Rabbi Sol Solomon’s celebrity interviews, Rabbinical Reflections (sermons), songs, and other appearances on the show.
INDEX: http://davesgoneby.net/?p=25407
Click above to listen to the interview (audio only).
Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with performance artist Adrienne Truscott
Topics include: One Trick Pony, theater, rape, comedy, Andy Kaufman. Segment airs June 16, 2018 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio 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)2018 TotalTheater Productions. More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com More information about Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com Download video file of audio content
Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of June 10, 2018.
Being Jewish, I don’t know a lot of guys named Tony, but I do know and love one Tony: The Tony Awards! They happen every June, and they celebrate excellence, artistry, and producers’ amazing ability to congratulate their own good taste and wealth. If you love Broadway, ya gotta love the Tonys: the one award ceremony per year that isn’t devoted to horrible country music.
Of course, being a Rabbi, I have my own thoughts on the Tony nominations, which I share each year in a special theatrical Rabbinical Reflection. Basically, I look at all the categories and try to find the Jews. For example, this season’s nominees for Best Play are unbelievably goyish. There’s Junk, written by an Arab; Latin History for Morons, written and performed by the Hispanic John Leguizamo; there’s Harry Potter, which has a black Hermione and a WASPy everyone else; and a drama called The Children, which deals with the aftermath of a holocaust. Don’t get your hopes up. It’s a nuclear holocaust—not the other one.
Jews have better luck with the Best Revival category. Yes, there’s Eugene O’Neill and Edward Albee, but there’s also the half-Jew Kenneth Lonergan and his play, Lobby Hero, which is all about a nebbishy security guard. That character isn’t explicitly Jewish but…come on. Come on! Also in the Revival category, you got Tom Stoppard. A lot of people don’t realize he’s a Yid whose family fled Czechoslovakia during the Nazi occupation. People also might not know that Stoppard’s 1974 comedy, Travesties, deals with two Jews: performance artist Tristan Tzara, and Vladimir Lenin, whose mother was of hidden Jewish ancestry. In fact, there are a lot of things we don’t know about Travesties because no one can understand the fucking thing. But it seems really funny.
And then there’s the elephant in the room—the circumcised, payes-wearing elephant—Tony Kushner and Angels in America. This play starts with a rabbi and goes downhill from there. Seriously, Angels is widely considered a modern classic: the most important play of the latter 20th century—with the possible exception of my own Shalom, Dammit!. (But mine is a musical, so I understand the nominators’ confusion.) My sole quibble with Angels in America is that its focus is on three Jews, and they’re all wretched. Louis is a gay New Yorker sleeping with a shaygitz who gets AIDS, and the symptoms are so horrible, Louis can’t take it. He dumps the boyfriend and starts banging a Mormon. This leaves him with tremendous guilt, which is the one thing a heterosexual Jew can relate to in this play. Meanwhile, the other big Jew is Roy Cohn, the hateful, closeted son-of-a-bitch who helped Joseph McCarthy destroy suspected communists. Among them: the third character, Ethel Rosenberg. She and her husband Julius went to the electric chair for treason for funneling secret documents to the Russian government. Obviously, this was before colluding with Russia became something that got you elected president. All told, as a multi-dimensional drama, Angels in America is major. As a show to bring a group from the Hadassah…I’ll stick with Perfect Crime.
Now, before we get too depressing, let us note that all three Tony nominated musical revivals have Jewish DNA. Carousel: by yidlach Richard Rodgers and half-Jewish Oscar Hammerstein II; My Fair Lady by yidlach Alan Jay Lerner and half-Jewish Frederick Loewe; and Once on this Island, by yidlach Lynn Ahrens and an Irish guy. Strangely enough, all three musicals tell of incandescent women suffering at the hands of asshole men—which is why I’m not taking my wife to any of them.
