Rabbi Sol Solomon’s celebrity interviews, Rabbinical Reflections (sermons), songs, and other appearances on the show.
INDEX: http://davesgoneby.net/?p=25407
Segment aired May 9, 2015 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)2015 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com More information about Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com
Topics include: After Woodstock, Andre Ernotte, Belgium, Rue Haute
Segment aired April 11, 2015 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.
Note: Elliot Tiber passed away 8/3/16.
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)2015 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
More information about Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com
RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #121 (4/5/2015): Passover
(aired April 5, 2015 on Dave’s Gone By. https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27305. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/P5iBQJD75tg)
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of April 5, 2015.
Friends, are you constipated? I certainly hope so, because that would mean you are eating your matzah, the traditional food of the Passover holiday, which we are in the midst of celebrating as we speak. Well, as I speak; you’re just listening.
But yes, Passover is one of the most important Jewish holidays—certainly the most labor intensive. Other holidays, you cook a meal, you make a blessing, maybe you don’t eat for a day—boom, you’re done. Okay, Sukkos, you have to build a little house, which is a pain in the ass, but you get to use it for a week, and you can make believe it’s a gazebo or a cozy shed. And if you’re too lazy to build, you can always go to the local shul and stay in theirs. Just make sure to use the guest towels.
But Pesach? Oy, what a production. You have to clean the whole house, top to bottom, of every crumb, every last bit of leavened bread. You have to sell everything in your fridge and cupboards to your local Rabbi–because what Rabbi doesn’t want to be responsible for two-week-old meatloaf? You gotta change all your dishes and cutlery, because a fork that touched pizza is somehow satanic for a week. And then, throughout Passover, you can eat only foods that are approved for holiday use. Wheat and beans and whole-grain products are verboten, and everything you reach for has to be certified Kosher L’Pesach. Which means a bottle of ketchup that’s $2 the rest of the year now costs $7.50. Why? Because some mashgiach was there to make sure that no tomato came into contact with a pretzel. HaShem forbid.
It’s a lot of nonsense, of course, but like all religious rituals, the doing of them forces us to remember who we are and the legacy to which we are tied. God doesn’t give a rat’s tushie if we hide the Afikomen or not; but my great, great, great grandfather hid the Afikomen—probably from the Cossacks—and my 21 ½ children will hide the Afikomen from my (god willing) 150 grandchildren. It’s not the activity; it’s the legacy.
Or, on Passover, it’s leprosy. And blood and frogs and boils and murrain and darkness and death of the first born and all the things usually caused by Comcast/Xfinity. We remember the 10 Plagues God visited upon the Egyptians as payback for subjugating the Hebrews. And when Moses visited Pharaoh and told him, “Look, we’re leaving. Can we get a severance check and a few weeks of interim health insurance?”, Pharaoh said no, so God made him suffer. Actually, Pharaoh didn’t say no. I mean, at first he did, when Moses was turning water into blood and making frogs jump out of underwear drawers. Pharaoh saw a bunch of magic tricks and said, “Copperfield does them better.”
But as the plagues turned nastier, Pharaoh was ready to be done with the Jews and let our people go. Until HaShem hardened his heart–I guess with some kind of aortic Viagra–and forced Pharoah to make ruinous choices, essentially robbing the king of Egypt of his free will.
I admit, I’ve always found something unsettling in that story. It’s one thing if Pharaoh is so evil, or so moronic, that he invites torture upon his empire through his own pig-headedness. But the Torah makes it clear that God is pulling the strings. He’s like the schoolyard bully that grabs your fists and makes you sock yourself in the face, all the while saying, “Stop hitting yourself. Why are you hitting yourself?” In the Pesach story, God puts Pharaoh through ten rounds with Mike Tyson, and then a bonus round with Muhammad Ali. The Jews finally hit the road, Pharaoh sends soldiers after them—presumably all second-born sons–and what happens? They all drown. God is nothing if not thorough.
So what do we learn from that gruesome fable? First, that if you mess with the Jews long enough, you get payback of biblical proportions (pun intended). After all, the Hebrews served as Egyptian slaves for generations before the big rescue. Stopping the punishment at flies or even flaming hail just wouldn’t send the same message as mass murder.
