Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of March 29, 2015.
Much to many people’s surprise, Benjamin Netanyahu was elected for a third term as the Prime Minister of Israel. Everyone assumed Labor would win. Everybody thought Netanyahu’s hard-line, status-quo policies were on the way out, and peaceniks were on the way in. Well, pre-April fool! Or technically, Adar fool, since it’s the Jewish calendar we’re dealing with.
But let’s be clear: for all Israel’s weariness of war, and for all the country’s gratitude to the United States for support, for money, for defense, for money, for money, for money . . . Israeli voters nevertheless sent a strong message and a mandate. The safety and security of Eretz Yisroel comes before everything else. It comes before friendship, before negotiations, before swallowing the latest Palestinian PR. They said to Netanyahu: “Give us strong borders and a promise that you won’t sell our country down the river—Jordan or Nile—and we’ll vote for you again.” He did, and they did.
Therefore, much to the chagrin of President Barak Oblivia, Bibi is back. And the shocking part is: he did it, not by kowtowing to the left, not by lying about the potential for peace with our sworn enemies, but by facing facts. The Arabs hate us, they won’t even recognize Israel on their maps or GPS systems, and any chance they get, they’d gladly send the Jews on a blind date with Robert Durst.
In his campaigning, Bibi went so far as to say that on his watch, there would never be a Palestinian state, which is harsh to hear even for a die-hard Zionist like yours truly. I’ve always said, I have no objection to a Palestinian state . . . in Algeria, in Curacao, maybe somewhere north of Omsk. The two-state solution, however, just seems like a disaster on the drawing board: unsafe, untenable, and you know it would just turn Jerusalem into a ping-pong ball. Filled with explosives.
Still, you’re not allowed to say that. If you’re a diplomat or a head of state, you’re supposed to make believe there’s always room for negotiation, that the Arabs really will lay down their arms and be all neighborly-like. Because, hey, they’ve been such good citizens in Yemen, Tunisia, Iraq, Syria, Libya – fill in the name of a country; the Muslims have probably terrorized it.
Our President won’t admit that, of course. It’s like he’s living in the movie “Candyman.” If you say the name “Moslem” five times to a camera lens, the bad guys’ evil will be unleashed. But here’s news, Mr. Pres, the bad genies are already out of the bottle, and if there’s one country on earth that knows not to trust the Bedouins, it’s their Semitic brethren.
Now, for the sake of diplomacy, Benjy Netanyahu has already gone back on his pre-election speechifying. He says he didn’t really mean there was no solution, that he’s always willing to schmooze with Abbas, and we should take his posturing with a grain of hummus. He’s a politician. He says what he has to to get what he wants. Once he’s got it, then he can be more truthful. Not completely truthful, but a percentage.
Meanwhile, the President, who has been going through an otherwise impressive stretch of lame-duck vigor, is pitching a hissy fit over Bibi’s bonanza. Obama wants to be the next Jimmy Carter, brokering the all-but-impossible peace deal that will cement his legacy for the ages. But lemme tell you, Barack, if you’re listening, which I know you are: with Israel and Egypt, Jimmy Carter did an amazing, impossible, fantastic thing. No one can take that away from him. But if you ask anybody about the legacy of James Earl Carter, 39th President, the response will be: hostages, oil shortage, inflation, Cold War, losing the Panama Canal, and a general American bad mood. In other word, that peanut-brained peanut farmer had as much business ruling the free world as Bill Cosby would have running a rape crisis center. So if Obama thinks he’s got anything to gain by twisting Israel’s arm into a phony truce with terrorists, he’s in for a rude awakening.
And yes, it was rude of Netanyahu to visit America and gab with Republicans when the White House all but begged him not to. But I repeat: maybe, just maybe, Bibi knows whereof he speaks when he cautions that trusting Iran to scrap its nuclear program is like trusting Bill Cosby to run a rape crisis center. I know, I already used that joke, but I’m hungry, and I want to finish this stupid essay and get to my brisket.
Folks in Washington are saying that relations between Israel and the United States are nearly at an all-time low. But I think—or at least, I hope—that’s overstating the case. Deep down, both American parties are very committed to Israel and realize how strategically important it is to the West, as well as its moral right to exist in a post-Holocaustal world. If Obama wants to rattle his saber—and you know, those people are blessed with long sabers—it could be the same kind of bluff and bluster Netanyahu was using to win his election. What actually goes on behind the scenes . . . that’s for statesmen to know and Aaron Sorkin to fabricate.
So I hope this is all just smoke and mishegoss, and that the Democrats—especially their presumptive 2016 candidat-ess—remember that what’s good for Auntie Israel is what’s most prudent for Uncle Sam. Or, put another way, don’t throw the Bibi out with the bathwater.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.
RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #119 (3/8/2015): Dave’s 500th
aired March 7, 2015 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/SJrDutZ8dpc
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of March 8, 2015.
Some inventions in this world are amazingly useful, life-changing, relevant, exciting, and crucial to every single person on the planet. And then there’s radio. Oh sure, 80 years ago, if you lived on a farm with one telegraph pole and a half-dead chicken, being able to dial your wireless to hear the latest barn dance down the road was a blessing. Think of families in the Forties, gathered around the console to hear Fred Allen, The Shadow, Fibber McGee, Father Coughlin — everyone staring at the speaker as if waiting, waiting, waiting for David Sarnoff to invent television so they wouldn’t look like idiots staring at nothing all night.
Well, eventually, television did come. As did walkmen, and video games and iTunes and Netflix, and now the only people who listen to radio are the ones who — no, nobody listens to radio. Except blind people. And even they’re watching television; they just think it’s radio. However, despite the obsolescence of Arch Obeler, some people still MAKE radio! Don Quixotes tilting at the windmills of modern media, not caring that while the rest of the world is using washer-dryers, they’re still bashing dirty clothes on a rock. Yet that is part of the mystique that still affords radio whatever charm it has left. A human at a microphone reaching through the airwaves to communicate with another human stuck at a red light.
Even in this hypersaturated visual era, some radio personalities have broken through to become superstars: Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh, the dead guy who laughed a lot on that car show — yes, radio has been bery bery good to .00003 percent of the population. And then there’s Dave Lefkowitz. Twelve and a half years ago, not content with being an underpaid arts journalist, a marginally produced playwright and an unemployable actor, Dave tried his hand at the media world’s oldest profession. He knew he wanted to do something different but not too different, since Jews are terrified of risk. And he knew he wanted to be funny and interesting and worth spending time with. It never worked with women, so he figured it might work with listeners. In a musical market then dominated by Celine Dion, Britney Spears and Hoobastank, Dave wanted to play Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Frank Zappa, Joni Mitchell, Tom Lehrer, and Shooby Taylor. (Personally, I don’t think he plays enough Rabbi Moshe Koussevitsky, but that’s just me.) Dave also wanted to talk to heroes of his youth, like Doctor Demento, Joe Franklin, and the opera fanatic who talked like he was castrated but nevertheless was shockingly heterosexual.
