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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Dave’s Gone By Skit (6/29/2024): STORYTIME: Rabbi Sol Solomon Reads “Schmegoogle”
For this week’s StoryTime segment on Dave’s Gone By, Rabbi Sol Solomon skims through Daniel Klein’s book Yiddish-friendly book, “Schmegoogle.”
This segment aired June 29, 2024 as part of the 950th “Dave’s Gone By” video podcast program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz. Full episodes also available on youtube, Facebook (davesgoneby), and on DavesGoneBy.com.
All content (c)2024 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #188 (6/22/2024): The New Aristocrats Joke
airs June 22, 2024 on Dave’s Gone By.
Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for late June 2024.
Just like new plots for movies, there’s really no such thing as a “new” joke, just old jokes packaged in a different way. For example: Why did the fireman wear red suspenders? Because he was shopping at Kohl’s, and it was all they had — plus it was on clearance. Why did the chicken cross the road? Because he heard all these people telling jokes about him and he got curious.
Old Manischewitz: new bottles. So here’s a naughty little joke called “The Aristocrats” that’s been around for decades. Gilbert Gottfried made it famous, and they even did a documentary about it. But I doubt you’ve heard my version.
A guy goes into a talent agent’s office, and he says, “Buddy, have I got an act for you!”
And the agent says, “Don’t waste your time. Novelty is dead. Nobody watches “Got Talent” anymore. I’m sorry, but — ”
“No, no, no,” says the guy. “This is huge. My family, my friends, strangers — it’s spectacular!”
“You’re wasting your time,” says the agent. “I’m not interested.”
“You will be!” says the guy. “Just gimme a chance. Please!”
The agent sighs and says, “All right, fine. Show me what you got.”
“Thank you!” says the guy. “It’s incredible, I promise!”
So the guy claps his hands, and shouts, “Allahu Akbar.” Suddenly thousands of Arabs appear. He blows a whistle, and the Arabs start attacking Israel. They’re firing rockets, they’re launching missiles, they’re hurling bombs and grenades.
Meanwhile, one group of Arabs go to an Israeli kibbutz where they’re having a music festival. And the Arabs start mowing down Jews with machine guns and rifles. They’re killing women, they’re hacking up children, dogs, pets, birds. And they’re shooting the men and then defiling the corpses and cutting off heads and pissing down the necks. Another group is taking hostages. And they’re torturing them, punching and kicking and stabbing and dragging and frogmarching them into tunnels.
And the women hostages are getting raped. Oh, they’re fucking these women with gun barrels and fists and korans. And they’re fucking the child hostages, too. They’re using dead kids as dildos to ass-fuck the live ones. So there’s blood and cum and baby teeth spraying every which way.
Meanwhile, the living hostages are dragged into daycares and hospitals and elementary schools, where the hidden Arabs are firing rockets and explosives to kill more Jews. This while thousands of other Arabs are butchering and killing and shitting on synagogues and smearing themselves with IDF soldier blood.
“But wait, there’s more!” says the guy to the talent agent. “That’s when all these college students come out and they run on campus with tents and banners and costumes. And they’re all screaming, `Death to Israel’ and `Free Gaza’ and `Stop the Palestinian Genocide’ while dancing around and crying and fucking each other even though they haven’t bathed in a month. And some of them break into hundred-year-old buildings and smash windows, trash furniture, crap on books. And then campus presidents come over, and they just watch. They don’t do anything; they just stand there like a 19th century French tableaux.”
But meanwhile the hostages are still dying in the tunnels, the Arabs are slaughtering every Jew in sight, the students are blocking highways, vandalizing Jewish homes, and jumping on subways to threaten anyone who looks like a kike. That’s when all these other countries around the world come in and start sanctioning Israel and banning Israelis from having passports. And the left-wing media applauds this and weeps for the refugees whose vote for a terrorist government started all this shit in the first place.
And meanwhile the terrorists murder and torture and rape and kill and kill and kill and kill in a ritual orgy of sadism, savagery, and Islamic frenzy.
With that, the guy in the office blows his whistle and says, “Well, what do you think?”
The talent agent sits for a minute and finally says, “Wow, that’s quite an act. By the way, what do you call yourselves?”
The college students all start cheering as the guy straightens himself up, Jewish blood still dripping from his sleeves, and says, “Hamas!”
