Reserved.
RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #212 (7/25/2026): Jimothy
(c)2026 David Lefkowitz. airs July 25, 2026 on Dave’s Gone By.
Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon, with a Rabbinical Reflection for late July 2026.
What happy things occurred this year to take our minds off the miserable state of the world? The New York Knicks? America doing okeedoke in FIFA? Travis Kelce making an honest woman of Taylor Swift? Democrats magically realizing that a lech with a Nazi tattoo might not be the best Senatorial candidate – even for progressives? I mean, they wanted a socialist, but a National Socialist?
All of those were bright spots in a brown year. The latest distraction from doomsday may not be the most dramatic, but it is the cutest. Last week on social media, a raccoon lumbering across backyards in Seattle, went viral. In fact, people thought the animal was viral because he was a mess. A hunchback with a foreshortened spine, the beast – lovingly nicknamed “Jimothy” – looked like a cross between a squirrel and a midget gorilla. And yet, although goofy looking, this rodent with a pudgy body and a stubby tail was doing everything raccoons normally do – sneaking around, foraging, forcing suburbanites to double bag their garbage.
And here lies the conundrum of Jimothy. Raccoons are viewed as a nuisance. They’re beautiful creatures, but in your backyard or your garage or, God forbid, your chimney, that’s a call to pest control. And don’t let children go near them `cause they could be rabid. Your garden-variety raccoon is the last thing you want to see in your garden.
Except when you have an abnormal, deformed, genetically fucked-up raccoon – then it’s love. Everywhere, Jimothy t-shirts, tattoos, murals, glass figurines! The University of Washington already has a mascot so they couldn’t adopt him, so they just gave him an honorary doctorate. (Not really, but check their Instagram.)
So, yes, people are besotted with this trash panda because he’s beating the odds. He’s living his best raccoon life despite being shaped like Danny DeVito. Jimothy’s deformity, his homeliness – which would ordinarily set off a Darwinian “ugh” – instead prompts a desire to mother and protect him.
So this got me thinking (which with me is always dangerous). What can Jews learn from Jimothy? I realize our problem is we’ve become too normal. We’re so assimilated, so taken for granted for blending in, people feel no guilt for hating us. Jews hold major positions in law, entertainment, medicine, technology. We have physically gorgeous actors and actresses on TV and in movies. And we may not own all the banks, but we probably own the buildings the banks are in.
Despite our tiny population, Jews are major players in every aspect of the world stage, which gives everyone from good-ol’-boy bigots to social-justice sophomores carte blanche to harangue us with insults, falsehoods, and blame. When Israel hit back after October 7th, the world went, “What??? The underdog isn’t supposed to take brutal revenge! If you’re not cowering in the corner, you must be the bad guys. Not to mention Christ killers.”
So, how do we Jews counteract this latest wave of anti-us-ism? Why not go the Jimothy route? Instead of being attractive, educated, erudite, cultural, influential, and basically normal, maybe it’s time for Jews to lean into the old stereotypes. Lose the attributes that have helped us pass – and surpass.
We all want to be Paul Newman, but it’s safer to be Arnold Stang. Why? People who fear commonplace raccoons adore Jimothy because he’s a harmless freak. Maybe we Jews should grow our noses out, run around with scraggly beards and smelly old coats, cough and limp and crap ourselves, and get partial lobotomies to make us retarded. And then we approach our enemies, with Sarah McLachlan music playing behind us, and say (retarded voice), “Shalom! Look how helpless and wretched we are. Won’t you let us live in peace in our own widdle country? Think of us as the Moo Deng of the Middle East.”
Now, granted. That approach might backfire. Zohran Mamdani might round up all the New York Hebes and throw `em in zoos. But just maybe, if we can convince our foes to view us as pathetic Jimothies instead of powerful Jews, perhaps we’ll dodge the next pogrom.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches, in Great Neck, New York. Jim-jimothy, Jim-jimothy, jim-jim-jeroo.
(c) 2026 TotalTheater. All rights reserved.
—>
For this week’s StoryTime segment on Dave’s Gone By, Rabbi Sol Solomon reads Jake Lockett’s “My Life as an Asthmanaut”
This segment aired July 11, 2026 as part of episode #1040 of the “Dave’s Gone By” video podcast program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz. Full episodes also available on youtube, Facebook (davesgoneby), and on DavesGoneBy.com.
All content (c)2026 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
For this week’s StoryTime segment on Dave’s Gone By, Rabbi Sol Solomon reads Michelle Nietert and Tama Fortner’s “God, I Feel Sad”
This segment aired July 11, 2026 as part of episode #1040 of the “Dave’s Gone By” video podcast program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz. Full episodes also available on youtube, Facebook (davesgoneby), and on DavesGoneBy.com.