These people did appear on Dave’s Gone By, as did Neil Sedaka, Carl Reiner, Carol Channing, Charles Grodin, Bonnie Franklin, Sheldon Harnick, Dick Cavett, Judy Collins and, most importantly, yours truly. I was on that very first episode, October 6th, 2002. It was 11 o’clock at night on a Sunday, so you can tell just how important the station thought this new show would be. That station is still around by the way, except now, all day long, they play news and music in Mandarin Chinese. It’s a brilliant strategy, actually, because you hear it, and then an hour later, you wanna hear it over again. But back then, the station was a lot more eclectic, and Dave came on with his jokes and sketches and theater reviews and oddball segues, and I have to say my radio was never the same again. Because I dropped it in the toilet while I was listening.
But as I said, I was on the debut show, offering my benediction for success and an important public-service segment about monitoring for breast cancer. My small hope was to alert women to the importance of early screening — by having them come down to the station and let me check their boobs for lumps. That didn’t quite work out, but my connection to Dave’s Gone By was solidified that night, joined together…like an unidentified fibrous mass under a nipple. Since then, it has been a joy and an honor to be a dweller in the Daverhood. I get to share my weekly Rabbinical Reflections on this program, where I can rant and rave and embarrass Dave. These reflections have encompassed everything from Coca Cola to gay rights to Regis Philbin to the relentless insanity of the Arab world. Considering some of the things I’ve said, it’s a miracle I haven’t had my head handed to me – literally, by some English yutz in ISIS.
Think about what radio has come to. Go up and down the dial, and what do you hear? Obnoxious debt consolidators, obnoxious mariachi music, obnoxious preachers spouting that Jesus is the answer to everything when we all know that chocolate is the answer to everything. You’ve got your right-wing, talk-radio goons who think our President is worse than AIDS, and you’ve got your hand-wringing, public-radio schlemiels who think we should cut off Israel’s aid. You get one classical-music station that’s always playing Mozart, because nobody can tolerate anything else. And, of course, 20 rock stations doing their own unique formats of top-40 pop, which all uniquely suck dog poop in their own unique ways.
Somewhere in that vast audio wasteland, you also get sports talk, lite jazz–which is what the devil listens to when he’s not torturing bin Laden—and commercials, commercials, commercials, commercials, commercials, commercials, public-service announcements, commercials, station IDs and commercials. Thank haShem for college radio: for a few spots on the dial that have real kids with quirky personalities playing the shitty music that they love. At least it means something to them.
My friend Dave has found a home on college radio, and so have I. Especially since we both like co-eds. UNC Radio may be a pup tent in a land of high rises, but we can speak freely and not fit into some politically correct, constrained, corporate idea of what a deejay is, or what a Rabbi is, or, in the case of Bill Clinton, what “is” is. And besides, everyone says fame and fortune can make you just as miserable as poverty and obscurity. To which I say, “Prove it! Prove it on me! I am so ready to be miserably wealthy, you can’t imagine!”
But I digress. Dave, my friend, my acolyte, my Miller Lite, mazel tov on your 500th radio program of the air. It’s an achievement that speaks to your tenacity, your talent, your endurance, your inflated ego, and your belief that a moribund medium can still reach one or two lonely people out there, in the dark, who aren’t necessarily serial killers.
Radio isn’t always an honorable or dignified profession, but Dave, that’s why it suits you. I wish you 500 more shows – nay, 5,000! 5,000,000! 5 shmagillion – whatever comes after that. I know you’ll keep doing radio as long as the inspiration holds. And when inspiration goes and you have nothing left to say? Well, there’s always blogging.
Until then, Dave Lefkowitz: more you, more me, immortality. This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of March 1, 2015.
(sings) Shout hallelujah, come on, get happy! It’s the Purim holiday Though the rest of the year is crappy We can drink all our blues away.”
Yes, my friends, this Wednesday night, the Purim holiday arrives, bringing with it the chance to celebrate our Jewishness, to dress up in funny costumes, and to recall a time in our history when, like the Crusades and the Holocaust, we were almost wiped out but saved at the last minute. Actually, no Jews died on Purim, so as happy holidays go, this one’s like hitting Lotto on the day your baby’s born.
On Purim, we read the Book of Esther — returning it to her after we’re done — and we rejoice in a holiday that is truly about fun. F – U – N. I spell it out, not because I’m worried the FCC thought I said something else, but because “fun” is not a word we often associate with my tribe, so we grab it when we can get it. And I get it on these Rabbinical Reflections by sometimes sharing jokes with a Jew-y theme and a Purim-packed punchline.
Our first joke is about my cousin Irving, who lives in Brooklyn and gets on a bus. He’s carrying this big duffel bag, and he asks the driver if he can get a senior discount. The driver looks at him funny and says, “You don’t look a day over 40. Show me some ID.” “I left my wallet at home,” says Irving. “All I have is change for the bus. But I still I demand a senior discount.”
“You’re not old enough!” yells the driver. “What are you trying to pull?”
“How dare you!” screams Irving. “I demand my rights!”
The two start arguing and going back and forth and screaming. Finally, the bus driver gets fed up. He pulls to the curb, opens the doors, grabs the duffel bag and hurls it from the bus onto the sidewalk.
“You bastard!” says Irving. “Just because I wouldn’t pay full fare, you try to kill my son?”
Now, this joke trades upon two of the worst stereotypes you can foist upon the Jewish people: we’re cheap and conniving. We would do anything to save a penny, including lying and cheating. How this became a quote-unquote “Jewish” characteristic is beyond me. Ask a Scotsman. And it’s a hard stereotype to fight because I am stingy and proud of it! I’ll clip every coupon, I’ll visit museums only on free nights, I’ll bring a doggy bag to restaurants – not just for my leftovers, but from anyone else who wants to donate. In a world where one percent of the population keeps 90 percent of the money, who am I to play the big shot?
However, to intimate that the Jewish race is so miserly as to commit knowing and brazen fraud is an ugly over-generalization. For every Bernard Madoff, you’ll find a dozen philanthropists. For every Yid who doesn’t tip a waitress, there are two dozen who overpay just so they don’t look cheap. So please, bear that in mind when you see me in the hallway at the multiplex next week, sneaking from “American Sniper” to the SpongeBob movie. I’m already in the building; I should pay twice to go in a different room?
Anyhoo, let’s move on to our next verbal amusement. Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin are sitting in a Berlin bar in the late 1920s. They’re planning and plotting and dreaming and scheming when an American tourist takes the stool next to them. “Hiya,” says the stranger. “I’m Chris from Ohio.”
“Nice to meet you,” says Hitler. “I’m Adolf, and this is my friend, Josef from Russia. We’re in politics, and we’re strategizing a great social undertaking. We’re going to murder six million Jews and a bicycle repairman.”
“Wow,” says the stranger. “Why a bicycle repairman?”
“See?” Hitler whispers to Stalin. “I told you nobody cares about the Jews.”