Funny joke, ha? 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 #187 (6/15/2024): Tony Awards 2024
airs June 15, 2024 on Dave’s Gone By.
Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for June 16—Tony Night—2024.
Oh, my friends, the time has come as it does every year (except the year of the pandemic) to celebrate and honor excellence in the Broadway theater. The Tonys are named for Antoinette “Tony” Perry, an actress and early female stage director who founded the American Theater Wing, which brought shows to our servicemen in World War II. In 1947, Tony Perry and producer Brock Pemberton cooked up the idea of giving out prizes at the end of the season. Here we are, 77 events later, and the Tonys are a ritual, a commercial for Broadway, and an excuse to complain when musical numbers all sound the same or a performer we love gets egregiously overlooked.
For me, the Tonys are also a time to remember, with pride, just how crucial Jewish people were in creating Broadway, and how they are still—even in this age of trannies and Sudanis and Kardashian fannies—a theatrical force to be reckoned with. For example, “Mary Jane” may be the most goyische name for a character ever, but Mary Jane the Tony-nominated play is by Amy Herzog. She’s half-Jewish on her mother’s side and comes from a long line of Marxist, far-left socialist, and other politically wrongheaded but super-Jewish beliefs.
Speaking of 50/50 Jewesses, Paula Vogel is back on the Tony roster with Mother Play, about a mama who smokes and drinks gin. Okay, not Jewish, but we don’t want her to be. Plus, last decade, Vogel wrote Indecent, that lovely play about Yiddish theater and lesbians, two subjects I can’t think about without reaching for a box of tissues, albeit for different reasons.
Now, another nominated playwright, David Adjmi, is American-Syrian. (worried pause) Syrian-Jewish! (happy dance) Adjmi’s play Stereophonic, about a rock band in crisis, looks to be the one to beat for the Tony statuette. The competition is Jaja’s African Hair Braiding, by schvartze-shickseh playwright Jocelyn Bioh—hey, Jews can’t hog every nomination—and also a new play by Joshua Harmon, who wrote a comedy years ago called “Bad Jews!”
Well, Harmon’s Prayer for the French Republic is a three-hour Jewfest, a heartfelt exploration of why Jews never feel safe anywhere for very long. If you can believe it, the play was written two years before the latest cataclysm and before every putz walking a college campus turned into a billboard for Hamas. One of the show’s characters is a progressive Jewish chick who rails against Israel because she doesn’t understand that without Israel, Holocaust II is just a sequel waiting to happen. For making that case alone, Joshua Harmon deserves an award—not from the Tonys but from the B’nai B’rith.
But before we get too serious, let’s find some other Yids in the Tony tally. Songwriter Shaina Taub, the shayna maidel who wrote the musical Suffs, has said that the Jewish idea of tikkun olam, repairing the world, is a vital part of her ideology. Half-Jewish Liev Schreiber just played Anne Frank’s father in a TV miniseries,and Michael Stuhlbarg, raised as a Reform Jew, was the Rabbinically cursed Larry Gopnik in the Coen Brothers’ film, A Serious Man.
Now, this does bring us to actress Quincy Tyler Bernstine. She’s black. And I have no idea if… (mouths) Bernstine? However, both her parents were lawyers, and she went to Brown University, so even if Bernstine is not a Bernstein, she’s fine. The same goes for special Tony winner Abe Jacob, a legendary sound designer who’s probably Jewish, but I can’t prove it, and Alex Edelman, whose one-man show, Just for Us, brings us back to—you got it—anti-Semitism as an American pastime. Edelman, raised Orthodox, talks about assimilating and wanting to be like everyone else but still feeling unsure how he fits in. He also recounts attending a meeting of Neo-Nazis just to study their mindset. Actually, I could have saved him a trip; just go to your nearest university student government and watch them vote on divestment.
But Mazel Tov to Alex Edelman, Featured Actress nominee Shoshana Bean, Featured Actor Steven Skybell (whose last big role was a Yiddish Tevye!), and let’s not forget half-Jewish Daniel Radcliffe! Yes, Harry Potter’s magic wand is circumcised.
Not surprisingly, we see many landslayt in the Best Musical Revival category—remember when all musicals were Jewish even when they weren’t Jewish? (sighs) Anyhoo, there’s Cabaret, Gutenberg! The Musical!, Merrily We Roll Along, and The Who’s Tommy—all with some Jewish connection.Cabaret covers the rise of Nazi Germany and its effect on Jews and Gentiles alike. Well, not alike: Jews suffered worse. But the score was co-written by John Kander—Jewish, and still alive at 97!—and Fred Ebb—no longer alive but Jewish when he was!