All content (c)2026 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #211 (6/27/2026): BAD COFFEE
Subject: Rabbi Sol reflects on a Brooklyn coffee shop’s anti-Semitism.
This Rabbinical Reflection first aired June 27, 2026 on the “Dave’s Gone By” video podcast program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.
Rabbi Sol’s Rabbinical Reflections air on the long-running Dave’s Gone By program (davesgoneby.com) and are also archived on the Rebbe’s blog, Shalomdammit.com.
Rabbi Sol is also the creator of the stage shows, “Shalom Dammit! An Evening with Rabbi Sol Solomon” and “Hate Speech…With Love: Another Evening with Rabbi Sol Solomon.”
© 2026 TotalTheater Productions. All Rights Reserved.
TRANSCRIPT:
RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #211 (6/27/2026): Bad Coffee
(c)2026 David Lefkowitz. airs June 27, 2026 on Dave’s Gone By.
Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon, with a Rabbinical Reflection for the end of June 2026.
What the hell has happened to coffee? It wasn’t so long ago that if you wanted a morning brew in New York, there’d be a guy in a cart, and for a buck he’d hand you a fresh Folger’s, with cream and two sugars, napkins, a donut, and a tip on the third race at Belmont. Okay, maybe that was so long ago. For decades we’ve grown inured to the Starbucking of America. Jackie Mason said it best when he warned us, “Coffee in a coffee shop? Sixty cents, with cream. At Starbucks, it’s Cafe Latte: 3.50. Each French word costs another four dollars. No tables, no chairs, no busboy, you have to clean up — and it’s burnt coffee. If you get burnt coffee at a coffee shop, you call a cop. But when it’s burnt at Starbucks, it’s a blend.”
But at least Starbucks, which became a global powerhouse when led by a proudly Jewish CEO, stays mostly out of politics. Three years ago some of the unionized workers got mouthy about Gaza, but that simply triggered the most Jewish result of all: competing lawsuits. Since then, Starbucks has been extremely careful to say, “We don’t support Israel; we don’t not support Israel. We have stores all over Arabia, but the terrorists don’t get gift cards.” Like Switzerland in World War II, Starbucks’s neutrality is disingenuous and cowardly, but at least they didn’t join the other side like the French and Italians.
Nowadays, however, self-righteous identity politics is everything. It’s not enough to sell an eight-dollar mochaccino to some Gen Z schmuck; you also have to treat them to your Instagram-based musings on social justice. It shouldn’t surprise us that coffee pourers think they’re experts on decolonization. The whole point of coffee is de-colonizing – getting the crap out of our colons.
But a different kind of crap is being served up at one java shop in Brooklyn: Poetica Coffee, which is run by a jerk named Parviz Mukhamadkulov – and I wish this Mohammedan would cool off. Poetica refused to serve a pro-Israel Jewish politician. The store wrote on its official Facebook page, “Hey Congressman Dan Goldman. Do you see how our coffee doesn’t taste like genocide juice? Here at Poetica we don’t serve genocide enablers. We issued you a refund – your money’s probably coming from AIPAC anyway. Don’t ever come to Poetica.” Unquote. Obviously, this Parviz guy is chock full of nuts. But he’s getting away with this garbage! Hordes of Brooklyn millennials who fancy themselves baby Nelson Mandelas are cheering this douche-nozzle as he sells his rancid Robustas and gives only the Arabs Arabica. You gotta love a coffee shop that creams itself over equal rights while denying a customer . . . equal rights!
Tuesday’s primaries showed the New York Democratic party moving even further towards radical anti-Semitism, so Poetica’s perversion should not shock us. Still, the gall of this guy’s blatant Israel-bashing, that crosses way past altruism into straight-up Jew hate, can be met only with incredulity and rage. I am heartened by the counterprotestors who staged a pro-Israel, anti-Mamdani rally outside Poetica, telling those progressos to drown in their espressos. I am disheartened by Congressman Goldman losing in the primary to Jewish kapo Brad Lander, a bleeding-heart socialist who parrots all Hamas’s talking points about the “horrors” of Zionism. You know he’ll be getting free refills from the eyebrow-piercing crowd.
But the funniest part of all this – and none of this is funny – is that when Poetica refunded Dan Goldman’s cup of coffee and tip (because, yes, Jews do tip), he got back $9.82. That’s nearly ten dollars for heated brown water. And people pay it!
