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Dave’s Gone By Skit: Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #165 (1/17/2021): FREE SPEECH

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(Rabbi Sol Solomon’s 165th Rabbinical Reflection aired Jan. 16, 2021 as part of the Dave’s Gone By show. watch video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Y0DFpad8eto).

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of January 17th, 2021.

Can we speak freely? No, I mean, can we speak, freely? I don’t like the “Stop the Steal” mishegoss any more than you do, and I think the nudniks who stormed the Capitol building deserve the strongest punishment. Like fines, imprisonment, or being trapped in an elevator with Jeanine Pirro in your left ear and Nancy Grace in your right. And they’re both using megaphones. And guess what? They’re angry.

But back to the point: we’ve got a paranoid President who is circling the drain because he’s terrified of being called the one thing he is–at least in terms of the 2020 election–a Loser. Not with Israel and the Middle East; he’s a winner there. Not with Wall Street and big business; he’s a Superman there. And, up till March of last year, not with the economy, which had low unemployment, tons of job growth, and a gung-ho attitude.

But COVID knocked him down, as it did 350,000 of his countrymen. Trump’s rash pronouncements and veiled racial signaling appealed to America’s baser instincts, so although 75 million people voted for him, 80 million didn’t. He lost. Deal with it. I wish he would. I wish his Confederate flag-waving acolytes would. I wish the folks on QAnon would get a Clue-Anon.

However, just before the riots, the President gave a speech where he dubbed the elections fraudulent, the news fake, and the elections rigged by Big Tech. He called on Congress to recount everything, and he said, and I quote, “I know that everyone will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard,” unquote. He also praised the size of the crowd–he does love a big crowd–and urged them to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. As a protest. As a way for those who legitimately felt the election was stolen to make their voices heard.

For this, Donald Trump was again impeached. For spinning a false narrative, yes, about the election, but moreover for inciting the crowd to riot. “Something is wrong here, really wrong,” he said, “and we fight. We fight like hell, because if you don’t, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” You know what that’s called? Rhetoric. Not insurrection, not incitement to anarchy. It’s a politician telling his believers not to give up hope and to channel their rage into action. If some followers in buffalo skins and football-fan camouflage took that to mean storm the government, break stuff and take stuff, that’s on them. At the very least it’s trespassing; at most it’s sedition.

The Democrats are accusing the President of having a signed First Sedition. True, he wound the bozos up, but he didn’t set them loose, any more than the makers of Cabbage Patch dolls doing TV commercials telling parents “buy these horrible things for your even-more-horrible children,” caused riots in Kmart.

But pushing past impeachment and trying to remove Donald Trump from office–which will happen two weeks after he’s already been removed from office–my problem is with the censoring of free speech. President Trump has been banned, permanently, from Twitter. Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram have deleted him for however long they choose, and YouTube has pulled his channel down. Far more worrisome, they’re doing the same for all his nutty followers who now have no place to share their cries of “fraud!” and “conspiracy!” Google, Apple, and Amazon have all removed the social-media site Parler, because too many kooks were spoiling the broth.

Now, these are private companies–sort of–so their CEOs have the right to monitor everything that goes on them. If you own a restaurant, you can’t discriminate against your customers based on race or gender, but you can still demand, “No shirt, no shoes, no service.” I’ve thrown people out of my synagogue for wearing dirty tallises. Well, they weren’t wearing anything underneath them, but that’s neither here nor there.

The point is we are on a very slippery slope when our biggest purveyors of public palaver start telling us, “Well, you’re allowed to post hopeful things about Joe Biden’s inauguration, but you can’t write anything questioning the legitimacy of his victory.” “You’re allowed to condemn the violent idiots rioting in Nancy Pelosi’s office, but don’t you dare encourage the peaceful idiots to keep marching two blocks away.”

When I was a little Rabbi, a Rabbette, I was taught three things you couldn’t do: yell fire in a crowded shul, slander someone, or be so obscene that a reasonable person would go, “dude, I’m as kinky as the next fetishist, that’s messed up.” But no law says you can’t lie. That’s not even one of the Ten Commandments. Wait, let me make sure (thinks and counts), nope. False witness is different. And there’s certainly nothing in there about not sharing things that you actually believe are true–even if there’s overwhelming evidence they’re false.

So what happens when you censor folks on the fringe? You make them angrier, you drive them deeper underground, and now it gets harder to track them to make sure they don’t escalate from angry TikTok videos to kidnapping Ilhan Omar. You also cause everyone else to self-censor. “Hmm, maybe I better not post this because they’ll just take it down anyway. Maybe I better not think this, because then I’ll waste time posting it, because they’re just gonna take it down anyway.”

I am of the mind that you say what you have to say, and if I hate it, I get to say what I have to say back at you, louder. The problem in 1925 was not that Hitler published Mein Kampf; it’s that not enough people read it and went, “ooh, this guy’s bonkers and maybe dangerous.” The problem is not that right-wing Republicans are posting that the elections were a fraud; it’s that they believe it and won’t be de-convinced no matter the proof. Still, prohibiting them from non-violent, non-slanderous, non-obscene communication is non-okay.

