Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #111 (11/23/2014): Murder in Jerusalem

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #111 (11/23/2014): Murder in Jerusalem

aired Nov. 23, 2014 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/Nko93BwJGS0

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of November 23, 2014.

And here I was, all set to do a gentle sermon about Thanksgiving. How grateful we should all be for friends and co-workers and family — well, maybe not family — but for all the loving, helpful people in our lives. How we must be thankful to HaShem if we still have good health, functioning limbs, working brain cells, food on the table, a roof overhead — preferably one with a fiddler on it — a decent job, a couple of hobbies, a warm winter coat and a not-bad summer vacation.

Saying grace after every meal has never been my thing. What, I should sit there thanking God for his bounties, and by the time I’m finished, the food gets cold? No wonder goyim are so skinny; by the time they finish praying, their entrees are back in the microwave. Nevertheless, a couple of times a year, it’s good to remember that everything comes to us by the courtesy of God above and the hard work of our peers and forebears.

How lovely to offer a Rabbinical Reflection on such a spiritual and fraternal topic. However, the news this week forbids me from doing such a gentle, joyful sermon. I am, once again, detoured from being my usual snuggly marshmallow of delight into sounding like a vindictive, vituperative expounder of hate and revenge. Last Tuesday, two Palestinians armed with guns and meat cleavers burst into a Jerusalem synagogue and began firing and chopping. They murdered five people, including a policeman, three American Rabbis and an Orthodox Jewish Brit. For their troubles, the assassins, Ghassan Abu Jamal and his cousin, Oday Abu Jamal, were sent to martyrdom and their 72 ugly-ass virgins in the sky.

As an extra-punitive measure, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu then ordered that the killers’ houses be demolished. Honestly, I don’t know how upsetting that is to a dead terrorist. What’s he gonna say? “Aww, I was gonna make hummus tonight. No wait, I’m being shoveled into an unmarked grave. Gee, I’m gonna miss the sun room.”

Still, hurrah for any action by the Israeli government that warns Arabs we will not stand for such horrors as violence, murder and television programs featuring Jane Velez Mitchell. Let there be no doubt: bloodthirsty Palestinians may not storm into a temple in Yerushalayim and start executing people. Not unless it’s the high holy days and they bought a ticket.

Seriously, do you know why these terrorists embarked upon their rampage? Was it eye-for-an-eye revenge? Were they mad about Jews who went on a killing spree in the local Falafel Mart? No, because that didn’t happen. The Palestinians were irate because Jews have been visiting a holy site on the Temple Mount that the Arabs think should be off-limits to Hebrews. Doesn’t matter that Arabs in East Jerusalem can go anywhere they damn well please; Jews are forbidden from going where the Arabs don’t want them. Apparently, the penalty for trespassing in the Arab world is being hacked to death. Which makes sense, since the penalty for stealing is cutting off a hand, and the penalty for adultery is, well, let’s just call it extreme circumcision and leave it at that.

Following the synagogue attack, lame-duck President Obama is calling for peace and restraint on both sides, downplaying the savagery of the event and, as usual, doing nothing. Hey Barry! We had three Americans murdered by agents of a foreign regime. Isn’t that like, war, or something? I know the dead Rabbis weren’t black, but you could at least raise an eyebrow.

In the weeks ahead, you can bet your burqa Israel will do a lot more than snivel and call for moderation. There’ll be raids, roundups, demolitions and, alas, probably some vigilantism, too. I won’t deny that there’s a back-and-forth, you-did-this-so-I-do-that element to Israeli/Arab conflagrations. Remember last time? They killed those hitchhikers, so some misguided, hyped-up Israelis murdered some soccer-playing kids. Much as I hate the radical Arabs, killing innocent people is never an answer to anything. In fact, that’s what got us here. If the Palestinians would stop being terrorists, we’d stop being enemies. And if we stop being enemies, they can visit our synagogues, and we can be tourists at their shrines. And we’ll talk, and we’ll laugh, and we’ll bitch about the government, and we’ll share music and art and sports and do business deals, and food! We’ll sit down together with pastrami and goat and borscht and eggplant and kugel and yogurt, and we’ll watch TV, and we’ll fall asleep, and you know what we’ll call it? Thanksgiving.

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

(c) 2014 TotalTheater. All rights reserved.

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27484

Dave’s Gone By Interview (11/22/2014): CHAZZ PALMINTERI & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews actor Chazz Palminteri

Topics include: A Bronx Tale, Yankees, theater, Bullets Over Broadway, Robert De Niro.

Segment aired Nov. 15, 2014 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)2014 TotalTheater Productions.

More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
More information about Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com

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Dave’s Gone By Interview (11/15/2014): DANIEL CAINER & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews songwriter Daniel Cainer

Topics include: The Jewish Chronicles, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Germany.

Segment scheduled to air Nov. 15, 2014 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)2014 TotalTheater Productions.

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

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

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #110 (11/16/2014): Christmas in November

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #110 (11/16/2014): Christmas in November

aired Nov. 15, 2014 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugLGtx38doQ

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of November 17, 2014.