So here’s my idea: the most expensive coffee in the world is called kopi luwak. That’s the one where an Asian cat called a civet eats the coffee beans and then excretes them. Supposedly, the bowel movements taste fantastic with non-dairy creamer. Well, Parviz, let me go the civets one better. I will eat a dozen coffee beans then climb up on your counter and shit into your mouth and down your throat. The flavor will be rich, distinctive, and, if you have an enema handy, sustainable. Oh, sure, you might choke to death, and that would be poetic – and Poetica – justice.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches, in Great Neck, New York. Good to the last plop.
(c) 2026 TotalTheater. All rights reserved.
Dave’s Gone By Skit (5/30/2026): STORYTIME – Rabbi Sol Solomon shares an A.I. rap and reads “Miriam and her Dancing Shoes”
For this week’s StoryTime segment on Dave’s Gone By, Rabbi Sol Solomon reads a Jewish rap concocted for him by Artificial Intelligence and then reads Sandy Eisenberg Sasso’s “Miriam and her Dancing Shoes”
This segment aired April 25, 2026 as part of episode #1029 of the “Dave’s Gone By” video podcast program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz. Full episodes also available on youtube, Facebook (davesgoneby), and on DavesGoneBy.com.
All content (c)2026 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
Pet potato: https://youtu.be/Js_fkVmkH4Q
Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #208 (5/23/2026): MOSQUE ATTACK
This Rabbinical Reflection first aired May 23, 2026 on the Dave’s Gone By video podcast.
Rabbi Sol’s Rabbinical Reflections air on the long-running Dave’s Gone By program (davesgoneby.com) and are also archived on the Rebbe’s blog, Shalomdammit.com.
Rabbi Sol is also the creator of the stage shows, “Shalom Dammit! An Evening with Rabbi Sol Solomon” and “Hate Speech…With Love: Another Evening with Rabbi Sol Solomon.”
© 2026 TotalTheater Productions. All Rights Reserved.
TRANSCRIPT:
Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon, with a Rabbinical Reflection for late May 2026.
So often in these mini-sermons, I am mourning and expressing rage at attacks on Israel, synagogues, and the Jewish community. It came as almost a shock this week when a mosque, the Islamic Center of San Diego, became the target of terror. Three innocent people, including a security guard, were murdered by a couple of teenagers, whose stockpile of weapons included 30 guns and a crossbow. This is a horrible story, yet another in a long line of gun-crazy crazies ruining life for the rest of us. Condolences to the survivors of the dead, and compassion for the Moslem community enduring an unquestionable hate crime.
However, that said, there’s also room for gratitude. (And yes, here comes the politically incorrect part). As Jews, we should be grateful that the shooters were named Clark and Vazquez, and not Cohen and Vogel. All we needed now was another excuse for the watermelon crowd to bash us.
Speaking of the Intifada, I hate to say it (actually, I don’t hate to say it; I’m just gonna say it), but this is the Muslims getting a taste of their own medicine. For 78 years, Jews have lived with both the threat, and the realization, of terror violence. Year after year of bombings, blastings, stabbings, hijackings, four all-out wars, and then the atrocities of October 7th, 2023. Jews are forever the targets of blind hatred and slaughter – all too often at the hands of Arabs.
I am not saying, “Aha! This time we get one back!” That is reductive and ugly, even for me. Then I’d be like the Luigiites. They celebrate a psycho because the healthcare guy he shot was responsible for much more suffering and death than Luigi’s single killing. Still, two wrongs don’t…dot dot dot.
But perhaps this awful tragedy at the San Diego mosque will be a reminder that no matter how you despise someone else, terrorism is the wrong response. For example, just because it feels right to assassinate the guy who replaced supermarket cashiers with automated kiosks doesn’t mean it is right. Maybe.
And let’s not forget, those teenage losers in California didn’t just hate Muslims. These white supremacists abhorred schvartes, faigeles, women – because they couldn’t get laid – Republicans and Democrats. Oh, and they wrote a manifesto blaming Jews for everything. Well, isn’t that a kumbaya moment? Muslims, white supremacists, leftist progressives, and writers for the New York Times all standing together against the Hebrews. Hey, free country. Loathe us all you want. But if you go the next step, once in a great while, it’ll be your brains on the sidewalk. You have been warned.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches, in Great Neck, New York.
Happy shavuis.
(c) 2026 TotalTheater. All rights reserved.
Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #207 (5/16/2026): ABRAHAM FOXMAN
This Rabbinical Reflection first aired May 16, 2026 on the Dave’s Gone By video podcast.
Rabbi Sol’s Rabbinical Reflections are heard on the long-running Dave’s Gone By radio/video podcast program (davesgoneby.com) and then archived as text and audio on the Rebbe’s blog, Shalomdammit.com, where a transcript of this Reflection may be read.