Big Brother is already watching us from every stop light, website, Smart TV, closed-circuit camera, and GPS system. You can’t sneeze without someone in the CIA muttering gezundheit. Must we have social-media platforms that restrict content based on alternative narratives? Do we really want to side with Cardinal Maculani over Galileo? With Anthony Comstock over James Joyce? With Ayatollah Khomeini over Salman Rushdie?

In my version of reality, Donald Trump was an okay president who made just enough poor decisions to lose the election. In your version of reality (points), Donald Trump was a terrible president who should have been impeached before he was elected. Or in your version of reality (points elsewhere), Donald Trump was a great president who got cheated out of a second term. Can’t we all just not get along? Tolerating stupidity is one of the great virtues of our nation. That and cream soda. What, you disagree? That’s your right.

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 #164 (12/31/2020): 2020 FAREWELL

Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #164 (12/31/20): 2020 FAREWELL

(Rabbi Sol Solomon’s 164th Rabbinical Reflection airs Thursday, Dec. 31, 2020 as part of the Dave’s Gone By annual New Year’s Eve special). youtube link: https://youtu.be/1J8f9dTce1o.

Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for New Year’s Eve, December 31, 2020.

Well, it’s been a year, hasn’t it? I mean, we’ve had some doozies: 1929, 1941, late 2001, a very bad dental appointment I had in 2017. It’s the nature of living that we have to enjoy the good times, because the shitty, rotten, what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-God? times come up right behind them.

The year started well. The stock market was booming, so a couple-hundred really rich people got really richer. And that trickled down to the rest of us because unemployment sank to three percent. Which made it a terrible year for lazy people because now there was no excuse for not getting a job. Everyone was hiring! They weren’t paying a living wage or decent health benefits or treating you like a human being, but you could get a job if you wanted one.

Also, we felt kinda safe. Kim Jong-Un seemed to like Donald Trump and the feeling was mutual. We killed an Iranian General by drone, and Iran went, “eh, we’ve got others.” Meanwhile, American diplomacy was creating peace in the Middle East! Well, not the whole Middle East—never the whole Middle East—but Israel is now doing trade and tourism with Sudan, Bahrain, and United Arab Emirates. It’s an Abu Dhabi honeymoon!

Granted, at home it was politics as usual. 117 BIPOC Democrats were running for President, which got whittled down to . . . an old white guy. Maybe a too-old white guy, but Joe Biden picked a black woman running mate. And thank God for that because anyone whiter than him and Mike Pence would hurt people’s retinas. And through it all, the left continued to despise Donald Trump, the right despised Bill—uh, Hillary—uh, Obama—uh, anyone who doesn’t like country music. President Trump was impeached—remember that? Remember why? Because he allegedly solicited foreign help in the 2020 elections. The Republicans called that crazy and blocked an indictment. Months later, it’s Trump who’s bitching the elections are rigged, and it’s the Democrats calling him crazy. If you ever thought the world was nothing more than a snowglobe that HaShem shakes up and down to amuse Himself, 2020 was your year.

Harry and Meghan exited Buckingham Palace, England brexited from the European Union, and Yuri Tolochko sexited from his blow-up doll. Look it up.

And, of course, the world blew up in the middle of March. One day, a few passengers got sick on a cruise; a month later, the globe is closing restaurants, theaters, nightclubs, massage parlors—or so I’ve been told—and ordering everyone stay home, wear a mask, and don’t get within six feet of another human being. Go figure, the Unabomber becomes a role model. And worse, thousands of people die. New York’s Governor Cuomo herds all the old geezers into nursing homes, where they do not get herd immunity. And Central Park turns into a M*A*S*H unit because the hospitals are full of victims on ventilators suffering from a malady the President once called a hoax.

Where did Coronavirus come from? You tell me. Did Wuhan mishandle it? Did someone undercook the bat they were making for dinner? Did swine flu go through conversion therapy? The only good news is that a disease no one heard of in March already has two vaccines to prevent it in December. Now if if you can just keep from coming down with corona when you’re on the long lines to receive the shot, we’d be getting somewhere.

So we’re nearing 350,000 dead, 19 million diagnosed, and everyone avoiding each other like the plague—because of a plague. Everyone, that is, except, I’m ashamed to say, Orthodox Jews, who think goyishe rules don’t apply to them. Ten thousand of them show up at a wedding in Williamsburg where they sing, dance, eat, drool, and pull the garter off the Rabbi’s leg. Maybe my Jewish brethren think if they stay among their own kind, they don’t affect anyone else. Except the mailman, the doctor, the grocer, the funeral director. They say they’re being unfairly targeted for just trying to keep their businesses open—especially since the media simultaneously glorified Black Lives Matters protests—which weren’t exactly masked, socially distanced, or peaceful.

To be fair, schvartzes had a lot to feel violent about. They didn’t come through 400 years of slavery and oppression to ignore a policemen crushing a suspect’s neck. Or a bunch of other hinkie deaths of unarmed perps who just happened to be the wrong color. And even more deadly than rogue policemen? Murder hornets! Have you heard about these things? Along with Covid, the Asians have given us flying, stinging insects that are killing off the flying, stinging honeybees that keep our ecosystem going.

