Rabbi Sol Solomon’s celebrity interviews, Rabbinical Reflections (sermons), songs, and other appearances on the show.
INDEX: http://davesgoneby.net/?p=25407
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Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with musician WILLIE NILE
Topics include: Bruce Springsteen, New York, Bob Dylan, coronavirus, Catholicism, rock and roll.
Segment aired July 4, 2020 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio/podcast program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.
Please Note: Segments extracted from “Dave’s Gone By” may have music and other elements removed for timing and media re-posting considerations. For the full interview with all elements, please visit the audio of the complete original broadcast.
click above to watch in-studio footage of the zoom interview.click above to listen (audio only)
Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews Chicago actress and playwright Vicki Quade, co-creator of Late Nite Catechism and author/star of Christmas Bingo.
Topics include: Late Nite Catechism, Christmas Bingo, Maripat Donovan, coronavirus, Chicago theater, audience participation.
Segment aired July 4, 2020 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio/podcast program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.
Please Note: Segments extracted from “Dave’s Gone By” may have music and other elements removed for timing and media re-posting considerations. For the full interview with all elements, please visit the audio of the complete original broadcast.
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)
click above to watch.
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.
click above to watch in-studio footage of the entire episode.click above to listen (audio only)
Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with Broadway and voice-over actor STUART ZAGNIT
Topics include: Crazy for You, Seussical, Rosie O’Donnell, Mandy Patinkin, Eartha Kitt, Toni Collette, Pokemon, Professor Oak, The Golden Land, Kuni Leml, COVID-19, Bruce Adler.
Segment aired May 30, 2020 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio/podcast program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.
Please Note: Segments extracted from “Dave’s Gone By” may have music and other elements removed for timing and media re-posting considerations. For the full interview with all elements, please visit the audio of the complete original broadcast.
click above to watch in-studio footage of Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Zoom interview with Ted Greenberg.click above to listen (audio only).
Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with comedian TED GREENBERG
Topics include: Wall Street, The Complete Performer, taxis, Late Night with Dave Letterman.
Segment aired May 16, 2020 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” podcast program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.
Please Note: Segments extracted from “Dave’s Gone By” may have music and other elements removed for timing and media re-posting considerations. For the full interview with all elements, please visit the audio of the complete original broadcast.
click above to watch in-studio footage of the interview.click above to listen (audio only).
Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with podcaster GREG ALPRIN
Topics include: DJ Gregalicious, Nick Scopoletti, The Mangina Dialogues, podcasting, stand-up comedy, franchising
Segment aired May 9, 2020 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” podcast program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.
Please Note: Segments extracted from “Dave’s Gone By” may have music and other elements removed for timing and media re-posting considerations. For the full interview with all elements, please visit the audio of the complete original broadcast.
Segment aired May 2, 2020 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” podcast program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.
Please Note: Segments extracted from “Dave’s Gone By” may have music and other elements removed for timing and media re-posting considerations. For the full interview with all elements, please visit the audio of the complete original broadcast.
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.
Click above to watch in-studio footage 0f the interview.Click above to listen to the interview (audio only).
Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with singer-songwriter JEFFREY LEWIS
Topics include: Lower East Side, COVID-19, songwriting, Daniel Johnston, Peter Stampfel, records.
Segment aired April 25, 2020 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” podcast program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.
Please Note: Segments extracted from “Dave’s Gone By” may have music and other elements removed for timing and media re-posting considerations. For the full interview with all elements, please visit the audio of the complete original broadcast.