Rabbi Sol is also the creator of the stage show, “Shalom Dammit! An Evening with Rabbi Sol Solomon,” which played in NYC in Nov. 2011 and Aug. 2012.
© 2026 TotalTheater Productions. All Rights Reserved.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
More on Rabbi Sol: shalomdammit.com
TRANSCRIPT:
RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #207 (5/16/2026): Abraham Foxman
(c)2026 David Lefkowitz. aired May 16, 2026 on Dave’s Gone By.
Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon, with a Rabbinical Reflection for mid-May 2026.
Baruch Dayan HaEmet Avraham Chanoch Hanach Fuksman, which is a lot of names to say goodbye to Abraham Foxman, for 30 years the indefatigable head of the Anti-Defamation League, the ADL.
Now before the Israel-bashers chime in, please don’t confuse the ADL for AIPAC. AIPAC lobbies for money from American politicians to keep Israel safe, secure, and on the map. The ADL calls out the kind of idiots who bitch about AIPAC. The ADL is there to monitor anti-Semitism and torchlight it before it becomes Germany 1933.
Founded in 1913, the ADL is an off-shoot of the B’nai Brith – and if you’ve ever had a brith, you know how painful that can be. Thank God for the B’nai Brith because it’s an organization devoted to protecting Jews and the Jewish homeland, Israel. The Anti-Defamation League is exactly what its name promises: taking people to task when they do or say racist things affecting the Jewish people.
That was Abraham Foxman’s job for 30 years. Trained in the law, Foxy would hear some terrible comment by a politician, or a great actor, or Mel Gibson, and he’d be there to say “watch your fucking mouth.” (Maybe not in those words.) With his gift of persuasion, Foxman would guilt the guilty party into apologizing and admitting the error of their ways, or at least pretending to, for the sake of public relations.
More than just catching and punishing people, Foxman truly wanted our enemies to realize the harm they were doing and make them see our side of story. We find a great example of this in a column earlier this year in the Jewish Daily Forward. It covers Foxman’s prickly friendship with another recent dead guy, Jesse Jackson. When he ran for president, Jackson might’ve garnered sizable Jewish support: he was a liberal, a friend of MLK, a voice for the underclass. But Jesse got frustrated by the bureaucracy of New York politics and was heard calling the Big Apple “Hymietown” – which is a nicer way of saying “Kiketown.” Just the way “schvartzetown” is a nicer way of saying . . . Well, anyway, the media picked up Jackson’s racial slur, not to mention his buddy-buddyship with Louis Farrakhan, and now not only wouldn’t Jews vote Jackson for president, they wouldn’t even trust him as a Shabbos goy.
So, Abraham Foxman let Jackson have it – which started a dialogue, which led to years of a grudging mutual respect and Jackson paying attention to and often supporting the Jewish community. Was he perfect? No. Are you perfect? No. Am I perfect? (pause) Was Abraham Foxman perfect? Of course not. It’s easy to overreact when someone in a pissy mood blurts a slur. However, hate speech is a slippery slope, and more power to the ADL for throwing down a little gravel to impede the slide.
How sad it is that Foxman died at a time when we need him most: when social media has brainwashed a generation of college students to despise Israel, when every musical micro-talent spouts Hamas talking points better than their own shitty navel-gazing lyrics, when the New York Times – always suspect when it came to Eretz Yisroel – falls all over itself printing false narratives for liberals to immerse themselves in a Gaza pity party.
Jonathan Greenblatt is the new CEO of the ADL (actually, not so new; he’s been running it since Foxman retired a decade ago), and I commend him for filling his predecessor’s big shoes in a quieter way. But silence isn’t always golden, and while Abe Foxman helped bring the right wing under Israel’s chuppah, the progressive left has left the altar and thrown itself into the arms of Hezbollah. I don’t think Foxman’s turning in his grave (because he’s a big guy and his stomach would get blocked by the coffin lid), but I’m sure he’d have much to say about the state of the world and the state of Israel. If only we could still listen.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches, in Great Neck, New York. Alav HaShalom.
(c) 2026 TotalTheater. All rights reserved.
—>
For this week’s StoryTime segment on Dave’s Gone By, host Dave Lefkowitz reads Josh Lacey’s “The Pet Potato.”
This segment aired April 25, 2026 as part of episode #1029 of the “Dave’s Gone By” video podcast program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.
Full episodes also available on youtube, Facebook (davesgoneby), Spotify, and on DavesGoneBy.com.
All content (c)2026 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