This joke has a dark underpinning because had these lunatics stayed friendly and non-aggressive, they truly would have succeeded in exterminating the Jewish population. Mercifully, this did not occur because HaShem hardened Hitler’s ego and made him fight on two fronts. Why God waited until 1945 to stop Der Fuhrer is a question that even the wisest Talmudic spin doctors lose sleep over, but since this is Purim, I’m not going to. I’m just going to tell one more joke.
An Italian mafioso and his Jewish lawyer are walking down the streets of Rome when they see a curvaceous lady bend over to fix her shoe. “Mamma mia!” says the mafioso. “I would love to screw her.”
“Really?” says the lawyer. “Out of what?”
Ahh, lawyers. Where would humor be without them? Actually, on the scale of evil, Wall Street tycoons have leapfrogged over attorneys in the annals of disdain — maybe because we need lawyers to put all these stockbrokers in prison. Still, with litigation the second-most popular American pastime after football, it’s hard to stick up for lawyers, since they’ve been sticking up taxpayers for years.
And before women complain that the joke has a sexist component because just the sight of an attractive lady bending over turns grown men into wolverines, please remember that just the sight of an attractive lady bending over turns grown men into wolverines. It’s funny because it’s true. So…
(sings) Hallelujah, come on, get happy We’re gonna laugh at offensive yoks So if hot women get you fappy Grab some baby oil and two old socks
Happy Purim everybody! This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of February 22nd, 2015.
Problems in the Middle East got you down? Sick of the fighting over healthcare and immigration between the left and the right? Constipated by last night’s meal? (I know I am.) We’re still in the ass-end of winter, the Super Bowl has come and gone, and Purim is mainly for kids, so hurray for the Academy Awards, here to give grownups a shpritz of glitz and a glimpse of glamour, if only for a night. It’s a chance to forget our woes and wallow in Hollywood worship. Three-and-a-half hours of people who make more money in a week than you will in a lifetime, patting each other on the back over just how hard their jobs are.
I’m being sarcastic but, you know, you can take 80 million dollars and make a piece of drek, or you can take that same amount of money and create something memorable and touching and fun. Or best of all, you can take 80 million dollars, give me two million, and I don’t give a crap what you do with the rest.
Anyhoo, this year’s Oscar roster is an eclectic bunch. It seems they always are now that they allow something like 37 movies up for Best Picture. There’s been controversy this season over how white all the acting nominees are. Not one best or featured actor is a person of color – unless you count Robert Duvall, who’s grey, or Benedict Cumberbatch, who, if he were a paint, would be eggshell.
This could be pushback from last year, when “12 Years a Slave” won for best picture, and you had African actors up for other prizes. Considering what John Travolta did to that nice Jewish girl Idina Menzel, maybe the Academy is just terrified of what he’d do to “Selma” actors like David Oyelowo and Carmen Ejogo.
Up for Best Picture is “Selma” – so I feel bad for her sister, Patti – as is “American Sniper,” which is also controversial because in one scene, Bradley Cooper is holding a baby, but it’s obviously a plastic doll. The screenwriter later tweeted that the first infant got sick and the second didn’t show up, so they had to go with a fake. Still, viewers are crying foul, saying how dare Clint Eastwood ask us to use our imaginations and suspend disbelief. That’s what Fox News is for.
Vying with “Selma” and “American Sniper” for Oscar honors are “Birdman,” “Whiplash,” “Boyhood,” The Grand Budapest Hotel,” The Imitation Game,” and “The Theory of Everything.” “Birdman” is about a washed-up actor who keeps trying to make a comeback on Broadway. Or, as I like to call it, the Tony Danza Story. “Whiplash” stars J.K. Simmons as a music teacher so obnoxious and abusive, he missed his calling and should have become a New York City cop.
Then you’ve got “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” a Wes Anderson confection about an old man who can’t give up the one thing that keeps him young. Or, as I call it, The Bill Cosby Story.
We also have “The Imitation Game,” which tells the tale of Alan Turing, a genius who cracked the Nazi code in World War II, only to be hounded to suicide because he was a faigeleh. The tragedy of Alan Turing is that he voluntarily underwent chemical castration, when all he had to do was find the right woman, marry her, and she’d castrate him every day of his life.
Also up for the big prize is “Boyhood,” a story of adolescence that has the critics kvelling because Richard Linklater shot it over the course of 12 years. That’s not inspiration, that’s laziness. Instead of using makeup and padding to make Patricia Arquette look old and fat, he let God do it.
And finally we come to “The Theory of Everything,” a bio-pic about astrophysicist Stephen Hawking. You know, the guy who wrote “A Brief History of Time,” which everyone bought but no one could understand. Kind of like Reaganomics. The point of the movie is that Hawking didn’t let Lou Gehrig’s disease cramp his mojo, especially since it didn’t affect his brain. Well, not until 2013, when that homely hobbit chose to boycott Israel over its supposed mistreatment of the Palestinians. The only black holes Stephen Hawking should be concerned with are the ones in Muslims’ hearts.
So there you have it: the nominees for the 87th annual Academy Awards in Los Angeles. I would be remiss, however, not to mention one of the nominees for best Foreign Film: “Ida,” about a Polish woman who’s about to become a Catholic nun when she learns that her parents, murdered during the Holocaust, were actually Jewish. You can tell that the movie is Polish because it’s set in 1872. Just kidding. You might also check out the Animated Feature Film nominee called “The Boxtrolls,” just because that’s what they really should rename the remaining women on “The View.”
So everyone get your popcorn, your ballot sheets, your No-Doz for Sunday night, February 22nd, when the Oscars arrive and all’s right with America. I’ll miss Joan Rivers on the Red Carpet. Though she was more fun on the kitchen table. Again, just kidding. In closing, I’d like to thank the Academy, my parents and the Lord. And I’m not even schvartz.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of February 8th, 2015.
What is the purpose of education? In an idealistic sense, it is to broaden the mind, to open young people to a world greater than themselves that they have to wade into in order to become productive members of society. Or, more simply put: live and learn. But one can also say the purpose of education is to take a bunch of kids who are too stupid to be left alone during post-adolescence, and corral them all in one place before we inflict them willy-nilly upon the planet.
Well, you don’t get kids much dumber – or potentially dangerous – than the yutzes at UC Davis, the University of California, Davis. Pro-Palestinian, liberal wackjob teenagers, who comprise the rotting corpse that is the student body, voted to boycott Israel over the country’s treatment of the poor, poor Palis. In a vote that passed 8 to 2, these bleeding-heart buttheads recommended that the University divest itself of all business dealings with the land of milk and honey. The SJP, whose letters stand for Students for Justice in Palestine (though they could just as easily stand for Suck my Jewish Penis), the SJP cheered and waved Palestinian flags as the vote went down in their favor. Best of all, as Jewish and pro-Israel students shuffled out of the meeting hall, the Arab-sympathizers began chanting, “Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar.”
Now, where have we heard that poem before? Oh yeah, every time a Muslim with a grudge and an AK-47 decides to vent his spleen on a bunch of innocent civilians, those are the words: “Allahu Akbar.” It may sound like a religious prayer, but it’s more like a death yell. We heard it from Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people in Fort Hood a few years ago, and we heard it last month, with a French accent, when the Koran Krazies lit into Charlie Hebdo for drawing cartoons.