The second thing we learn is a rational reason why we spill drops of wine during the Passover seder. The Haggadah explains that even though Pesach is a happy holiday, and we’re delighted to recall the deliverance of Israel from Egypt, we’re not supposed to celebrate a hundred percent. We diminish our wine glass literally and our joy metaphorically, because even though our enemy treated us worse than the worst Jennifer Lopez movie, they are still human beings. They are still God’s children being destroyed.
Personally, I don’t spill a whole lotta wine on Passover—and not just because we have to use the same tablecloth for two nights. I rejoice freely when my enemy falls. When the Navy Seals took out bin Laden, I tore off my clothes and started dancing naked around the house. Which caused some problems because I was outside. But oh boy, did I shake my tailfeather! Miley Cyrus could have studied my tuchas for twerking lessons. And if I’d been alive in 1945 to witness V-E Day, I would have kissed a girl for every German that got a bullet through his eye or a bayonet through his heart. (You could probably call it VD Day…) I still would do this, so if any young girls want to stand in the street and let me kiss them, drop me an email, and I’ll get my sailor suit out of the cleaners.
Don’t get me wrong; I like the idea of being a good sport when my adversary is vanquished, but in reality, the misery and death of my enemies gives me less pause than a skip on my CD player. (For those of you under 30 who don’t know what that is, a CD player is like Spotify on a pancake.)
Anyhoo, my point in all this is however you celebrate Passover—if you follow all the rules, some of the rules, or if you serve bacon croissants during the Seder—and however you feel about Passover—whether you’re there just for family or you’re looking for a greater spiritual purpose in choking to death on horse radish—enjoy the holiday, appreciate the history, and take comfort that you don’t have to fast and no one gets circumcised.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York. Dai-Dai-enu.
Segment aired April 4, 2015 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)2015 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of March 29, 2015.
Much to many people’s surprise, Benjamin Netanyahu was elected for a third term as the Prime Minister of Israel. Everyone assumed Labor would win. Everybody thought Netanyahu’s hard-line, status-quo policies were on the way out, and peaceniks were on the way in. Well, pre-April fool! Or technically, Adar fool, since it’s the Jewish calendar we’re dealing with.
But let’s be clear: for all Israel’s weariness of war, and for all the country’s gratitude to the United States for support, for money, for defense, for money, for money, for money . . . Israeli voters nevertheless sent a strong message and a mandate. The safety and security of Eretz Yisroel comes before everything else. It comes before friendship, before negotiations, before swallowing the latest Palestinian PR. They said to Netanyahu: “Give us strong borders and a promise that you won’t sell our country down the river—Jordan or Nile—and we’ll vote for you again.” He did, and they did.
Therefore, much to the chagrin of President Barak Oblivia, Bibi is back. And the shocking part is: he did it, not by kowtowing to the left, not by lying about the potential for peace with our sworn enemies, but by facing facts. The Arabs hate us, they won’t even recognize Israel on their maps or GPS systems, and any chance they get, they’d gladly send the Jews on a blind date with Robert Durst.
In his campaigning, Bibi went so far as to say that on his watch, there would never be a Palestinian state, which is harsh to hear even for a die-hard Zionist like yours truly. I’ve always said, I have no objection to a Palestinian state . . . in Algeria, in Curacao, maybe somewhere north of Omsk. The two-state solution, however, just seems like a disaster on the drawing board: unsafe, untenable, and you know it would just turn Jerusalem into a ping-pong ball. Filled with explosives.
Still, you’re not allowed to say that. If you’re a diplomat or a head of state, you’re supposed to make believe there’s always room for negotiation, that the Arabs really will lay down their arms and be all neighborly-like. Because, hey, they’ve been such good citizens in Yemen, Tunisia, Iraq, Syria, Libya – fill in the name of a country; the Muslims have probably terrorized it.
Our President won’t admit that, of course. It’s like he’s living in the movie “Candyman.” If you say the name “Moslem” five times to a camera lens, the bad guys’ evil will be unleashed. But here’s news, Mr. Pres, the bad genies are already out of the bottle, and if there’s one country on earth that knows not to trust the Bedouins, it’s their Semitic brethren.
Now, for the sake of diplomacy, Benjy Netanyahu has already gone back on his pre-election speechifying. He says he didn’t really mean there was no solution, that he’s always willing to schmooze with Abbas, and we should take his posturing with a grain of hummus. He’s a politician. He says what he has to to get what he wants. Once he’s got it, then he can be more truthful. Not completely truthful, but a percentage.