And since we’re talking biblical catastrophes: Locusts devoured all the food in East Africa, wildfires burned up half of California, and Cats became a major motion picture. This was the year Hamilton came to Disney, Tiger King came to Netflix, and Harvey Weinstein came just enough times to put him in prison. Aunt Becky from Full House also went to prison, although for some reason, the writers of that show didn’t.

2020 was the year we lost Sean Connery, Kirk Douglas, Diana Rigg, Olivia de Havilland, Eddie Van Halen, John Prine, Tom Seaver, Whitey Ford, Terrence McNally, Toots Hibbert, Terry Jones, Buck Henry, Carl Reiner, RBG, Squiggy, Regis Philbin, and “Jeopardy’s” Alex Trebek. No question: they will be missed.

To paraphrase Charles Dickens: It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times. But hey, we still got through a presidential election and the less-awful candidate won. SpaceX put humans into orbit—not the humans we’d want to send into orbit, but it’s the science that counts. And speaking of science, because we’ve all been staying indoors, animal species that were becoming extinct are coming out to play again, and best of all: researchers in Australia discovered that giving doxycycline to koala bears cures their chlamydia! Who knows? Maybe by this time next year, they’ll zap the gonorrhea out of those poor giraffes.

I hope we’re here next year. Well, I hope I’m here next year. But if we can get through the pandemic, and the global warming, and the political divide, and the racial unrest, and the coming apocalypse, we just might have a passable 2021. Hey, I’m Jewish. That’s as optimistic as I get. But even if it’s an even worse year, you can still try to be the best you. In times like these, even HaShem couldn’t ask for more.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches. Shana Tovah, ovah and ovah.

Dave’s Gone By Skit: DAVE’S GONE CANCELING #002 (7/11/2020): Quick Draw McGraw

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DAVE’S GONE CANCELING #002 – QUICK DRAW McGRAW

Ladies and gentlemen, last week, we inaugurated this new segment of the Dave’s Gone By program, Dave’s Gone Canceling. We here in the Daverhood feel it is important to call out cultural icons who represent the worst kinds of racism, sexism, genderism, and jingoism. It isn’t enough to put questionable content into context, we must erase it! Cancel it! Begin a clean slate so that America can cease its unrest and . . . rest.

A week ago, we eviscerated musician and painter Joni Mitchell for her appropriation of black-American culture. Sure, she’s one of the great pop songwriters of the 20th century, but she dressed in blackface on an album cover; therefore, she must be banishe’d from the cultural landscape. There’s no room for shades of grey in our black-versus-white society. You either make politically correct art all the time, or you get called out and canceled.

Which brings us to this week’s offender. Someone white, someone who prides himself for upholding law and order—just like the police, and we all know how wrong they are these days. Someone who not only oppresses a Mexican who serves him, but appropriates Latinx stereotypes whenever it suits him. All of this, by the way, in the name of “fun.”

I am, of course, talking about that Cancel Criminal, Quick Draw McGraw. Hanna-Barbera’s white cartoon horse who serves as a sheriff in the Old West. His deputy? A little Mexican donkey with a ridiculous accent, a sombrero, and the embarrassing name, Baba Looey—a bastardization of the Cuban song “Babalu.” Granted, Baba Looey is often shown to be smarter than his boss and warning Quick Draw of impending danger, but he is still the lackey, the second banana, the comical sidekick donkey to the great white horse.

To make matters worse Quick Draw isn’t satisfied with having a best-friend Mexican stereotype; he, himself, takes on a farcical hispanic persona when becoming El Kabong. A masked vigilante, El Kabong conquers his enemies by shouting “Ole’!” and then bashing their heads in with a Spanish guitar. If you don’t think that’s offensive, just imagine El Kabong as a hegemonic Anglo-Saxon. He’d be named Elliot Kabson, he’d shout “Fore!”, and whack his enemies with a golf club. Or a bottle of chilled white wine.

To those of you who say, “Yes, there’s something unseemly about how Mexicans were treated in that animated series. But these things were drawn 60 years ago. Why take offense now?” Because cartoons are evergreen entertainment, and they’re loved best by children—the most susceptible to systemic racist ideology seeping into their post-cradle crania. Do we want our five year olds watching Quick Draw McGraw and then growing up to say, “Hey, where’s my servile donkey with the funny accent? And why is it, when I hit my little brother over the head with an electric guitar, he didn’t go `Kabong!, he just bled a lot and had to be rushed to the hospital?”

We must protect our youth, ladies and gentlemen, and we must also be offended on behalf of our brothers who are Spanish, Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Brazilian, Columbian and all those other countries with diarrhea food. It is therefore with a corazon muy triste that we cancel you, Quick Draw McGraw. Baba-Boo to you! Your 45 cartoons shall be blotted out and erased like Daffy in “Duck Amuck.” Long live political correctness. El Ka-bye.