Merry Christmas, non-Jewish listeners! A very merry Christmas and Yuletide to all the goyim within the sound of my strident voice! Jingle bells, glad tidings, joyeux Noel – whatever the hell that means — Merry Chris — wait, what? You mean it’s not Christmas? You mean it’s not even Thanksgiving yet, and Christmas is a month and a half away?

Well, you wouldn’t know it. Not from the TV commercials. Not from the music they play in the department stores. Not from the displays in Walgreens and Walmart and K-Mart and K.Y. and why is it Christmas already when it isn’t December 25th for another 35 days?

We all know why, of course. It’s because America needs to sell you crap as much and as often as possible. The home shopping networks and the mall shopping outlets want to get you in the money-spending spirit as soon as they can. If they could start next year’s holiday sales on December 26th at midnight, they would. In fact, they already almost do. In the middle of July, QVC and HLN and the CIA are doing infomercials for ornaments. “Make sure you order them now, people, so they arrive by August — just in time for Christmas.”

As a Jew, but not just as a Jew, but mainly as a Jew, I object to all this haranguing, day after day after day over a holiday I do not believe in and couldn’t care less about. You wanna put up some lights on the weekend before Christmas, and maybe start the Ruh-puh-pum-pum on your drum a week or two before the holiday? Be my guest, and buy me something nice. But stop with the Yuletide cheer when I haven’t even gotten all the matzoh out of my colon from Passover yet!

I have spoken before and elsewhere about the pressure Jews feel to morph Chanukah into a Yuletide-like holiday…Chrismakkah…a concept which fills me with enough loathing to stuff a Santa suit. They are not similar holidays; they are not equivalent holidays. And yet, because they fall at the same time of year, Yiddlach feel compelled to match their neighbors gift for gift, light for light, stupid singalong for stupid singalong. The only thing that keeps me from jamming hot knitting needles through my eardrums this time of year is Adam Sandler, and even that song wears out its welcome by its third spin. Try playing “Here Comes Chanukah” as often as Rite Aid plays “The Christmas Song,” and you’ll want to open every bottle in the pharmacy and swallow till the pain stops.

Holiday overkill is bad enough two or three weeks out of the year, but a whole month? You got radio stations that play only Christmas music. Some stores block off entire sections for stocking stuffers the day after Labor Day. Just stop it! Stop it! Nobody’s roasting chestnuts on an open anything. If grandma’s getting run over, it’s by grandpa’s Rascal, not a reindeer.

And I know Christmas is an excuse for people to do nice things and feel good about themselves. Soldiers stuck in a sandpit in Trashcanistan have a chance to come home and see their families because it’s Christmas. Why the army can’t do that on Groundhog Day just the same is beyond me, but okay. It’s like supermarkets that give the destitute free turkey on Thanksgiving. Fantastic — homeless people have a dozen meal options on Thanksgiving Day. The day after Thanksgiving? Pfftth. Back to 99-cent pizza and Spaghettios.

Still, if we use the holiday as an impetus to be better humans and do more good, even the cranky, miserable misanthrope in me cannot object to that. But the time leading up to the holiday is about nothing more than marketing and selling and forced, fake, phony good cheer. It’s all too much, too soon, and if I sound like the Grinch, so be it. Especially since I’m not trying to steal Christmas. I just want to hide it for awhile, like the Afikomen, so that, as an accountant would say, the interest appreciates.

No Marine comes home on special leave November 8th. Nobody’s donating cans to the food bank on December 12th. We’re subjected to the hype but not the help. I say, if big business must turn Christmas into a season-long capitalist orgy, at least give out condoms of compassion to go with it.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York. Ooh, only 288 shopping days until Simchas Torah!

(c) 2014 TotalTheater. All rights reserved.

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27488

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #087 (11/12/2014): Duck Amuck

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #087 (1/12/2014): Duck Amuck

aired Jan. 11, 2014 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/yqw7B8Z50Mo

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of January 12th, 2014.

Where does free speech cross into hate speech? This is an issue I deal with all the time, or at least other people tell me I do. At what point does expressing an unpopular opinion become something you have to censor and censure?

The question has been bedeviling the whimsically named Arts & Entertainment Network owing to their smash-hit program, “Duck Dynasty.” It’s all about this Louisiana backwoods family that has spent the past 25 years hand-making products for duck hunters. They apparently created the world’s most effective bird call, the so-called “duck commander” – and from this, they got rich. But they didn’t let money go their heads; they still live like Swamp Thing. But thanks to the reality show, these hirsute hillbillies are squatting on an $80 million empire.

Everywhere you go, there’s “Duck Dynasty” t-shirts, Halloween masks, posters, body spray – and more power to them. If you can just be your crazy self and get the whole world to watch, that’s the secret to fame in the 21st Century. If you’re lucky and have huge tits, you’re Kim Kardashian; if you not so lucky and have a penis, you’re Jon Gosselin. If you have huge tits AND a penis, you’re Big Ang.