I don’t need to tell you how I feel about the Israeli-Palestinian situation. But I will anyway. As I’ve said fifteen quadrillion times, Israel is a country — the size of a postage stamp — created after the Holocaust for Jewish people to finally have their own homeland. Anyone else on it either has to live by Israel’s rules or get the Allah out. And if you live in a country bordering Israel, or on land Israel gave back in the vain hope of trading acreage for peace, you better not be hostile, or we’re gonna stomp you like a wine glass at a wedding. But alas, up until that time, it’s the Arabs and their misguided sympathizers that do the violence, over and over again.
After the UC Davis vote – that the SJP won – the anti-Semites weren’t even satisfied with that! Two days later, someone painted swastikas on the walls of the Jewish fraternity, Alpha Epsilon Pi. (Actually, they should call it Aleph Epsom-Saltz Chai, but that’s for another time.)
It’s unclear whether this act was perpetrated by Arabs or just white kids goaded by all the latent Hebrewphobia stirred up by the vote. Either way, UC Davis has a nasty hurricane coming. I don’t mean a riot. I mean the whooshing sound of Jewish students exiting a place of higher learning that has sunk to a valley of lower squirming. It’s the sound of Jewish alumni divesting their donations and bequests from UCD and sending them to the UJA. It’s the whooshing sound of freshman applications – and application fees – being turned into paper kites because little Missy Horowitz and her 1500 SAT score now chooses to attend USC or UC Berkeley instead.
People at the University say the graffiti and the protests and threats are coming from outside sources and not the college kids themselves. How convenient. You light a torch and you wonder why someone behind you screams fire. Well, I’m screaming, too. Screaming at the retarded students of UC Davis who buy into this wahh-wahh, right-of-return, push-Israel-off-the-map garbage. And all this time, what’s been happening in the Arab world? More beheadings, hostages being burned alive, kidnapping and attacks – business as usual in the radical Muslim cyclone everywhere they are. And yet Israel is the bad guy.
Students of UC Davis, in my gradebook, you get an F for Flunk and a U for Uninformed. I realize you probably can’t spell, so I’ll put them together for ya: F. U.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of February 1st, 2015.
(sings) Letters, I get letters. Actually, I don’t get letters. I get emails and tweets and instant messages and the occasional bomb threat. And while it’s true that people only write to you for two reasons: to complain–or it’s your birthday—either way, I am happy to be acknowledged and on the radar, so to speak. It’s like an actor: you can get great scripts or you can get Vin Diesel scripts; it’s all good . . . until the phone stops ringing.
Well, my proverbial phone has been ringing off the proverbial hook, so I thought I would share some of these messages with you, my proverbial congregation. Now, I was terribly broken up last week by the death of Joe Franklin. Legendary talk-show host, magnificent New York character, and more than a passing acquaintance of my good friend Dave, who hosts the Dave’s Gone By radio program, of which I assume you are familiar. Joe came to my stage show, “Shalom Dammit!”, when it was at the Roy Arias Theater in Times Square a couple of years ago. Joe stayed through both acts, he applauded, I think he was eating a tomato—but he did not throw it—and he said very nice things about me and my performance.
But even if he hadn’t, there will never be another like Joe Franklin, who carved out his niche—which sounds both erotic and painful—and made a life in show business for seven decades. I should only be so lucky. I’m already so short.
So in the spirit of Joe’s eccentricity and sly obliviousness, I took to Twitter and wrote this message: quote, Joe Franklin was a legend, and I’m proud that he came to my stage show, “Shalom Dammit!”. Then, after the show, we both raped Sarah Silverman.” Unquote.
I know, shocking. How could I possibly fit all that information into 140 characters on Twitter? But more to the point, how could I make a joke about sexually assaulting the best-looking Jewish comedienne since Totie Fields still walked on twos? So a lady wrote to my Facebook page to opine that, quote, “Rape is not a joke punchline.” I guess she never met Bill Cosby. “I love your posts,” the woman said, “but this one is VERY OFFENSIVE!” She put that in capital letters, I guess because she knows my eyesight tends to fail right in the middle of messages. Very thoughtful. She also worried about, quote, a backlash against me and this radio program. Thank you, ma’am, but in order to have a backlash, I first have to have a lash. I don’t have enough followers for an eyelash!
But seriously, for those of you, like this worried woman, who thought my joke was off the grid, you do have to keep in mind that it was Sarah Silverman who started the ball rolling in the first place. She was in that movie, “The Aristocrats,” where all these comedians tell different versions of a long, scatological joke about a showbiz family and their disgusting, depraved, sick and kinky exploits . . . basically the Palins. So Sarah Silverman is in there, and she does her own twist on this twisted joke, one that implicates Joe Franklin by name, accusing him of sexual molestation. Cue the giggles.
To be fair, Joe didn’t find it funny, and he contemplated suing her for defamation of character. Joe’s friends and colleagues reminded him that she was just kidding, and he should lighten up, and that, really, he had no character. But seriously, the rape joke was hers, she put it out there, making it fair game for my tweetmaking.
Which does point to a larger issue: the idea that rape is never funny and can never be funny under any circumstance. Same with the Holocaust, 9/11, retarded people and Nelson Mandela. If you’re like this woman who wrote to me, you can’t possibly find anything amusing, ever, about any of those four things: Holocaust, 9/11, retards, Mandela. If you’re like me, you’re already picturing a retarded Nelson Mandela trying to fly a plane into the World Trade Center, but he’s brain damaged so he crashes into Elie Wiesel’s house by accident.
Anything and everything is fair game depending on time, context, delivery and audience. When Michael Richards used the “n” word at that comedy club years ago, he wasn’t wrong for trying; he simply misjudged the material and the crowd. I use the “n” word in my sermons all the time, and everyone laughs and laughs. Except the janitor.
But moving on to my next letter, this one comes from Marie, an elderly lady in South Florida, or, as I like to call it, Israel East. Marie is responding to my Rabbinical Reflection about the slaughter at Charlie Hebdo magazine. Says Marie, quote, “I couldn’t agree with your comments on Islam more. The Paris thing makes me sick. I don’t like Charlie Hebdo, but I don’t think one should kill someone for cartooning.” Unquote. One time I came close with “Ren and Stimpy,” but I got over it.
Marie goes on to say that “People don’t know history! They act,” she says, “as if Israel went to battle to take over the West Bank instead of being attacked. The problem goes all the way back to the Middle Ages, when the Muslims tried to take over the world. They made it all the way up to France until they were stopped in the Battle of Tours in 732.” Personally, I thought the Battle of Tours was 1965 when the Rolling Stones were trying to out-sell the Beatles, but I digress.