Gutenberg! The Musical! was written by two shaygitzes, but the name “Gutenberg” sounds Jewish, and, hey, he printed the Bible, so he gets a pass. Pete Townshend, who wrote the music for Tommy, has always looked Jewish, so thumbs up for that. And how can we leave out the melech malchei hamlachim, Stephen Sondheim, whose Merrily We Roll Along finally became a Broadway smash? That musical shows how youthful idealism corrodes into cynicism, disappointment, and schadenfreude. What could be more Jewish?
And so, chaverim, we await Broadway’s big night: the teary-eyed speeches, black actresses thanking the Lord, gay directors thanking their husbands, viewers at home thanking God that Jo Koy isn’t hosting. My hope for the Tonys is that anyone wearing a Gaza pin on their dress accidentally sits on it, and that we are spared acceptance speeches that sneak in brainless homilies on ceasefire and two-state solutions and other subjects pampered Broadway snowflakes know less than nothing about. Stick to art, stick to entertainment! I just wish they’d stop sticking it to consumers by charging $200 for orchestra seats. (Go figure how all these socialists don’t mind a little free-market capitalism when it comes to their paychecks.)
But I can get only so angry at the theater, which has given me so much nachas over the years. May creativity and beauty always be replenished, and may Broadway, that Fabulous Invalid, which has survived world wars, assassinations, Covid, and even TikTok, forever go on with the show.
This has beena Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York. Curtain up!
STORYTIME: Rabbi Sol Solomon Reads “The P Word,” Part 3
For this week’s StoryTime segment on Dave’s Gone By, Rabbi Sol Solomon continues to read from David Hu’s book, “The P Word.”
This segment aired June 8, 2024 as part of the 947th “Dave’s Gone By” video podcast program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz. Full episodes also available on youtube, Facebook (davesgoneby), and on DavesGoneBy.com.
All content (c)2024 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #186 (6/8/2024): Maldives n’ Mexico
airs June 8, 2024 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube video:
I am mmmmarveling at the news this week involving two countries with mmmmarkedly different responses to the mmmmadness in the Mmmmiddle East. I am talking about the Maldives and Mexico. One of them is meretricious, the other marvelous.
So as the patient says to the doctor: “Bad news first.” The Maldives. It even has “mal,” a prefix meaning “bad,” in its own name. What are the Maldives? They’re a teeny Republic in South Asia, about 115 square miles of land with the rest in the Indian Ocean. And considering all the things Indians do in the ocean, it’s best not to drink the water. Or visit the Maldives.
Not that you could visit the Maldives right now if you were an Israeli. President Mohamed Muizzu — who belongs in a zoo — has banned anyone with an Israeli passport from entering the country, this in response to the war in Gaza. Why any Jew would visit this place in the first place is a puzzlement. Maldives is a country so Muslim that the practice of any other religion is forbidden by law. This is also a land that not only prohibits homosexuality but reprimands anybody kissing or even holding hands in public. So, basically, if you wonder what the Bahamas or Aruba would be like if they took away the fun and relaxation and replaced it with totalitarian jihad, you’ve got the Maldives.
In 2023 about 5,000 Jews visited the various Maldive islands. Maybe they were Orthodox and appreciated the modest-clothing rules and pork-free eating. Maybe they just wanted to watch other Semites inflict suffering on themselves for once instead of being tormented by others. Even prior to this ban, only 500 Yids Maldived themselves this year, and one hopes that goyim, in solidarity with Israel, will put Maldives on their “fuck-it” list. But hey, there’s sand and palm trees and, thanks to climate change, more and more and more water. It’s an Arcadia—and a perfect spot to relocate a few thousand displaced Palestinians! What? Dr. Muizzu? Not returning their calls? Well, at least you support them in theory.
But what gives me joy in reality is the result of a Presidential election held this week in Mexico. Replacing current honcho Andrés Manuel López Obrador is someone with a shorter name, thank God, but also a highly promising name. Winning a landslide victory is Mexico’s first female leader and first Jewish leader: Claudia Sheinbaum! I’m not kidding — Claudia Sheinbaum! Her heritage is a mix of Ashkenazic Lithuanian and Sephardic Bulgarian, and she’s a scientist with a PhD—a Jewish doctor will be running Mexico!