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27784

Dave’s Gone By Skit (6/20/2020): DAVE’S GONE CANCELING #1: Joni Mitchell

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DAVE’S GONE CANCELING #1 – Joni Mitchell

Ladies and gentlemen, these are difficult times as we grapple for the very soul of our nation. America is a great country, but it has been built on the backs of the poor, and along the way it has mocked, abused, and sometimes murdered those who don’t fit into the hegemonic Norman Rockwell/“Leave it to Beaver” family album.

It’s taken 250 years, but we’re finally doing something about it. No, we’re not fixing immigration laws or rethinking the criminal justice system or leveling the economic playing field for everyone of all races. That would be silly. Instead, we’re showing that we care by taking things that were created in a whole different time and mindset and culturally erasing them. Why bother with substantive change when you can tear down a statue? Why make a serious effort when you can simply signal your wokeness? And you do that by taking offense at an artwork that never made you mad before but now leaves you furious.

Right-wingers are sneering at this trend by calling it “Cancel Culture.” It’s making believe the movie or book or song or pancake syrup never existed because it represents something racist or worse. You don’t hear a lot of Bill Cosby routines on Sirius/XM’s comedy channel. Mel Gibson movies aren’t all the rage at the B’nai Brith. And The Collected Love Sonnets of Jeffrey Epstein still hasn’t found a publisher.

But why stop there? Don’t be namby-pamby like HBO-Max and put “Gone with the Wind” in historical context; just cancel it! Burn the prints! Delete the MP4s! Don’t play Richard Wagner at the Israeli Philharmonic and think you can justify it with an essay in the Stagebill. Kick that Gotterdamerung opera out the door!

And so, in that spirit, we inaugurate this new special segment of Dave’s Gone By: Dave’s Gone Canceling. You, my viewers, have had a hard week—a hard year, so it’s no fair to ask you to think for yourselves. Let me think for you. So much racism, sexism, anti-semitism, homophobia, and sheer tastelessness goes unchecked out there, I feel it’s my duty—and yes, I said doody—to call for the removal of artworks that either of themselves or through the actions of their creators—call to mind the injustices of this terrible society. I call it “Dave Goes Canceling.”

Today’s cancel criminal is . . . not Mel Gibson. Too easy. Not Tina Fey—she canceled herself by pulling back those 30 Rock episodes with blackface in them. No, our inaugural Cancel Criminal is . . . that terrible racist: Joni Mitchell.

Lest we forget: the cover of her mostly crappy album, Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter, features a picture of her in a colorful dress—not a colored dress, so that’s okay—but also another picture of her dressed up as a pimpy black guy. Complete with fuzzy hat, big sunglasses (shop stylish glasses at ICU Eyewear) , and bling. She said at the time this was her jazzy alter ego, a black hipster she called “Art Nouveau.” That’s not a tribute, that’s appropriation!

And does she dress as Martin Luther King? Or Rodney King? No, it’s a black dude you’d see sashaying in front of the Port Authority looking for teenage runaways.

As if to compound the crime, one of the songs on the album is “Dreamland,” where she dreams about a weird tropical place “a long, long way from Canada.” One lyric dreams about, “Black babies covered in baking flour.” Ooh, delicious! Is that what Joni thinks about? The opposite of blackface—where little black babies try to turn white. In front of a cook, by the way, who might be eyeing them as tender morsels. And if that’s not enough, later in the song she brings up “tar baby and the Great White Wonder.” Well, tar baby was a story cooked up by none other than Uncle Remus, that Song of the South darkie. The actual story of the tar baby can be seen as a metaphor for slaves, the bunnies, outwitting the foxes, their masters. But the actual baby made of tar is a racist visual cue, and that plantation owners would cover their walls with tar to keep hungry slaves from stealing their fruit. If a slave stole an orange, the master would see the tar stuck to his body and whip it right off him. Tar baby and the great white wonder, indeed.

And if you’re thinking, well, that album was from the seventies; it was a different time, don’t forget that Mitchell’s last original album, from 2007, was titled “Shine.” Sunshine, you say? Inner beauty shine, you say? I say: slur for a black shoeshine boy.

Joni Mitchell, you hereby stand accused and convicted of racism. We hereby cancel you! Instead of Both Sides Now, you are No Sides Now. We will not turn you on even if you are a radio. And you may be the color blue, but that doesn’t excuse what you’ve done to black!

Long live political correctness . . . until we’re canceled.

—> https://wp.me/pzvIo-26D

Dave’s Gone By Skit: Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #163 (6/7/2020): BROADWAY 2020

Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #163 (6/7/20): BROADWAY 2020

(Rabbi Sol Solomon’s 163rd Rabbinical Reflection airs Saturday, June 6, 2020 as part of the 16th annual Dave’s Gone By Broadway special. Watch on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-mpB45YQoI&feature=youtu.be)

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Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of June 6, 2020.

Year after year, I’ve been coming on this program to help celebrate the Tony Awards—the glittering prizes Broadway people give themselves to compensate for not getting movie work. The awards are meaningless; how do you compare one actor playing a frustrated gay writer in a comedy, to another actor playing a frustrated gay writer in a drama? It’s apples and oranges. Well, still two fruits, but you know what I mean.