I am dismayed by the paucity of Jews in the lead acting categories. Andrew Garfield stars in Angels in America, and Amy Schumer made the critics laugh in Meteor Shower, but don’t be fooled! Lauren Ridloff, of Children of a Lesser God, has a Jewish name, but I’m pretty sure she’s a schvartze; and Jessie Mueller looks Jewish but she’s Lutheran. Worse, Josh Groban, who co-hosts this year’s Tonys with Sara Bareilles, had a Jewish father who converted to marry his Christian mother. Everyone assumes Groban is a Yid because of the beard and old footage of him playing Tevye in high school, but he’s as goyish as pulled pork on a Triscuit. People are so worried about fake news; we should worry about fake Jews!
But I kid, because one of the new musicals up for a Tony, and the one most likely to win, is a minyan unto itself. Of course, I am talking about The Band’s Visit, an off-Broadway smash that is wowing them uptown at the Barrymore Theater. It’s written playwright Itamar Moses, whose parents are Israeli, and scored by David Yazbek, who comes from a Lebanese dad and a Jewish mama. More importantly, the musical tells of an Egyptian police band accidentally stuck in a nowhere, hick town in Israel. Is there fear, mistrust, miscommunication? A bit, but there’s also music, empathy, helping, romance, niceness, clever lyrics, lovely music—what’s not to enjoy? The Jews in The Band’s Visit aren’t perfect; in fact, they’re gruff and neurotic compared to the decorous Egyptians, but everyone’s human, everyone’s making the best of a weird situation, no one talks politics, no one wants to talk politics, and by the end, everyone’s a little bit better off through the commingling of cultures. I know I was. Except when I had to explain to my dear wife Miriam Libby why I had to cover my lap with my Playbill every time Katrina Lenk walked onstage. My God, that woman could melt hummus. Was the musical worth sleeping on my couch for three days? Damn right it was. And I will be rooting for The Band’s Visit to win many Tony Awards on Sunday, June 10th, at Radio City’s Hall of Music.
Win or lose, I congratulate all nominees of all de-nominations, and wish for a wonderful night of glamour, showtunes, and chorus boys who don’t have to worry about Kevin Spacey buggering them in the lounge. There’s nothing like live theater and nothing bigger than Broadway. It’s like eating deli; even when the sandwich is mediocre, it’s still deli! And I am hungry for a Broadway feast.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches, in Great Neck, New York. Curtain up!
Segment airs June 2, 2018 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio 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)2018 TotalTheater Productions. More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com More information about Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com
Click above to listen to the interview (audio only).
Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with folk musician Jim Kweskin
Topics include: music, jug bands, Bob Dylan, Geoff & Maria Muldaur, drugs, construction, jazz.
Segment airs May 26, 2018 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio 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)2018 TotalTheater Productions. More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com More information about Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com
Segment airs May 19, 2018 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio 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)2018 TotalTheater Productions. More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com More information about Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com
Click above to listen to the interview (audio only).
Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with cabaret icon Sidney Myer
Topics include: cabaret, Judy Garland, Panache, Don’t Tell Mama, Bing Crosby. Segment airs May 5, 2018 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio 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)2018 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com More information about Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com
Click above to listen to the interview (audio only).
Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with author Iris Rainer Dart
Topics include: Beaches, The People in the Picture, theater, musicals, Judaism.
Segment airs April 7, 2018 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio 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)2018 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com More information about Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com
Click above to listen to the interview (audio only).
Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with musician Billy Coté Topics include: Madder Rose, Mary Lorson, music, art.
Segment airs March 31, 2018 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio 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)2018 TotalTheater Productions. More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com More information on Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com Download video file of audio content
Click above to listen to the episode (audio only).
Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with comedian Jackie “The Jokeman” Martling
Topics include: Howard Stern, comedy, jokes, Long Island. Segment airs March 24, 2018 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio 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)2018 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com More information on Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com
Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of March 25, 2018.