“Why is it,” writes Marie, “that in Paris, the Jewish Museum has to have antechambers and all sorts of protection, but the huge Arab Institute needs no protection?” Maybe it can’t fit the condom over the dome. “Why are we not hearing in the news,” continues Marie, “about Muslims from North Africa trafficking humans and, if caught on the seas, killing them?” I dunno, Marie, maybe because they’re not inadequately trained police officers.
And finally, says Marie, “If the Western World is so bad, why are all these Muslims here, or coming here? And why are we not hearing about the consistent, casual rapes by Palestinians in North England?”
Good point, Marie, although I’m not sure what a casual rape is. It’s like, “Hey, baby, I kinda wanna rape you, but, you know, no strings, and I don’t want you to wake up in the morning and feel weird about it. And for god sakes, don’t tell my friends because they think I’m still raping my ex.”
Oh no, oh no! I made a rape joke. Which, for some people, renders me worse than those who are out there actually committing such crimes. Sorry, but no comparison. And besides, if unwanted sexual advances are never funny, how come when I pull down my pants at night, my wife starts laughing?
Thank you, by the way, for your letters and comments, which you can send to shalomdammit@aol.com, that’s shalomdammit@aol.com, or find me on Facebook at Sol Solomon, or twitter me at RabbiSolSolomon or, best of all, leave me alone; I have a deadline for a fan fiction piece I’m writing about Mayim Bialik being violated by Prince Andrew. It’s hot . . . and funny.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of January 11, 2015.
Where’s the King of Cartoons when you need him? Remember him, from the Pee-Wee Herman show? He was a big old schvartze with a super 8 projector, and he’d show nostalgic animations to the kiddies at home. It wasn’t exactly “South Park,” but at least, the cartoons had a big brother, an overseer, someone who would, presumably, also protect harmless, defenseless cartoonists.
Protect them from what? What else? Muslims. Crazy-ass, psychopathic, radical Muslims. Muslims who stormed into the offices of a satirical newspaper in Paris and methodically killed a dozen people, wounded a dozen others, and got away in their black Mohammed mobile while shouting “Allahu Akhbar,” which, of course means, “whose turn is it to pay for White Castle?”
Seriously, though, I am getting so tired of hearing, “Oh, it’s just a small faction. You can’t fault the whole religion. A zillion people follow Islam all over the globe, and they’ve never killed anyone . . . Yet.” Sure, that’s true. But why is it every time you turn on the news, and some lunatic causes mayhem and chaos, 99 times out of 103, it’s a douchebag in a black hood shouting how much he loves him some Allah?
And God forbid we should say there’s a pattern. God forbid we should profile towelheads at the airport. No, better we should blame the cartoonists for riling up our enemies with naughty pictures. You know, if I tracked down and shot every schmuck who made an anti-Semitic comment on youtube or Huffpo, I’d be a killing machine to rival Chuck Norris. I’d have to hire my accountant, Morty Birnbaum, just to keep a ledger of all the worthless bastards I’d executed. I’d walk through every school in the middle east with bandoleers criss-crossed over my chest like Pancho Villawitz. And I’d put a bullet through the head of every man, woman and child who ever said a word against me, Israel, or “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” I’d leave so many bodies lying around, the 2004 Indonesian tsunami would look at me and go, “Dude, I’m not worthy.”
Homicidal fantasies aside, I do not do these things. I dream about them. I rant about them. But I do not do them. Why? Because I’m a coward. And also a human being. Occasionally. I know there’s a difference between right and wrong, and that committing mass murder to prove how religious you are is like drinking three sixpacks to prove you’re not an alcoholic. But someone in Arabia didn’t get the memo. And he certainly didn’t forward it to his gun-toting, Koran-spewing buddies.
If I sound like a broken record, it’s because I’m a broken-hearted record. Every couple of weeks I have to do one of these Rabbinical Reflections, not about a Jewish holiday, not about social causes, but always about Arabs with a mental defect and a death wish. But when I call a spade a spade, I’m a racist, I’m part of the problem, I’m promoting the crypto-zionist western-fascist Jew-owned police state that’s oppressing the poor little Bedouins and their cutesy-wutesy oil wells. Well, shtup that and shtup them.
As of this writing, one of the terrorists has given himself up, and authorities are on the trail of two French-born, Islamic brothers who helped pull off the bloodbath. May all three be caught, strapped to an easel and stabbed in the throat with a sharpened Faber Castell polychromos yellow. And, at the moment of their deaths, may the King of Cartoons draw a thought bubble, in permanent marker, next to their heads, with the words inside reading, “Suck it, Allah. Mohammed’s a joke!” Or whatever the Arabic version of that might be.
Then, may his highness, the King of Cartoons erase these three Islamic smudges from the book of life, and may God create another tsunami, this one in the middle east, wiping out every terrorist and enabling Muslim caliphate, leaving just Israel intact, surrounded by millions of miles of pure, pristine sand. “Well,” God will say to the King of Cartoons, “back to the drawing board.”
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of December 21, 2014.
Happy Chanukah, everybody; happy festival of lights, latkes and love. It’s the next best thing to Christmas, and at least when we go to shul, we don’t have to look at a statue of a guy bleeding to death and ruining our appetite.
Speaking of appetite, in honor of this joyful week, I am going to regale you with a story, a fabulous fable for the holiday. So children, gather `round. Or don’t, I don’t really care. Either way, I am going to relate to you the story of “Little Yomo and the Corned Beef Sandwich.”
The story is called, “Little Yomo and the Corned Beef Sandwich,” copyright 2014 by Rabbi Sol Solomon, all rights reserved. Use of this material in any form, written, digital or audio is prohibited by law and punishable by…I dunno…a year in Gitmo or something.
Little Yomo and the Corned Beef Sandwich.
Once upon a time, there was ten-year-old boy named – you guessed it — Little Yomo. He was a good little boy living in Boston with his mama, his papa, his know-it-all older sister, and the family cat, Noosh-Noosh. Little Yomo loved the Jewish holidays – or certain aspects of them. Finding the Afikomen on Passover, dressing up as a Ninja Turtle on Purim, dancing and gorging himself with candy on Simchas Torah. But most of all, Yomo loved Chanukah. The colorful candles on the menorah, the fun songs to sing, beating his sister seven times out of ten at dreidel and taking all her pocket change.
Little Yomo also loved seeing his family on Chanukah. Cousins and other relatives from miles around would come visit on the first and second nights to partake in the festivities around the front window. They would bring him presents or sweets, and they’d talk with him just like he was a grownup. He loved gramma and grampa, Cousin Ida and her boyfriend, Aunt Evelyn and her twins — who were two years younger than Yomo and great to play hide-and-seek with. Honest to gosh, there was nothing about Chanukah Little Yomo didn’t like . . . except Uncle Victor.
Uncle Victor. Respected in the garment district. Loved by his own grown children. Kindly if noticeably obese, Uncle Victor. Victor would always come both nights on Chanukah, and he always did the same thing to Little Yomo. He’d hold the boy by his shoulders and say, “Ooh, you’re getting so big. Pretty soon you’ll be bigger than me! Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha.” So funny.