The Tony Awards are important because they serve as an excuse to remember how lucky we are to be in New York. It’s where the most talented performers, designers, writers, orchestrators, wigmakers, and intimacy directors ply their craft.

Going to the theater is a social activity, an emotional experience, an intellectual pursuit, and a cultural lifestyle. Or at least it was, until some Chinaman cut up a bat, and now no one can go ten feet from their bedroom.

As you know, playhouses in America closed in mid-March because theater is not just about art. It’s about a thousand people squeezing through a lobby at intermission to get to four toilets built in 1908. It’s about smelling the Chanel number two on the woman behind you, hearing the crunch of potato chips from the jerk next to you, picking up gonorrhea from the last person who used your arm-rest, and catching flying spittle from actors over-emoting downstage. I wasn’t there at the time, but I’ll bet you bubonic plague started during an ancient production of Sugar Babies.

So Broadway, the Fabulous Invalid, is once again crippled. Theater owners must figure out how to make their buildings tourists traps instead of death traps. Producers are scared they’ll have to lower prices, cut capacity, and submerge all the balcony seats in Purell. And members of Actors Equity are learning how fun it is to be unemployed 100% of the time instead of 90% of the time.

But my friends, I take the long view. It is my opinion, based on absolutely nothing but my kishkes, that a year from now, everything will be back as it was. When New York gets hit with blackouts and snowstorms, Broadway stops for a day. When Kennedy was shot, Broadway went dark two days. Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, Broadway closed . . . and reopened on Thursday.

People want normalcy even in a new normal. And with the COVID curve collapsing, it’s just a matter of weeks before Mrs. Cohen turns to Mr. Cohen and says, “Ooh, Denzel is playing Mama Rose! Tickets are only $470. Let’s go!” And Mr. Cohen will say, “Are you crazy? You just got outta the hospital with pneumonia!” And Mrs. Cohen will say one word: “Denzel.” And that will be it.

And if it’s not Denzel, it’s Meryl. Or Bette. Or Audra. Or Rabbi Sol Solomon doing his magnificent show, “Shalom Dammit! An Evening with Me.” Whatever the impetus, people will take the risk to reap the reward. After the market crash of 1929, who would invest again? People did. After 9/11, who’d get on an airplane? People did. After Tom Six directed Human Centipede 2, would anyone go to a movie again? They did. To Human Centipede 3.

Scientists predict that the autumn will bring us a spike in coronavirus cases and force all the stores and restaurants that just ramped up to re-hibernate. That could happen. We might also see a lot of marquees go blank and theater companies give up the ghost. That’s likely. But eventually people will sit together, watching a stage, laughing, crying, clapping, and burrowing into the seat cushion when they have to hide a fart.

And so I have been asked, by nobody in particular, to give a blessing, a benediction, for the future of the American theater.

Blessed art thou, O Lord, our God, King of the Universe. Or possibly Queen. Or Gender-questioning deity. O father of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And by that I mean F. Murray Abraham, Oscar Isaac, and Jacob Adler. It’s been a rough couple o’ months. A hundred thousand dead, massive unemployment, race riots, disappointing episodes of Nailed It!. We need a beacon in these dark times. We need the most talented, charismatic people on the planet; live and in-person, creating art, and making us feel something beautiful.

As the wolf dwells with the lamb and the leopard lies down with the sheep—hey, consenting animals—let the unions dwell with the producers and the landlords be fruitful and multiplex. May God say, “Let there be theater!” Well, maybe not Frank Wildhorn musicals. And Glass Menagerie revivals. And three-hour plays about British politics. And rock musicals about teenagers with problems. BUT LET THERE BE OTHER THEATER! And may we dwell in the houselights of the Lord forever. Amen.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches. The show will go on.

Dave’s Gone By Skit: Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #162 (5/2/2020): SOCIAL DISTANCING

Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #162 (5/2/20): SOCIAL DISTANCING

(Rabbi Sol Solomon’s 162nd Rabbinical Reflection aired Saturday, May 2, 2020 as part of Dave’s Gone By: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZP5bCPfLKY&feature=youtu.be)

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Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of May 3rd, 2020.

You know, I usually take great pride in being Jewish. Despite my neurosis and fear-based logic and my alarmingly small penis, other aspects of my heritage give me significant nachas. We’re survivors, we’re creative and cultural, and we’re smart. Even anti-Semites warn the world that we’re crafty, we use our big brains. What a lovely stereotype! French people are snooty, Italians are hotblooded, the Polish are . . . Polish, but Jews were always the smart ones. Granted, in recent years we’ve gotten complacent. Look in a library at night, you know the Asians have usurped us. But at least we’re still second-smartest.

Or so I thought until this-past week. On Wednesday, Rabbi Chaim Mertz—no relation to Fred or Ethel—he dropped dead of COVID-19. A tragedy; my condolences to his family. How did the Orthodox community respond? With a funeral—a public funeral. 2,500 Orthodox Jews of the Haredi sect gathered on the streets of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Did they stand six feet apart? No. Did they all wear masks? No. Although some of those beards could have doubled as a hairnet. Did they pay any attention to scientists and state officials who said, “Excuse me, we’re in a pandemic. Stay indoors and practice social distancing. And Hulu-watching.”