What does Israel really need? What’s missing from the land of milk and honey? Oh, some would say peace between Jews and Arabs. Others might suggest curing cancer or irrigating more of the Negev. But a couple of Rabbis have a different idea. They say what Israel needs most of all is a theme park.
No, I am not kidding. A story in the Jerusalem Post explains that entrepreneurs have been visiting Eretz Yisroel in the hopes of building a Jewish equivalent of Disney’s Magic Kingdom. In fact, planning is well under way for a 60-acre tourist attraction in the heart of Dimona—a city which, until now, was best known for housing the secret arsenal of Israel’s nuclear weapons. What better place to bring kids for a Hebraic vacation or, as I call it, Shlepcot.
The theme park will consist of five “worlds”: “World of Spirits, World of the Jewish Nation, World of Society, World of Time, and Oasis.” Someone got lazy with the last one, there. (Either that, or Noel Gallagher is really out of ideas.) But this is beautiful – Lea Malul, CEO of the project, told the Jerusalem Post, quote, “The park will have the same rides and the same layout as Disney World but with content. It will be 90% fun and 10% content.” Because God forbid Jews should have 100% fun at anything. No, always gotta make room for disappointment and boredom. Even at Passover, a happy holiday where we escaped from slavery and entered the holy land, we pour out 10 percent of our wine glasses. Why? Because Egyptians died, and we’re not supposed to celebrate too much. So now they’ll have a theme park where the last 10 seconds of the roller coaster slows down for a physics lesson.
But seriously, although the original idea for Shlepcot was put forward by a New Jersey Rabbi, the venue won’t be one of these biblical passion pageants. Nevertheless, it will promote Talmudic values. For example—and again, this is right from the Jerusalem Post—the popular Splash Mountain ride will include a theme of six work days and then, after the drop, a calm zone representing the day of rest. There’ll also be a People of the Book Roller Coaster. Which I guess means that Genesis and Exodus go really fast, and the last three books go two miles an hour and put you to sleep before Deuteronomy. They also might consider branding the long lines in the hot sun as representing 40 years in the desert, and making The Haunted Mansion Leona Helmsley’s old apartment.
If the project goes forward, developers expect the surrounding area to be built up with shopping malls, hotels—I’d say falafel stands are a good bet. More importantly, officials from Dimona hope to make that city an international destination. Said one official, quote, “Every year, four million cars pass by en route from Beersheba to Eilat. We want them stopping in Dimona.” What they don’t say is that the city was originally settled by North Africans and later got an influx of Russians. So the theme park will have both rhythm and fixed elections.
Here’s one more quote from Malul, the CEO: “Jewish history is mostly sad – with the Holocaust and so on.” I love that, `the Holocaust and so on.’ Like she’s browsing through a catalogue. But, she says, “this will be a unique way for Jewish values and learning to become fun.” Well, 90 percent fun.
Most promising is the idea that this park will not have Mickey Mouse or Goofy but “alternative characters who will represent the heroes of tomorrow,” unquote. One can only imagine: Ephraim, the plucky lizard. Stingy Duck. Winnie the Jooh. Captain Shnook. Shmuella DeVille. Shimon E. Cricket. And of course, Lilo and Stitch, the stitch being part of grandpa’s hernia operation. And I guess you need seven dwarf-equivalents: Yitzi, Chaiki, Shloimi, Rivki, Doc (who is a Jewish doctor), Gassy, and Grumpy because, let’s face it, Grumpy was always the Jewish one anyway.
Jokes aside, I am all for anything that brings joy and tourism to Dimona. And if some shmegegge employee accidentally pushes the wrong button, and instead of starting the Magic Carpet ride blows up half of Lebanon? Well, that would sure be worth the price of an E-Ticket.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches, in Great Neck, New York. (sings) “Leave a small tip after all, leave a small tip after all…”
Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with performance artist Adrienne Truscott
Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with folk musician Jim Kweskin
Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with musician Billy Coté