And then Uncle Victor, reeking of aftershave, would reach into his back pocket and give Little Yomo the special gift that every child loves on Chanukah: gelt. Not real money, that would be amazing. But holiday money made of chocolate. Small gold coins – or, more precisely, golden foil wrappers covering chocolate disks made to look like coinage of old. Few gifts are so perfectly presented. It starts with the visual appeal of the golden-yellow bag of loot. Then, you cut the thin strings and hold your first coin, shiny and delicate yet so solid. And then peeling off the top wrapper, pulling it back to reveal a perfectly round circle of milk chocolate. And the final joy: hooking your fingernail under the lower foil to free the confection from its condom and taste the cocoa-ey bliss within.
Now, you might be asking, why would Little Yomo despise his Uncle Victor if the man was giving him delicious candy money twice a year? The reason was that Uncle Victor, as we’ve said, was a big fat man. A man who drove two hours from Pennsylvania to come visit Yomo’s family. And since Boston is freezing cold in the middle of December, Uncle Victor would roll up the window of his Buick Skylark and put the heat on, full blast, for the entire trip. All of this was fine for Uncle Victor, but by the time he would get in the house and greet little Yomo in his hilarious way, he was a cloud of sweat, body odor and Walgreens aftershave. Worst of all, when he’d reach in his back pocket to produce the Chanukah gelt, what would emerge was a bag of melted, crushed foil, covered with brown goo and smelling like horrible Uncle Victor.
As his mama and papa pointed out again and again, it would be rude of Little Yomo to turn down a gift brought by a family member. So the poor child had to hold out his hand, smile his biggest, toothiest grin, and thank his uncle with a big a hug. And then, to prove how excited he was to receive this thoughtful gift, Yomo had to open the bag and eat three coins, while Uncle Victor beamed and pointed and watched. “Look at him,” Victor would say. “I know it’s spoiling his dinner, but he loves it so much.” Meanwhile, it was all Yomo could do to keep from vomiting against his teeth.
This ritual had gone on for years and years, since Yomo could remember, and probably even before then. Ten-year-old Yomo, however, had endured enough. It was Chanukah time once more, and not-so-little Yomo dreaded encountering Uncle Victor and his smell, his chocolate, his whole nightmarish persona.
So Little Yomo decided to do something about it. “I’m going to beat him at his own game,” the little boy told himself, in the way little boys tell themselves things. Three weeks before Chanukah, Little Yomo started saving up his allowance. He needed fourteen dollars. Oops – plus tax; fifteen, just to be safe. I’ll explain. Little Yomo set aside four dollars a week of his allowance for the Unkie Fund. He needed three more dollars, but it was no problem beating his sister at dreidel and getting the extra dough. Once he had it, the day before the first night of Chanukah, little Yomo took his bundle and walked – almost ran – the four blocks from his apartment to the Kosher delicatessen on Pelham Street.
“Shalom, Little Yomo,” called the owner. “Did your mama send you on a grocery run?”
“No Mr. Hersh,” replied the boy. “This is special. I’m getting a sandwich for my Uncle Victor.”
“Well, I’ve never met your Uncle Victor, but I’m sure he’s a terrific guy, and I’m gonna make him a beautiful sandwich. What would he like?”
“Corned beef,” said Little Yomo. “On rye with two pickles and Russian dressing on the side.”
“Your wish is my command,” laughed Mr. Hersh, impressed with Yomo’s gravitas.
Two minutes later, the deli man was handing Little Yomo a bulging bag and his change. And a free hot dog to go. “Yomo,” he said, “have a great Chanukah!”
“You too,” Little Yomo called back, skipping out of the store and eager to get home and continue his plan.
The corned beef sandwich, fresh and juicy, smelled so good in the brown paper bag, but Yomo resisted having a bite. He was saving every crumb for Unkie Victor. And when the boy got home, he ran to the kitchen, but his mother was there starting to fry that evening’s latkes.
“What’s that?” asked his mama.
“Oh, just something for Chanukah,” said the little man. “It’s for daddy’s brother.”
“Awww…Victor? I swear to HaShem, you are the sweetest boy.” Mrs. Birmbaum hugged and kissed her son, which made the boy blush and grimace at the same time and squirm to get away. “I’m gonna go up and do my homework,” said Yomo slipping out of his mommy’s reach.
“Wait, don’t you wanna put that in the fridge?” his mother called.
“I have to put the card with it first!” Yomo called back as he headed towards the sun room.
But Little Yomo had no Hallmark on his mind. Instead, when he was sure no one was around, and the sound of frying oil would mask the sound of his crinkly paper bag, he took out the corned beef sandwich and held it delicately between his fingers. Carefully, he lifted the slice of rye bread off the top. He then knelt down in front of what the family called Noosh-Noosh corner. That was just a nice way of saying the cat’s litter box. Little Yomo placed the rye slice face down on the litter and the rest of the sandwich in a heap at the corner of the box. He then sprinkled a light layer of clay dust over both and called the cat over from across the room. “Noosh-Noosh! Hey kitty! Come see.”
Noosh-Noosh swished her tail and hesitated, looking disinterested, as cats do, but eventually made her way over to her corner. Sniffing at the litter-littered sandwich, Noosh-Noosh gave a low purr, then lifted her tail, and her leg . . . and did her kitty-cat business. “Good girl, Noosh-Noosh,” exulted Yomo. “Okay, shoo!”
Little Yomo whisked the cat away and then, with the tips of his fingers, lifted the soggy sandwich out of the box with one hand and the top slice with his other. Once the delicacy was put back together, Little Yomo wrapped it, stuffed it back in the paper bag, and deposited said bag in the fridge. Washing his hands thoroughly – which, for a little boy, is about four seconds with an eye-dropper’s worth of soap – Little Yomo ran upstairs to do homework . . . and wait.
The hours crawled until, finally, the sun set, and guests began arriving. There was Aunt Evelyn and her girls. There was Cousin Ida, talking a little weird because she’d had a stroke that August. And the neighbors from down the street. And Mr. Claremont, the token goy, from dad’s office. But no Uncle Victor. Not when Yomo’s sister was going around serving appetizers. Not when the family sat around the big-screen TV watching a rerun of “Everybody Loves Raymond.” Not even when the assembled gathered by the living-room window, and said the special prayers. Not even when mama lit the shamash and handed the big candle to Yomo and warned him, as always, “tilt it, so the wax doesn’t drip down your hand.”
Yomo obeyed and began lighting the first candle of Chanukah. Just then everyone heard the squeak and clatter of the screen door. “Did I miss the latkes?” came the familiar voice. “Uncle Victor!” shouted Yomo. And then, Ow!”, for, not paying attention, Yomo held the shamash vertically and let a teardrop of blue wax drizzle down his finger.
With barely contained excitement, Yomo placed the candle back in the menorah and ran to greet his Unkie Victor. “Sorry, everybody! Traffic was insane,” Victor sighed.
“You should’ve taken Horseneck Beach,” cousin Avrum said. “I-91 is a disaster at rush hour.”
