Rabbi Sol Solomon’s celebrity interviews, Rabbinical Reflections (sermons), songs, and other appearances on the show.
INDEX: http://davesgoneby.net/?p=25407
Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with Broadway songwriter AMANDA GREEN Topics include: Comden & Green, Hands on a Hardbody, High Fidelity, Female Troubles, Broadway, Bring it On.
Segment aired Sept. 25, 2021 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio/podcast program #817 hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.
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All content (c)2021 TotalTheater Productions. More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com More about Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com.
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Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with musician BEN SIDRAN
Topics include: jazz, Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, Steve Miller, Jews, Miles Davis, Rickie Lee Jones, Diana Ross.
Segment aired Sept. 18, 2021 as part of the 815th episode of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio/video 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 #171 (9/14/2021): How to Fast on Yom Kippur
(Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflections air on the long-running podcast Dave’s Gone By. youtube: https://youtu.be/ZGFcUunDz38)
Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for Yom Kippur, 2021.
Even non-observant Jews, who wouldn’t know a Torah from a tuba, remember that they’re Jewish on Yom Kippur. It’s the one holiday on the Hebrew calendar where everyone agrees to be depressed. We think about our sins, we promise to do better, and we hope God doesn’t hold us to that promise because, let’s face it, we’re human.
So people ask me, “Rabbi, how do I get through the day? How do I observe the Yom Kippur fast?”
Okay, so on Erev Yom Kippur, you have dinner in the evening. And when the sun goes down, you stop eating. Then, an hour later, keep not eating.
By nine, ten o’clock, when you usually have a snack. Don’t.
Sixty to 120 more minutes will pass. During those minutes, do not eat.
Then, time to go to sleep. Unless you’re narcoleptic elephant, you don’t eat when you sleep, so you’re fine. If you get up in the middle of the night to pee, don’t pee-eat. Save that for Shavuis. Go back to sleep.
Wake up in the morning. Pee again. Brush your teeth. This is great because if you’re thirsty, you get a little water, a minty bissel flavor — but it doesn’t count as food because it’s a health thing. You can even gargle, but no fair gargling with a Starbucks latte.
Now, the fun thing about Yom Kippur is you can’t work. So lie on the couch, read a book, make up a song. And continue not eating.
Eventually, noon will roll around, and you’ll think it’s time to eat. Guess what? It’s not. Keep reading and singing.
Now it’s early afternoon and you’re getting hungry. Too bad. Don’t eat.
By three o’clock you should have a minor but persistent headache. This is all a natural part of Jewish suffering. However, it’s also a fantastic opportunity because you can take a Tylenol — and have more water. That’s two food-groups with one ailment.
Now it’s 3:30 and you’re exhausted. Go back to sleep. Try not to dream about food. Or naked women. Or anything else you’d want to eat.
After your nap, dusk should be approaching — homestretch! Just another hour, and you can stuff your face. But not yet; a little more torture never hurt anyone.
I will say, the most messed-up thing about Yom Kippur in America is that it doesn’t go 24 hours; it goes 25! The chassids invented this custom to make up for the inexactitude of when the sun officially rises and sets. They add an extra hour to be safe.
Good for them. The rest of us can look at a Timex. When you hit 24 hours and one second, the bagel can go here (points to his mouth).
Please note that if you are pregnant, or sick, or sick of being pregnant — do not fast. That’s just common sense — which you don’t find often in religion. But Rabbis agree: if you’re feeling crummy, don’t be a dummy: feed your tummy!
However, if you’re okay, you’re in the mood to detoxify, and you want to jump on the scale and see how much weight you lost just before you gain it all back, this is your chance.
It is recommended that you break the fast gently. Don’t be eating a chopped liver with sour pickles and a corned-beef chaser. Have a little soup, juice, vegetables, noodle pudding, clams casino – just kidding. Pace yourself; portion control. After a fast, your eyes are bigger than your stomach. Which will scare the hell out of your optometrist.
To sum up, if you’re fasting on Yom Kippur, the important thing is: don’t eat. You might want to write that down if starvation makes you forgetful.
Otherwise, have a meaningful Yom Kippur and a fast fast.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York, giving you plenty of food . . . for thought.
Segment aired Sept. 4, 2021 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio/podcast program #814 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.
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Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with composer MOSHE DENBURG, who stays on and plays the Today/Yesterday trivia game with David Sheward and Leslie (Hoban) Blake
Topics include: world music, Tzimmes, Israel, India.
Segment aired Aug. 28, 2021 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio/podcast program #813 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.
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Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with author and editor JAMI BERNARD
Topics include: film, cancer, writing, Roger Ebert, John Simon.
Segment aired Aug. 21, 2021 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio/podcast program #812 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.
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Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with playwright and actor ROBERT DUBAC, who stays on and plays the Today/Yesterday trivia game with David Sheward and Leslie (Hoban) Blake
Topics include: theater, The Book of Moron, The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron, stand-up comedy.
Segment aired Aug. 7, 2021 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio/podcast program #810 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.
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Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with director TIMOTHY DOUGLAS, who stays on and plays the Today/Yesterday trivia game with Vicki Quade and Leslie (Hoban) Blake
Topics include: theater, directing, Restoration Playhouse, August Wilson, The Gospel at Colonus.