They should get her to deal with climate change in the Maldives because she’s an expert—she was part of a Nobel Prize-winning UN think tank on the topic—and she’s pro-choice, pro LGBT, big on mass transit and bicycle paths—yeah, she’s kind of a lefty. And a landsman.
The cheeriest aspect of this political event is that despite Jews being despised seemingly everywhere in the world, Mexicans looked beyond that and picked a Shein-a maidel! She was the outgoing president’s choice, and because the peso has been in decent shape, and because the drug cartels have been killing only every third tourist, voters are giving Sheiny the sheeny a shot.
Please let us support her by purchasing all things Mexican: jumping beans, refried beans, bootleg t-shirts of Mr. Bean. Also, spend your vacation dollars South of the Border. And I don’t mean getting a pubic wax, I mean Guadalajara, Cancun, Oaxaca, Acapulco, and lest we forget, charming Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl.
Oh, my friends, we are forever asking: Is it good for the Jews? If Judaism has taught us anything, it’s that things can change in a blink. But right now: viva México! And Maldives? ¡Vete a la mierda!
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York. ¡Arriba!
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For this week’s StoryTime segment on Dave’s Gone By, Rabbi Sol Solomon continues to read from David Hu’s book, “The P Word.”
This segment aired June 1, 2024 as part of the 946th “Dave’s Gone By” video podcast program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz. Full episodes also available on youtube, Facebook (davesgoneby), and on DavesGoneBy.com.
All content (c)2024 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
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Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with jazz musicians JANIS SIEGEL and YARON GERSHOVSKY
Topics include: Bobby McFerrin, Cy Coleman, Manhattan Transfer
Segment aired June 1, 2024 as part of the 946rd 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.
All content (c)2024 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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Dave’s Gone By Skit (5/25/2024): STORYTIME: Rabbi Sol Solomon Reads “The P Word,” Part 1
For this week’s StoryTime segment on Dave’s Gone By, Rabbi Sol Solomon reads the first part of David Hu’s book, “The P Word.”
This segment aired May 25, 2024 as part of the 945th “Dave’s Gone By” video podcast program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz. Full episodes also available on youtube, Facebook (davesgoneby), and on DavesGoneBy.com.
All content (c)2024 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #185 (5/4/2024): Three Cheers for the NYPD
airs May 4, 2024 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube video:
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for early May 2024.
Credit where credit is due. And I don’t mean the credit cards where I owe 30 percent interest on a sofa I bought in 2014. No, I’m talking about: let’s applaud a job well done in a tremendously difficult situation.
Ever since George Floyd — you know, the drug addict, thief, armed robber, and counterfeiter who was horribly murdered by overzealous law enforcement — ever since that subject for statues became a symbol for systemic racism, cops have been betwixt and between. On the one hand, they face loathing from communities where, admittedly, they behaved badly for decades. On the other, they’re expected to be models of self-control while putting their lives on the line. Picture trying to do your job when the very people you are tasked to protect are shouting to defund you. Imagine that you take pride in serving the Big Apple, yet you’re automatically lumped in with the bad apples.
And now imagine that you’ve been called to a college campus where hundreds of deluded 20-somethings — whose age alone would mark them as enemies of authority — imagine that these liberal loonies and BIPOC buttheads have overtaken a major American university. As part of their tantrum, they’ve camped out on the lawn, blocked access to thoroughfares, and even vandalized a building. The school President has hithered and dithered, not wanting to spark violence or squelch free speech, but terrified to lose benefactors who might balk at endowing a university whose main export has become anti-Semitism.
By the time Columbia’s leader, Minouche Shafik, realized things had gotten out of control, things had gotten out of control. What to do? What to do? Let the monkeys run amok? Surrender Hamilton Hall, Lewisohn Hall, Kravis Hall, the ironically named “Harmony Hall” — all to a bunch of tent-pitching yahoos who couldn’t find Gaza on a map, a map in a bookstore, a bookstore in a city, and a city on their non-stop TikTok feeds?
At a certain point, order must be restored. It doesn’t matter that the disrupters were non-violent, and it wouldn’t matter if they were there supportingIsrael against the demons of Hamas. They were asked to leave and refused. They were commanded to leave, and instead, smashed windows and home-invaded the administration building.