“I know, I know,” said Victor, grabbing his beloved Yomo by the shoulders. “How’s my favorite nephew? Ooh, you’re getting so big! Next year, you’ll be bigger than me! Ha ha ha, ha ha ha!” So funny.
“I think you know what I have for you,” grinned Unkie Vic. “Lemme just reach. . .”
“No, wait!” cried Yomo. “Stay right there!”
Uncle Victor made an astonished face and shrugged at the family. “You’re not the only one who can give gifts,” laughed Mrs. Birnbaum. “Yomo has a surprise for you.”
“Ooh, I love surprises!” Victor yelled, loud enough for Yomo to hear.
“Be right there!” Yomo called from the kitchen, where he had opened the refrigerator, dumped out the sandwich, unwrapped it, slapped it with Russian dressing, and shoved it into the microwave for 55 seconds. “Come on, come on!” squealed the boy, hopping back and forth on the balls of his feet.
At last, Yomo heard the familiar ding. He popped the door open and reached for the sandwich, burning his fingers slightly in the process. He placed the corned-beef edible on a plate and scurried back to the living room where the grownups were already talking grown-up stuff.
“Uncle Victor!” shouted Yomo, louder than he wanted to. “Happy Chanukah!”
“Oh, my goodness!” responded the man, feigning amazement but also honestly thrilled to see a corned-beef sandwich presented before him. “Thank you, Yomo! Much as I love your roast turkey, Susan, a corned-beef sandwich is from another planet,” kvelled Uncle Victor.
“Enjoy,” beamed Mrs. Birnbaum. “Yomo was so excited to get it for you.”
Uncle Victor held the plate with the warm sandwich. He sniffed and smiled in ecstasy, smelling only the juicy Kosher beef, sliced thick and liberally drizzled with Russian dressing. Perhaps a thinner man without asthma would have noticed a faint uremic stench to the sandwich, but not Unkie Victor. With his meaty paw, he lifted half the sandwich off the plate and brought it to his wet, porcine lips.
“Don’t you dare!” came the voice. Ah, that voice. The voice of Aunt Dora, Victor’s wife of 38 long, long years. “If it’s a heart attack you want, go ahead, eat the sandwich. But personally, I’d rather see you live a few years longer.”
“But darling,” Uncle Victor sighed. “It’s Chanukah. And the boy — ”
“Yomo is an angel,” Aunt Dora nodded, grinning at the crestfallen child, “but what does he know from cholesterol and prediabetes?”
“But I’ve been so good,” whined Unkie Victor. “What’s half a sandwich? Two bites!”
“You’d better listen to her,” said Mr. Birnbaum. “You know your wife won’t let you live it down till next Shavuos.”
Panicking, Little Yomo piped up, “But it’s just bread and meat. It’s not bad like candy or soda. Can’t Uncle Victor have just a little, pleeeease?”
“I’m sorry, darling,” Aunt Dora said, kneeling in front of Yomo. “When you’re older, you’ll understand that I’m doing what’s best for your daddy’s brother. I your Uncle Victor to live a long, long time.”
“Sure, so she can torture me for years to come,” sighed Victor, surrendering the plate to his sister-in-law while looking, with just a hint of affection, at his martinet wife. “But I am so appreciative, Little Yomo, that you thought of me. Ooh, what a beautiful gesture, am I right?” called Uncle Victor, looking around at the assembled.
“I think,” said Mrs. Birnbaum, “that Yomo deserves a reward. A tasty reward.”
“Oh, the gelt, of course,” said Victor, reaching for his back pocket.
“No,” Yomo’s mother responded. “Our Little Yomo loves corned beef almost as much as you do. Let him eat it the sandwich.”
“Don’t you think that’ll ruin his dinner?” asked Aunt Dora, concerned.
“He can have leftovers tomorrow,” laughed Yomo’s father, not noticing the increasingly pale young man to his left. “A hot corned beef sandwich is not to be denied – even for my wife’s turkey.”
“But dad, it’s okay. We can leave it for tomorrow.”
“I wouldn’t hear of it,” boomed Uncle Victor. “In fact, I would take it as a personal insult if you didn’t gobble down every morsel of that juicy, spicy, fragrant, magnificent sandwich.”
“Victor, take your pills,” said Dora.
“Go ahead, Yomo,” said Mrs. Birnbaum. “We don’t want to be rude.”
“Yes, mom,” gulped Little Yomo. “Oh boy. Corned beef.”
With trembling hands, Little Yomo approached the plate that his father had put on the coffee table. Holding the sandwich and his breath, Little Yomo took a big bite, and then another, and another. Finishing half a sandwich as quickly as he could.
“Look at him go!” announced Mr. Claremont. “He eats like a big boy.”
With further familial encouragement, Little Yomo wolfed down the remaining section of the corned beef sandwich. His eyes watering, his gag reflex tested to the hilt, Yomo took a bow and made his way to the kitchen, where he poured and emptied three glasses of Dr. Brown’s Cream Soda in quick succession.
The rest of the evening passed without incident as Yomo joined the family in holiday festivities. However, the next morning, poor Yomo was not feeling so well. He felt even worse by the afternoon, and worse still when his mother left the second Chanukah party to rush the boy to urgent care.
Not wanting to admit his deception, Little Yomo left the doctors guessing, which only made his treatment more difficult. The next day he was hospitalized, and on the fourth night of Chanukah, Little Yomo, emaciated, green and septic, slowly closed his deep brown eyes and died.
Two days later, all the family wept at his funeral. The Rabbi spoke and said God has His reasons for pulling little boys up to heaven decades before their time. Uncle Victor began a short speech but found himself too overcome with emotion to continue.
Eventually, the whole mishpocheh braved the frigid winter weather to gather at the cemetery. The Rabbi sang prayers in Hebrew and continued extolling the virtues of this tragic young mensch. When it was time, he handed a heavy steel shovel to Yomo’s father. The distraught Mr. Birnbaum stood for a long minute before willing his wobbly legs to the foot of the grave.
“Wait,” called Uncle Victor, his face blurry with tears. “Ooh, to go with him. Something he always loved.”
The assembled shivered in silence and then shuddered each time at the sound: plink, plink, plink – the sound of rock-hard, frozen chocolate coins hitting the lid of a small pine box. The end.
Happy Chanukah everybody! Again, this story is copyright 2014 by me, and I have lawyers, so don’t even think of infringing.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York. Chag Sameach.
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of November 23, 2014.
And here I was, all set to do a gentle sermon about Thanksgiving. How grateful we should all be for friends and co-workers and family — well, maybe not family — but for all the loving, helpful people in our lives. How we must be thankful to HaShem if we still have good health, functioning limbs, working brain cells, food on the table, a roof overhead — preferably one with a fiddler on it — a decent job, a couple of hobbies, a warm winter coat and a not-bad summer vacation.
Saying grace after every meal has never been my thing. What, I should sit there thanking God for his bounties, and by the time I’m finished, the food gets cold? No wonder goyim are so skinny; by the time they finish praying, their entrees are back in the microwave. Nevertheless, a couple of times a year, it’s good to remember that everything comes to us by the courtesy of God above and the hard work of our peers and forebears.