These people did none of this. No doubt their thinking was, “this is our community, we self-govern, and if we choose to put ourselves at risk, that’s our business. Also, we share antibodies because we’re all inbred anyway.”

Mayor de Blasio looks at this de Blatant violation of community standards—and possibly the law—and says, “What’s wrong with you people?” Or, to be precise, he tweeted, quote, “My message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this: the time for warnings has passed. I have instructed the New York Police Department to summon or even arrest those in large groups. This is about stopping the disease and saving lives. Period.”

Did the Jewish community apologize? Did they say to the Mayor, “Slicha. We were overcome with grief for our dead Rebbe, but we were thoughtless and disrespectful to our neighbors. It won’t happen again, no matter who dies. Although if Messiah comes, we’ll probably still turn out in big numbers.”

That was not the response of the Haredis or the greater Jewish community. Instead, they jumped on the race wagon and accused de Blasio of de Bigotry for singling them out.

What a load of schmucks! The Mayor singled you out because you didn’t single yourselves out, you multiplied. If you’d stayed home and watched the funeral on Instagram, or done an orderly procession with everyone six feet apart and masked, you could have served as an object lesson for the world: “When the shutdown ends, this is how you can go into a sports stadium, a school assembly, a klezmer rave party—in a safe, public-minded fashion.”

Instead, you poured into the streets and milled around like a fire drill. And that behavior gives ammunition to real anti-Semites. Why shouldn’t they sneer, “You see? The Jews claim to love the USA, but but when push comes to shove, they push and shove. Religious ritual supersedes American law. And they turn a blind ear to mayors, governors, police forces—anyone outside their crazy creed.”

For their part, the Haredis say they notified police before the march and were given the go-ahead. A conversation that I imagine went: “Hi. We’re gonna congregate. Better get barriers ready so the goyim don’t bother us. Thanks!” They also noted that crowds elsewhere in the region turned out in numbers to watch a military flyover of Air Force Thunderbirds. “Why is de Blasio picking on us and not them?” Fair point. He should have crapped all over both of you. Instead, the Mayor was forced to temper his tweets. He didn’t apologize, thank goodness, but he did express regret for lashing out, saying he was frustrated by this disease, which has killed 63,000 New Yorkers—among them quite a few Jews.

Over the next year, this country must have serious debates about the line between security and civil rights. I mean, it’s 18 years since 9/11, and we still take off our shoes at the airport. What is that about? I’ve hurt more people with my foot odor than a shoe bomber ever could. So it will be interesting to see if the Orthodox, in their huddled masses, spread coronavirus so much worse than the rest of us on our couches watching “Nailed It!” all day.

But that’s for scientists and statisticians to figure out. In the meantime, the law—especially in a sardine tin like the five boroughs—is to socially isolate. I admit, that’s easy for me, because I hate people. But whatever your ethnicity, if you think your religion is more important than common sense or the common good, please, convert. And stay 6 feet—600 feet!—away from people like me who don’t wanna die. And if I do, no procession. Just give me a Pay-Per-View special with Gilbert Gottfried telling dirty jokes and Morgan Freeman doing the eulogy. Oh, and naked cheerleaders. For obvious reasons.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches.

Dave’s Gone By Skit (4/25/2020): RABBI SOL SOLOMON READS SHAKESPEARE’S SONNET #30

Click above to watch the video

Click above to listen to the segment (audio only).

Here is the Dave’s Gone By Skit, Rabbi Sol Solomon reads Shakespeare’s Sonnet #30, which aired on Dave’s Gone By April 25, 2020.

The event occurred April 23, 2020 as part of Irondale Ensemble’s virtual Sonnet Marathon to celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday.

Note: The other guy is Irondale co-founder Terry Greiss.

For those playing along, here’s Sonnet #30:

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unus’d to flow,

For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,

And weep afresh love’s long-since-cancell’d woe,

And moan th’ expense of many a vanish’d sight;

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All losses are restor’d, and sorrows end.

Dave’s Gone By Skit: Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #161 (4/25/2020): RABBI SOL SOLOMON READS SHAKESPEARE’S SONNET #30

Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #161 (4/25/20): RABBI SOL SOLOMON READS SHAKESPEARE’S SONNET #30

(Rabbi Sol Solomon’s 161st Rabbinical Reflection debuted live as part of Irondale Ensemble theater company’s virtual Sonnet Marathon on April 23, 2020 and then aired Saturday, April 25, 2020 as part of Dave’s Gone By: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_U35BeLXRg&t=4s)

Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon, founder and spiritual leader of Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York. And I am delighted to be taking part in Irondale Ensemble’s Sonnet Marathon to honor April 23rd, the day William Shakespeare was born. It’s also the day he died, but why be negative?

And besides, who needs sanitizer, when we can all be Sonnetized?

I have chosen to read Sonnet number 30; in Roman numerals that’s XXX, in Hebrew: Yud Yud Yud.