Meanwhile, the President, who has been going through an otherwise impressive stretch of lame-duck vigor, is pitching a hissy fit over Bibi’s bonanza. Obama wants to be the next Jimmy Carter, brokering the all-but-impossible peace deal that will cement his legacy for the ages. But lemme tell you, Barack, if you’re listening, which I know you are: with Israel and Egypt, Jimmy Carter did an amazing, impossible, fantastic thing. No one can take that away from him. But if you ask anybody about the legacy of James Earl Carter, 39th President, the response will be: hostages, oil shortage, inflation, Cold War, losing the Panama Canal, and a general American bad mood. In other word, that peanut-brained peanut farmer had as much business ruling the free world as Bill Cosby would have running a rape crisis center. So if Obama thinks he’s got anything to gain by twisting Israel’s arm into a phony truce with terrorists, he’s in for a rude awakening.
And yes, it was rude of Netanyahu to visit America and gab with Republicans when the White House all but begged him not to. But I repeat: maybe, just maybe, Bibi knows whereof he speaks when he cautions that trusting Iran to scrap its nuclear program is like trusting Bill Cosby to run a rape crisis center. I know, I already used that joke, but I’m hungry, and I want to finish this stupid essay and get to my brisket.
Folks in Washington are saying that relations between Israel and the United States are nearly at an all-time low. But I think—or at least, I hope—that’s overstating the case. Deep down, both American parties are very committed to Israel and realize how strategically important it is to the West, as well as its moral right to exist in a post-Holocaustal world. If Obama wants to rattle his saber—and you know, those people are blessed with long sabers—it could be the same kind of bluff and bluster Netanyahu was using to win his election. What actually goes on behind the scenes . . . that’s for statesmen to know and Aaron Sorkin to fabricate.
So I hope this is all just smoke and mishegoss, and that the Democrats—especially their presumptive 2016 candidat-ess—remember that what’s good for Auntie Israel is what’s most prudent for Uncle Sam. Or, put another way, don’t throw the Bibi out with the bathwater.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.
Segment aired March 28, 2015 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)2015 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
More information about Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com
Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews author, mime and artist Paulette Frankl
Topics include: Marcel Marceau, mime, Tony Serra, courtroom sketches.
Segment aired March 21, 2015 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)2015 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews SCTV costume legend Juul Haalmeyer
Topics include: Second City Television, costumes, Toronto, Holland
Segment aired March 14, 2015 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)2015 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com More information about Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com
RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #119 (3/8/2015): Dave’s 500th
aired March 7, 2015 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/SJrDutZ8dpc
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of March 8, 2015.
Some inventions in this world are amazingly useful, life-changing, relevant, exciting, and crucial to every single person on the planet. And then there’s radio. Oh sure, 80 years ago, if you lived on a farm with one telegraph pole and a half-dead chicken, being able to dial your wireless to hear the latest barn dance down the road was a blessing. Think of families in the Forties, gathered around the console to hear Fred Allen, The Shadow, Fibber McGee, Father Coughlin — everyone staring at the speaker as if waiting, waiting, waiting for David Sarnoff to invent television so they wouldn’t look like idiots staring at nothing all night.
Well, eventually, television did come. As did walkmen, and video games and iTunes and Netflix, and now the only people who listen to radio are the ones who — no, nobody listens to radio. Except blind people. And even they’re watching television; they just think it’s radio. However, despite the obsolescence of Arch Obeler, some people still MAKE radio! Don Quixotes tilting at the windmills of modern media, not caring that while the rest of the world is using washer-dryers, they’re still bashing dirty clothes on a rock. Yet that is part of the mystique that still affords radio whatever charm it has left. A human at a microphone reaching through the airwaves to communicate with another human stuck at a red light.
Even in this hypersaturated visual era, some radio personalities have broken through to become superstars: Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh, the dead guy who laughed a lot on that car show — yes, radio has been bery bery good to .00003 percent of the population. And then there’s Dave Lefkowitz. Twelve and a half years ago, not content with being an underpaid arts journalist, a marginally produced playwright and an unemployable actor, Dave tried his hand at the media world’s oldest profession. He knew he wanted to do something different but not too different, since Jews are terrified of risk. And he knew he wanted to be funny and interesting and worth spending time with. It never worked with women, so he figured it might work with listeners. In a musical market then dominated by Celine Dion, Britney Spears and Hoobastank, Dave wanted to play Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Frank Zappa, Joni Mitchell, Tom Lehrer, and Shooby Taylor. (Personally, I don’t think he plays enough Rabbi Moshe Koussevitsky, but that’s just me.) Dave also wanted to talk to heroes of his youth, like Doctor Demento, Joe Franklin, and the opera fanatic who talked like he was castrated but nevertheless was shockingly heterosexual.