Segment aired July 31, 2021 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio/podcast program #809 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.
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Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with actress & singer LILLIAS WHITE
Topics include: Get Yourself Some Happy, cabaret, The Life, Cy Coleman, How to Succeed, racism.
Segment aired July 25, 2021 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio/podcast program #807 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.
(This Rabbinical Reflection first aired July 24, 2021 on the Dave’s Gone By video podcast. youtube link: https://youtu.be/2l4v4oXw2Xc)
Rabbi Sol Solomon offers his Rabbinical Reflection on a cream-curdling decision by Ben & Jerry’s.
Rabbi Sol’s Rabbinical Reflections are heard on the long-running Dave’s Gone By radio/podcast program (davesgoneby.com) and then archived as text and audio on the Rebbe’s blog, Shalomdammit.com, where a transcript of this Reflection may be read.
Rabbi Sol is also the creator of the stage show, “Shalom Dammit! An Evening with Rabbi Sol Solomon,” which played in NYC in Nov. 2011 and Aug. 2012.
Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for July 24, 2021.
I scream, you scream, we all scream — at Ben and Jerry’s!
Back in the late 1970s, a couple of underachieving Jewish slobs, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, raised $12,000 to open an ice-cream store. Combining their very different skills and sensibilities — did you know Ben Cohen has no sense of smell? Finally, someone who can sit next to old men at the synagogue on Yom Kippur. But in a couple of years, Ben & Jerry’s became a serious brand and, eventually, a world-famous hoo-ha.
To their credit, these nice boychiks always tried to be socially conscious. They donated to oodles of charities and non-profits. They made their packaging more eco-friendly and objected to using growth hormones in their cows. For a while they had a policy that nobody at their company could make more than five times what the lowest-paid worker made. That didn’t last. But Ben & Jerry’s stood as a model for visionary capitalists who could create something people want, be funny and hip about it, improve the world, and still make a bundle. The most conservative, right-wing neo-fascist could sneer at Cherry Garcia and Chunky Monkey — but they still ate it and had to marvel at the company’s success.
Messrs. Cohen and Greenfield sold Ben & Jerry’s to Unilever two decades ago. it is said that they have no connection to the company beyond their first names still being on the buckets. So the horrible things I’m about to say are, I assume, not directed at them. But they certainly are to current CEO, Matthew McCarthy. Well, he can kiss the blarney stone’s tuchas for his leftist, radical, stupid decision-making. He wants gender equity in the workplace? Fantastic. He wants to give black people reparations for slavery? He’s welcome to write a check. But his decision to stop selling ice cream in East Jerusalem and the settlements in the West Bank is more “half-baked” than their most popular flavor.
In a statement last week, Ben & Jerry’s said that selling their product in the “occupied” West Bank was, quote, “inconsistent with our values.” So boycotting a country that annexed land it won in a war against perpetual enemies and then building citizens’ houses on that land, is inconsistent with the values of making people obese and giving them heart disease?
In response to Ben & Jerry’s BDS bullshit, the Israeli government is very likely to do what all Jewish people do when threatened — call their lawyers. They did it three years ago when airbnb, the company for people who don’t think they’re good enough to stay in hotels, airbnb banned listing properties in the territories. Benjy Netanyahu got on the phone to Moskowitz, Moskowitz, Moskowitz, and Flywheel. They put up a flurry of lawsuits, and airbnb reversed its policy. To save face — well, one of their faces — airbnb promised to take any money coming in from those properties and funnel it to humanitarian aid. I just hope the CEO of airbnb gets AIDS.
But I digress. In current times, when even ice cream is politicized, Ben & Jerry’s is facing a backlash over its anti-Zionist actions. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett called them “the anti-Israel ice cream.” South Florida politician Lavern Spicer tweeted, “I will never buy Ben & Jerry’s again. They might as well change their name to Hamas and Adolf’s.” A little hyperbolic Lavern, but appreciated nonetheless.
The BabylonBee satire magazine created a new Ben & Jerry’s flavor: Push the Jewish into the Sea Salt and Caramel. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has as much reason to eat his feelings as anyone, says he’s reluctantly giving up Cherry Garcia. And right here on Long Island, Town of Hempstead Supervisor Don Clavin bashed Unilever in a speech. He vowed to remove every Lipton teabag and Hellman’s mayonnaise jar from government offices. And let’s not forget Breyer’s ice cream, which is for people who don’t think they’re good enough to eat Super Fudge Chunk.
Uniloser has opened up a pint of worms with its decision to punish Israel simply for treating land in Israel like Israeli land. It’s time for Unilever, airbnb, and all these suddenly “woke” enterprises, that have no trouble doing business in China, Russia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia; it’s time for them to think real hard about who the good guys and the bad guys really are in this world. Until then, it’s up to us reasonable people to boycott them. Ben & Jerry’s go peddle your lumpy shit-cream elsewhere. We won’t buy it, we won’t eat it, and we’ll make sure your economic future hits a very rocky road.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York. Whatever happened to Sealtest?