How lovely to offer a Rabbinical Reflection on such a spiritual and fraternal topic. However, the news this week forbids me from doing such a gentle, joyful sermon. I am, once again, detoured from being my usual snuggly marshmallow of delight into sounding like a vindictive, vituperative expounder of hate and revenge. Last Tuesday, two Palestinians armed with guns and meat cleavers burst into a Jerusalem synagogue and began firing and chopping. They murdered five people, including a policeman, three American Rabbis and an Orthodox Jewish Brit. For their troubles, the assassins, Ghassan Abu Jamal and his cousin, Oday Abu Jamal, were sent to martyrdom and their 72 ugly-ass virgins in the sky.
As an extra-punitive measure, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu then ordered that the killers’ houses be demolished. Honestly, I don’t know how upsetting that is to a dead terrorist. What’s he gonna say? “Aww, I was gonna make hummus tonight. No wait, I’m being shoveled into an unmarked grave. Gee, I’m gonna miss the sun room.”
Still, hurrah for any action by the Israeli government that warns Arabs we will not stand for such horrors as violence, murder and television programs featuring Jane Velez Mitchell. Let there be no doubt: bloodthirsty Palestinians may not storm into a temple in Yerushalayim and start executing people. Not unless it’s the high holy days and they bought a ticket.
Seriously, do you know why these terrorists embarked upon their rampage? Was it eye-for-an-eye revenge? Were they mad about Jews who went on a killing spree in the local Falafel Mart? No, because that didn’t happen. The Palestinians were irate because Jews have been visiting a holy site on the Temple Mount that the Arabs think should be off-limits to Hebrews. Doesn’t matter that Arabs in East Jerusalem can go anywhere they damn well please; Jews are forbidden from going where the Arabs don’t want them. Apparently, the penalty for trespassing in the Arab world is being hacked to death. Which makes sense, since the penalty for stealing is cutting off a hand, and the penalty for adultery is, well, let’s just call it extreme circumcision and leave it at that.
Following the synagogue attack, lame-duck President Obama is calling for peace and restraint on both sides, downplaying the savagery of the event and, as usual, doing nothing. Hey Barry! We had three Americans murdered by agents of a foreign regime. Isn’t that like, war, or something? I know the dead Rabbis weren’t black, but you could at least raise an eyebrow.
In the weeks ahead, you can bet your burqa Israel will do a lot more than snivel and call for moderation. There’ll be raids, roundups, demolitions and, alas, probably some vigilantism, too. I won’t deny that there’s a back-and-forth, you-did-this-so-I-do-that element to Israeli/Arab conflagrations. Remember last time? They killed those hitchhikers, so some misguided, hyped-up Israelis murdered some soccer-playing kids. Much as I hate the radical Arabs, killing innocent people is never an answer to anything. In fact, that’s what got us here. If the Palestinians would stop being terrorists, we’d stop being enemies. And if we stop being enemies, they can visit our synagogues, and we can be tourists at their shrines. And we’ll talk, and we’ll laugh, and we’ll bitch about the government, and we’ll share music and art and sports and do business deals, and food! We’ll sit down together with pastrami and goat and borscht and eggplant and kugel and yogurt, and we’ll watch TV, and we’ll fall asleep, and you know what we’ll call it? Thanksgiving.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of November 17, 2014.
Merry Christmas, non-Jewish listeners! A very merry Christmas and Yuletide to all the goyim within the sound of my strident voice! Jingle bells, glad tidings, joyeux Noel – whatever the hell that means — Merry Chris — wait, what? You mean it’s not Christmas? You mean it’s not even Thanksgiving yet, and Christmas is a month and a half away?
Well, you wouldn’t know it. Not from the TV commercials. Not from the music they play in the department stores. Not from the displays in Walgreens and Walmart and K-Mart and K.Y. and why is it Christmas already when it isn’t December 25th for another 35 days?
We all know why, of course. It’s because America needs to sell you crap as much and as often as possible. The home shopping networks and the mall shopping outlets want to get you in the money-spending spirit as soon as they can. If they could start next year’s holiday sales on December 26th at midnight, they would. In fact, they already almost do. In the middle of July, QVC and HLN and the CIA are doing infomercials for ornaments. “Make sure you order them now, people, so they arrive by August — just in time for Christmas.”
As a Jew, but not just as a Jew, but mainly as a Jew, I object to all this haranguing, day after day after day over a holiday I do not believe in and couldn’t care less about. You wanna put up some lights on the weekend before Christmas, and maybe start the Ruh-puh-pum-pum on your drum a week or two before the holiday? Be my guest, and buy me something nice. But stop with the Yuletide cheer when I haven’t even gotten all the matzoh out of my colon from Passover yet!
I have spoken before and elsewhere about the pressure Jews feel to morph Chanukah into a Yuletide-like holiday…Chrismakkah…a concept which fills me with enough loathing to stuff a Santa suit. They are not similar holidays; they are not equivalent holidays. And yet, because they fall at the same time of year, Yiddlach feel compelled to match their neighbors gift for gift, light for light, stupid singalong for stupid singalong. The only thing that keeps me from jamming hot knitting needles through my eardrums this time of year is Adam Sandler, and even that song wears out its welcome by its third spin. Try playing “Here Comes Chanukah” as often as Rite Aid plays “The Christmas Song,” and you’ll want to open every bottle in the pharmacy and swallow till the pain stops.
Holiday overkill is bad enough two or three weeks out of the year, but a whole month? You got radio stations that play only Christmas music. Some stores block off entire sections for stocking stuffers the day after Labor Day. Just stop it! Stop it! Nobody’s roasting chestnuts on an open anything. If grandma’s getting run over, it’s by grandpa’s Rascal, not a reindeer.
And I know Christmas is an excuse for people to do nice things and feel good about themselves. Soldiers stuck in a sandpit in Trashcanistan have a chance to come home and see their families because it’s Christmas. Why the army can’t do that on Groundhog Day just the same is beyond me, but okay. It’s like supermarkets that give the destitute free turkey on Thanksgiving. Fantastic — homeless people have a dozen meal options on Thanksgiving Day. The day after Thanksgiving? Pfftth. Back to 99-cent pizza and Spaghettios.
Still, if we use the holiday as an impetus to be better humans and do more good, even the cranky, miserable misanthrope in me cannot object to that. But the time leading up to the holiday is about nothing more than marketing and selling and forced, fake, phony good cheer. It’s all too much, too soon, and if I sound like the Grinch, so be it. Especially since I’m not trying to steal Christmas. I just want to hide it for awhile, like the Afikomen, so that, as an accountant would say, the interest appreciates.
No Marine comes home on special leave November 8th. Nobody’s donating cans to the food bank on December 12th. We’re subjected to the hype but not the help. I say, if big business must turn Christmas into a season-long capitalist orgy, at least give out condoms of compassion to go with it.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York. Ooh, only 288 shopping days until Simchas Torah!