These people did appear on Dave’s Gone By, as did Neil Sedaka, Carl Reiner, Carol Channing, Charles Grodin, Bonnie Franklin, Sheldon Harnick, Dick Cavett, Judy Collins and, most importantly, yours truly. I was on that very first episode, October 6th, 2002. It was 11 o’clock at night on a Sunday, so you can tell just how important the station thought this new show would be. That station is still around by the way, except now, all day long, they play news and music in Mandarin Chinese. It’s a brilliant strategy, actually, because you hear it, and then an hour later, you wanna hear it over again. But back then, the station was a lot more eclectic, and Dave came on with his jokes and sketches and theater reviews and oddball segues, and I have to say my radio was never the same again. Because I dropped it in the toilet while I was listening.
But as I said, I was on the debut show, offering my benediction for success and an important public-service segment about monitoring for breast cancer. My small hope was to alert women to the importance of early screening — by having them come down to the station and let me check their boobs for lumps. That didn’t quite work out, but my connection to Dave’s Gone By was solidified that night, joined together…like an unidentified fibrous mass under a nipple. Since then, it has been a joy and an honor to be a dweller in the Daverhood. I get to share my weekly Rabbinical Reflections on this program, where I can rant and rave and embarrass Dave. These reflections have encompassed everything from Coca Cola to gay rights to Regis Philbin to the relentless insanity of the Arab world. Considering some of the things I’ve said, it’s a miracle I haven’t had my head handed to me – literally, by some English yutz in ISIS.
Think about what radio has come to. Go up and down the dial, and what do you hear? Obnoxious debt consolidators, obnoxious mariachi music, obnoxious preachers spouting that Jesus is the answer to everything when we all know that chocolate is the answer to everything. You’ve got your right-wing, talk-radio goons who think our President is worse than AIDS, and you’ve got your hand-wringing, public-radio schlemiels who think we should cut off Israel’s aid. You get one classical-music station that’s always playing Mozart, because nobody can tolerate anything else. And, of course, 20 rock stations doing their own unique formats of top-40 pop, which all uniquely suck dog poop in their own unique ways.
Somewhere in that vast audio wasteland, you also get sports talk, lite jazz–which is what the devil listens to when he’s not torturing bin Laden—and commercials, commercials, commercials, commercials, commercials, commercials, public-service announcements, commercials, station IDs and commercials. Thank haShem for college radio: for a few spots on the dial that have real kids with quirky personalities playing the shitty music that they love. At least it means something to them.
My friend Dave has found a home on college radio, and so have I. Especially since we both like co-eds. UNC Radio may be a pup tent in a land of high rises, but we can speak freely and not fit into some politically correct, constrained, corporate idea of what a deejay is, or what a Rabbi is, or, in the case of Bill Clinton, what “is” is. And besides, everyone says fame and fortune can make you just as miserable as poverty and obscurity. To which I say, “Prove it! Prove it on me! I am so ready to be miserably wealthy, you can’t imagine!”
But I digress. Dave, my friend, my acolyte, my Miller Lite, mazel tov on your 500th radio program of the air. It’s an achievement that speaks to your tenacity, your talent, your endurance, your inflated ego, and your belief that a moribund medium can still reach one or two lonely people out there, in the dark, who aren’t necessarily serial killers.
Radio isn’t always an honorable or dignified profession, but Dave, that’s why it suits you. I wish you 500 more shows – nay, 5,000! 5,000,000! 5 shmagillion – whatever comes after that. I know you’ll keep doing radio as long as the inspiration holds. And when inspiration goes and you have nothing left to say? Well, there’s always blogging.
Until then, Dave Lefkowitz: more you, more me, immortality. This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of March 1, 2015.
(sings) Shout hallelujah, come on, get happy! It’s the Purim holiday Though the rest of the year is crappy We can drink all our blues away.”
Yes, my friends, this Wednesday night, the Purim holiday arrives, bringing with it the chance to celebrate our Jewishness, to dress up in funny costumes, and to recall a time in our history when, like the Crusades and the Holocaust, we were almost wiped out but saved at the last minute. Actually, no Jews died on Purim, so as happy holidays go, this one’s like hitting Lotto on the day your baby’s born.
