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

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

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

click above to watch.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click above to watch the video

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

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

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

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

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

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

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

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

For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,

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

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

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

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

All losses are restor’d, and sorrows end.

Dave’s Gone By Interview (4/25/2020): JEFFREY LEWIS & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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.

More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com

More about Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

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

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

For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,

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

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

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shalom!

Dave’s Gone By Interview (4/18/2020): ROY SANDER & Rabbi Sol Solomon

Click above to watch in-studio footage of the interview–wifi glitches n’ all.

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

Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews cabaret critic ROY SANDER.

Topics include: cabaret, Julie Wilson, Vera Lynn, Berlin, religion, COVID-19, Bistro Awards

Segment aired April 18, 2020 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” podcast program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com

More about Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com.

Dave’s Gone By Interview (4/11/2020): ANNIE GOLDEN & Rabbi Sol Solomon

Click above to watch in-studio footage of Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Zoom interview with Annie Golden.

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Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with actress ANNIE GOLDEN

Topics include: On the Town, Orange is the New Black, Bleeding Love, Hair, Milos Foreman, COVID-19.

Segment aired April 11, 2020 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” podcast program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com

More about Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com.

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

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

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

click above to watch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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NOTES & BACKSTORY:

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

Dave’s Gone By Interview (4/4/2020): KEITH SHERMAN & Rabbi Sol Solomon

Click above to watch in-studio footage of Rabbi Sol Solomon’s phone interview with press agent Keith Sherman.

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

Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with publicist KEITH SHERMAN

Topics include: Broadway, Frank Sinatra, COVID-19, 42nd Street.

Segment aired April 4, 2020 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” podcast program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com

More about Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com.

Dave’s Gone By Interview (3/28/2020): BEN KATCHOR & Rabbi Sol Solomon

Click above to watch in-studio footage of Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Zoom interview with Ben Katchor.

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Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews cartoonist BEN KATCHOR

Topics include: cartoons, comic strips, Art Spiegelman, The Dairy Restaurant, The Jew of New York, Judaism, The Carbon Copy Building, graphic novels, newspapers.

Segment aired March 28, 2020 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” podcast program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com

More about Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com.

Dave’s Gone By Interview (3/21/2020): CHARLES BUSCH & Rabbi Sol Solomon

Click above to watch in-studio footage of Rabbi Sol Solomon’s phone interview with Charles Busch .

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

Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with playwright CHARLES BUSCH

Topics include: theater, Charles Ludlam, Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, Tale of the Allergist’s Wife, Die Mommy Die, Northwestern University, drag.

Segment aired March 7, 2020 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” podcast program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com

More about Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com.