“When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unus’d to flow,

For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,

And weep afresh love’s long-since-cancell’d woe,

And moan th’ expense of many a vanish’d sight;

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All losses are restor’d, and sorrows end.”

Now, what do we learn from this Sonnet? First: it’s ideal for Jews: it’s depressing, it’s about regret, and how tempting it is to rehash miseries over and over. Sorry—o’er and o’er.

The schmendrick in this poem sighs over spilled milk, cries over dead people, grieves over old pussy, and then complains that he’s wasting precious time being unhappy. Freud would have a field day with this putz.

But of course, Shakespeare being universal, we are the putz. Even before the pandemic, who among us hasn’t wasted decades on worry, fear, disappointment, inertia, and that most Jewish of bugaboos, guilt?

The silver lining is when you have someone who brightens your day: a friend, a pet, an anatomically correct, inflatable rubber Gal Gadot doll. Even if your loved one is merely a memory, it can erase all the tzuris of what Rabbi Tom Lehrer once called, “your drab, wretched lives.”

And so my dear friends, in this time of woes and grievances, where we can’t dab our drowning eyes because there’s no goddamn toilet paper, remember the good times and the good people of those times.

This is Rabbi Sol Solomon wishing you sweet thoughts and ended sorrows. And Charmin! Two ply!

Shalom!

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #160 (4/10/2020): Shaking Hands

Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #160 (4/10/20): SHAKING HANDS

(Rabbi Sol Solomon’s 160th Rabbinical Reflection aired Saturday, April 10, 2020 as part of Dave’s Gone By. Watch & Listen on Youtube: https://youtu.be/FBe-_trL2vI) / https://davesgoneby.net/?p=25519

click above to watch

Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon, with a special Rabbinical Reflection for the Rave Social Distancing Festival of 2020.

Now let’s be honest. If you personally have not gotten sick with the COVID-19. And nobody close to you has died. And your job, God willing, is safe. It really hasn’t been a bad disease.

I know: the store doesn’t have your favorite toilet paper, so you’re using the scratchy kind that hurts your tuchas. You have to wear a mask when you go outside. Lemme tell you something: the vast majority of us are so homely, in public we should wear masks. You can’t see a show on Broadway. Big deal. Netflix has tons of homosexuals. And one of them raises tigers. You don’t see that in Hamilton. The lions inThe Lion King? Not real! What a gyp!

So in terms of social distancing . . . Nisht gefelech. No big deal. So you can’t go to work and see your colleagues five days a week. Ask yourself: the day you retire, will you miss any of those assholes one bit? Even the nice assholes? Of course not! So why miss them now?

But people are all upset about these minor alterations in behavior. Like when Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the coronavirus task force, told a reporter that if we’re really serious about stopping the spread of infectious disease, we would never shake hands again. Never shake hands? How do you end a job interview? (mimes OK signs) “Thank you!” (and double handjobs) “When will you be deciding?”

Americans have this attachment to the hearty handshake. Extend your forearm, look your adversary in the eye, shake vigorously without bruising any cartilage, smile and start your business. This is the universal language of macho respect. It’s also a fantastic way to transfer the germs and the yuch and the hangnail and the paper cuts on your fingers to a perfect stranger.

You ever meet someone who wears too much fragrance, you shake their hand, and the whole rest of the day, your hand stinks like them, no matter how many times you wash it? And you can’t help yourself. The rest of the day, you’re smelling your own hand. You’re working on something, you’re eating dinner; you tell yourself not to… and yet you bring your hand to your nose and goddammit, it’s still there. Well, if that eau de Toilet stays on your fingers 10 hours, imagine how long their phlegm SARS will stick around.

Dr. Fauci has a good point. We don’t need to press the flesh to impress the fresh. Why can’t we bow like the Japanese? A deferential tilt of the head, a bend at the hips like you’re davening. Then you stay on your side of the tatami mat, and I’ll stay on mine. And you know what with the Japanese? No sushi. I love my wife, but it tastes like her vagina. And not, like, 30 years ago when it was tolerable. Now it smells like someone farted into rubber cement. It’s horrible.

But I digress. We need to find ways to greet each other that don’t involve hand-to-hand microbial combat. We could adopt the royal wave. Queen Elizabeth is 187 years old; you think she wants people getting close to her? She gives a little wave, her subjects bow, no one gets chlamydia.

Maybe we can do the namaste thing. “The Divine in me honors the Divine in John Waters movies.” I show my respect to you by shaking my own hand and leaving yours alone. Because I can tell, that’s your Pornhub hand.

And then there’s the Israeli way: say “shalom,” back off six feet, and be ready to shoot.

Either way, we can keep in touch without keeping touching. If the new normal means shifting a few cultural practices that threaten the greater good, we should make the effort. Personally, I think we could eradicate 99 percent of all diseases if we got rid of doorknobs. And the underside of toilet seats. And Dennis Rodman.

But until then, let’s all do our part to keep each other safe and healthy so that after this strange and difficult Passover, we can finally have a true exodus.