On Purim, we read the Book of Esther — returning it to her after we’re done — and we rejoice in a holiday that is truly about fun. F – U – N. I spell it out, not because I’m worried the FCC thought I said something else, but because “fun” is not a word we often associate with my tribe, so we grab it when we can get it. And I get it on these Rabbinical Reflections by sometimes sharing jokes with a Jew-y theme and a Purim-packed punchline.
Our first joke is about my cousin Irving, who lives in Brooklyn and gets on a bus. He’s carrying this big duffel bag, and he asks the driver if he can get a senior discount. The driver looks at him funny and says, “You don’t look a day over 40. Show me some ID.” “I left my wallet at home,” says Irving. “All I have is change for the bus. But I still I demand a senior discount.”
“You’re not old enough!” yells the driver. “What are you trying to pull?”
“How dare you!” screams Irving. “I demand my rights!”
The two start arguing and going back and forth and screaming. Finally, the bus driver gets fed up. He pulls to the curb, opens the doors, grabs the duffel bag and hurls it from the bus onto the sidewalk.
“You bastard!” says Irving. “Just because I wouldn’t pay full fare, you try to kill my son?”
Now, this joke trades upon two of the worst stereotypes you can foist upon the Jewish people: we’re cheap and conniving. We would do anything to save a penny, including lying and cheating. How this became a quote-unquote “Jewish” characteristic is beyond me. Ask a Scotsman. And it’s a hard stereotype to fight because I am stingy and proud of it! I’ll clip every coupon, I’ll visit museums only on free nights, I’ll bring a doggy bag to restaurants – not just for my leftovers, but from anyone else who wants to donate. In a world where one percent of the population keeps 90 percent of the money, who am I to play the big shot?
However, to intimate that the Jewish race is so miserly as to commit knowing and brazen fraud is an ugly over-generalization. For every Bernard Madoff, you’ll find a dozen philanthropists. For every Yid who doesn’t tip a waitress, there are two dozen who overpay just so they don’t look cheap. So please, bear that in mind when you see me in the hallway at the multiplex next week, sneaking from “American Sniper” to the SpongeBob movie. I’m already in the building; I should pay twice to go in a different room?
Anyhoo, let’s move on to our next verbal amusement. Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin are sitting in a Berlin bar in the late 1920s. They’re planning and plotting and dreaming and scheming when an American tourist takes the stool next to them. “Hiya,” says the stranger. “I’m Chris from Ohio.”
“Nice to meet you,” says Hitler. “I’m Adolf, and this is my friend, Josef from Russia. We’re in politics, and we’re strategizing a great social undertaking. We’re going to murder six million Jews and a bicycle repairman.”
“Wow,” says the stranger. “Why a bicycle repairman?”
“See?” Hitler whispers to Stalin. “I told you nobody cares about the Jews.”
This joke has a dark underpinning because had these lunatics stayed friendly and non-aggressive, they truly would have succeeded in exterminating the Jewish population. Mercifully, this did not occur because HaShem hardened Hitler’s ego and made him fight on two fronts. Why God waited until 1945 to stop Der Fuhrer is a question that even the wisest Talmudic spin doctors lose sleep over, but since this is Purim, I’m not going to. I’m just going to tell one more joke.
An Italian mafioso and his Jewish lawyer are walking down the streets of Rome when they see a curvaceous lady bend over to fix her shoe. “Mamma mia!” says the mafioso. “I would love to screw her.”
“Really?” says the lawyer. “Out of what?”
Ahh, lawyers. Where would humor be without them? Actually, on the scale of evil, Wall Street tycoons have leapfrogged over attorneys in the annals of disdain — maybe because we need lawyers to put all these stockbrokers in prison. Still, with litigation the second-most popular American pastime after football, it’s hard to stick up for lawyers, since they’ve been sticking up taxpayers for years.
And before women complain that the joke has a sexist component because just the sight of an attractive lady bending over turns grown men into wolverines, please remember that just the sight of an attractive lady bending over turns grown men into wolverines. It’s funny because it’s true. So…
(sings) Hallelujah, come on, get happy We’re gonna laugh at offensive yoks So if hot women get you fappy Grab some baby oil and two old socks
Happy Purim everybody! This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.