That’s when you send in the cops. With riot gear.
And that, finally, is what President Shafik did. After a week of letting the hyenas run the zoo, she called in the NYPD who, with exceptional restraint and by-the-book behavior, broke up Hamas on the Hudson. Crying sophomores, shrieking professors, double-talking outside agitators — rounded up, plunked on paddy wagons, and slapped on the wrists, alas, but at least temporarily out of commission.
This, my friends, is how it’s done. Because, God knows, the cops showed more self-control than I would have to these Morningside morons. The first one to shout “Free Gaza” would have to do it through a mouth full of broken teeth. The first holding a “Divest” sign would have to hoist it with cracked knuckles. And the first Jew tweeting “Cease Fire Now!” would have so much mace sprayed in her face, her eyes would turn all four colors of the Palestinian flag.
This is why I am not a cop. This is also why the New York Police Department — and every Blue brigade that’s been summoned to these conflagrations — deserves oodles of kudos for the job they did and the way they did it. I’m sure many of these officers agreed with the protesters — we’re not talking Einsteins here, on either side of the grass — but they followed reasonable directions in a professional manner, and they deserve our gratitude and admiration.
And when the green-tent vermin swarm back onto the lawns of Columbia, NYU, Yale, UCLA, or any other ivy-choked nest of minacious radicalism, let the liars on the left be met head on by what’s right.
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 #184 (4/27/2024): A Passover Prayer
airs April 27, 2024 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube video:
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for these last few days of Passover 2024.
A zissen Pesach my friends, and I hope you are having a fun holiday, with maximal contemplation and minimal constipation. Actually, this year is less likely to afflictus with intestinal binding than gastric reflux: we want to throw up at everything around us.
That’s why I’ve written this little prayer that you can append to your Haggadahs this Passover. It’s an appeal to God to get off his lazy tuchas and help us, just as he did in Egypt. He doesn’t have to show himself as a burning bush; he could set Ilhan Omar’s public hair on fire: same thing.
Anyway, here is a Prayer for late Pesach:
Blessed art thou, Oh Lord, our God. King of the Universe. (Or Queen, He can be gender-ridiculous). Blessed be He who sanctifies us with a holiday that deprives us of bread yet consoles us with Joyva Ring Jells; where we are scourged by horse radish, soothed by charoses, and confused by putting them together; and where we learn morality by letting a child hide the Afikoman and then rewarding him for thievery and blackmail.
Dear God, in these times of woe, when the land of Israel rages and Jew-haters have slithered from their cages, we implore thee to restore righteousness in the world. To vanquish our foes, as you did the Amalekites and the Canaanites, and sometimes the Monday nites. Oh Lord, protect the tiny nation of Eretz Yisroel and smite our enemies. For example:
May Hamas fighters see their tunnels turn to caskets, their caskets turned to dust, and their dust hoovered up by your ugliest cleaning lady.
May you lift the Palestinians up, up, up out of Israel and deposit them in a galaxy far, far away. Or at least Kuwait.
May Iraq get so fed up with Iran for being only one letter different, that the two blow each other to bits, which will be especially amusing to Jews named “Ira.”
May the United Nations vote to sanction itself out of existence and have to relinquish its New York headquarters to a Judaica superstore.
May every Western woman who supports the Arab world actually have to live, as a woman, in the Arab world.
May the marching students of Columbia and New York Universities be boiled in acid and then, ironically, fail their chemistry exams.
May the idiots posting anti-Zionist misinformation on TikTok be forced to use Dos dial-up just to get WiFi.
May the members of “Queers for Palestine” be bent over and their assholes stuffed with razor wire. And AIDS.
May every troglodyte who scrawls “Death to Israel” in graffiti on a public edifice be given a 1972 station wagon and forced to circle the building eternally looking for parking.
May every Arab who danced a jig on October 7th have their legs hacked off and fed to starving woodchucks, and may those marmots come back while the cripples are sleeping and vomit in their mouths.
May every Jew who betrays Israel in favor of “Palestine” be forced to eat matzoh made of ground glass and soaked in rat poison. In thy mercy.
And may whoever becomes President of the United States live four more years — and that’s a stretch right there — to see Israel triumph, her children multiply, her enemies divide and die, and her friends figure out a way to make even a bacon cheeseburger Kosher for Passover.
V’yimeru, Amen.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.