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

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NOTES & BACKSTORY:

[April 2020] This Rabbinical Reflection, written during the COVID-19 crisis, was specially created to be part of the Rave Social Distancing Theater Festival, an online-only fest to which playwrights and theater artists submitted pieces of five minutes or less that dealt with social isolation and other aspects of life during a pandemic.

Dave’s Gone By Skit: Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #159 (6/1/2019): 2019 TONYS

Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #159 (6/1/19): 2019 TONYS

Watch & listen on Youtube: https://youtu.be/aHTLs09fLX8

click above to watch

Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of June 2, 2019.

Well, this American Son and synagogue Choir Boy feels like King Kong when I get to be part of the annual Dave’s Gone By Tony show. And this year, I’m Head Over Heels like I’m going to The Prom; I couldn’t Be More Chill, and I Ain’t Too Proud to talk about the nominees for the Tony Awards. I just wish this show were on a Network, and that the theater had more Straight White Men.

But seriously, I do my annual Rabbinical Reflection about the Broadway season and the Tonys specifically looking for Jewish content and connections—of which the Best Play nominees have . . . bupkis, zero, nada, zilch. Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, is about a bunch of clowns cleaning up after a massacre in ancient Rome. There’s a lot flatulence, which is very Jewish, but otherwise, it’s a tiresome goyfest. Then you got Choir Boy, about a faigele schvartze in a prep school. Again: learning, studying: Jewish. Everything else: not. There’s The Ferryman, a magnificent drama about the Irish, and What the Constitution Means to Me, about a shikseh getting an abortion. That leaves Ink, which studies the newspaper business and how Rupert Murdoch built his empire. That right-wing mogul has always been very pro-Israel, but he ain’t Jewish, and neither is the play. In fact, the only Hebraic character in a play the whole season was Sarah Bernhardt—and she was baptized!

Okay, so maybe we’ll do better in musicals? Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations. Well, no. That’s a little closer to a Million Man March than a minyan. However, The Temptations’ manager, Shelly Berger, is a prominent and sympathetic character. That’s how we know the show wasn’t written by Spike Lee.And speaking of stereotypes, The Prom has a Jewish character, Sheldon Saperstein, who is—guess what?—an agent. The Prom also features a flamboyant, effeminate lead character, Barry Glickman, who turns out to be a mensch, so okay. Two other musicals have jerks in them, from hell, in Beetlejuice and Hadestown—but they’re goyim, so I’m fine with it. Meanwhile, Tootsie, both the movie and the Broadway musical, are swimming in Jewish-style humor—even if the characters are safely non-denominational. The composer is David Yazbek, a Yid, whose Tony-winning show last year, The Band’s Visit, took place IN Israel! So he could win a Tony every year; I’d be fine with that.

But where are the Jews this year? Well, there’s Arthur Miller and Harvey Fierstein, in the play revival category with All My Sons and Torch Song. Richard Rodgers and the semi-Jew, Oscar Hammerstein, creators of Oklahoma!, the musical revival. Not to mention Sam and Bella Spewack, who adapted William Shakespeare into Kiss Me, Kate. But the acting nominees this year? Not so much. Bryan Cranston, the star of Network, has a teeny bit of Jew in him, but that’s it for his category. I mean, he’s up against a black guy named “Pope”! Yikes!

Leading Actress? Annette Bening—Episcopalian. Laura Donnelly—Irish. Janet McTeer—English. Laurie Metcalf—midwestern. Thank God, Elaine May kept her Equity card. In The Waverly Gallery, she played an old crank who can’t remember anything and gets on everybody’s nerves. If that isn’t Jewish, what is?

And most of all, let’s pay tribute to the winner of a special Tony Award this year: Judith Light. She’s getting the Isabelle Stevenson Award for making a special and brave contribution to humankind: putting up with Tony Danza for eight seasons of “Who’s the Boss.” Of course, she’s also a terrific actress and an outspoken advocate for gay rights and the fight against AIDS. But screw all that, the best thing about Judith the Jewess is that in her second Broadway show, she played Julie Herzl—the wife of Theodore Herzl, Zionist visionary and spiritual father of Israel. That’s a light I wanna turn on!

Experts are saying that this particular Broadway season is marked by diversity, a wider acceptance of non-traditional casting like a female Lear and a wheelchair-bound Ado Annie in Oklahoma!. And we get more goofy, risk-taking shows like Gary and Hadestown and What the Constitution Means to Me. Does this ring the death knell for the old-fashioned Jewishy shows that made Broadway the greatest live entertainment since public hangings? Are the Neil Simons and Wendy Wassersteins of tomorrow all going to be gender-shifting provocateurs who think rising action is what you get in a gay porn flick, and a deus ex machina is a cappuccino maker?

That remains to be seen, but if I know Jews—and I do know some Jews—we will always have a place in the theater. Because we have imagination, creativity, ingenuity, and soul. And because all the goyim are busy doing anime.

So a toast once again to all the nominees, producers, directors, actors, designers, production stage managers, ushers, crew, those guys outside the theater who paw through your briefcase looking for firearms—all of them unite to make Broadway the magical place that it is. L’chaim.

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