Essentially, the Robertson family is a hick version of “Jersey Shore.” Instead of Italian goombas who do Gym/Tan/Laundry, you got smelly Bayou bozos who do Guns/Tattoos/Lard. And all of this was adorable in a post-Civil War, “let’s-make-fun-of-the-South” kind of way, until the patriarch of the clan, Phil Robertson, turned his private prejudice into public pronouncements. In an interview with GQ Magazine – because, of course, the Robertson clan are everyone’s idea of GQ material – grampa Phil Robertson shared his religious thoughts on sin. Without much prompting, foolish Phil said, quote, “Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men,” etcetera.

Phil Robertson parroted the same drivel spouted by every religious homophobe with just enough literacy to read the King James Bible. Leviticus says, “It’s an abomination when two men shtup each other.” Oddly enough, the bible says nothing about two women shtupping each other. This proves God is merciful because it spares us from having to edit out the fourth scene in every good porno movie.

But I digress. Phil Robertson views queerness as a disgusting sin – something even more loathsome to him than bathing or shaving. In his defense, grumpy grampy says he doesn’t advocate hatred or hate crimes against gays. Just being repulsed by them is enough. As Jesus says, turn the other cheek, just don’t spread those cheeks for a hunky apostle.

Faced with these comments in GQ and mounting pressure from gay groups – and if you’ve ever felt mounting pressure from gays, you know how painful that can be – A&E, which broadcasts Douche Dinosaurs, had to make a decision: Cancel the show? Keep the show but jettison its most popular star? Do nothing and just hold out until the next Miley Cyrus controversy takes everyone’s mind off things?

In the end, Arts & Entertainment Network – which in recent years has become as artful and entertaining as a children’s party clown performing knee surgery – A&E did a little of everything. They suspended Robertson, then they immediately reinstated him. They apologized for grampa’s stupidity, but then said, “Hey, he’s family. What can you do?” You can be richer than Croesus and still be a cretin.

And A&E has a point. We’re talking about “Duck Dynasty” not “Malcolm Gladwell Presents.” Just like the Jersey Shore kids and the Honey Boo-Boo brood, we’re watching a clan who, combined, don’t have sufficient I.Q. to spell “I.Q.” We expect the Phil Robertsons of this world to say off-the-wall things, and we’d get bored if he didn’t. We expect his thoughts to be either dead wrong or right but expressed in a goofy way.

All these reality shows are sort of the opposite of Fox News. Fox is dangerous because the hosts express themselves beautifully and are thus able to spin partisan factoids into a credible semblance of reality. “Duck Dynasty” is about folks who could star in the sequel to “Deliverance.” That the Robertsons can form sentences at all marks astonishing progress up the evolutionary ladder.

The point is, you can’t make a silk purse out of a duck’s ass. If we put someone on TV for being a laughable putz, we shouldn’t be shocked when he goes medieval on our ears. And if we penalize grandpa Phil for expressing his honest feelings about fags, what do we do when Jay Leno makes an Asian joke about North Korea? What do we do when a celebrity who’s had lipo makes fat people feel bad? As with so many things, there’s a slippery slope. And a fat person on a slippery slope is quite hilarious to watch.

Double standard? Perhaps. Do we go easy on Phil Robertson because he merely picked on gays – as opposed to saying that Jews killed Jesus or Negroes were more fun when they were slaves? But even then…we’re talking about a man who spent his life figuring out how to make noises that sexually arouse ducks. Let’s all be clear about that. And let’s keep Phil Robertson on “Duck Dynasty” until we either get bored with him – which should should come in another two minutes out of his allotted 15 – or viewers simply realize, “Hey, television doesn’t always have to be this shitty.” In the meantime, all A&E has to do is put up a disclaimer: “The views expressed in the following program do not represent the opinions of this network, this station, or this century. If Phil Robertson uses the bible to say something offensive and ignorant, well, just look at him. What the duck did you expect?”

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

(c) 2013 TotalTheater. All rights reserved.

—> https://wp.me/pzvIo-28X

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27900

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #112 (12/7/2014): Cos

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #112 (12/7/2014): Cos

aired Dec. 6, 2014 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/MaWHy74ejho

Hey Hey Hey! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of December 7, 2014.

How much smoke does there have to be before we cannot deny that there is fire? Well, when my wife is cooking, that’s almost every meal. But in the case of crime and accusation, at what point do look at hearsay and more hearsay and still more hearsay, and think, “It would be nice to have proof, but it’s time to presume the guy’s guilty until proven innocent.” Sounds ridiculous, but there is a logic to it. Does anybody in the world believe O.J. Simpson refrained from chopping up his ex-wife and her boyfriend the way Ted Nugent slices a deer? Can you hear the name Michael Jackson and not think, “He was bad. He was bad. Sham-on. You know.”

And now another black celebrity – well, Michael Jackson wasn’t exactly black, but be that as it may – Bill Cosby, beloved comedian Bill Cosby, has gone from “I Started Out as a Child” to finishing up in various teenagers. For years, Cos has been the cause of whispers, accusations, unsavory speculations and sub rosa scuttlebutt. There was even a civil suit – to continue the alliterations — but it was settled out of court, because a man of Cosby’s wealth could pay families off and leave the world guessing at his motives. After all, even if he was 100% innocent – which he may well be – he’d still have to hire a team of lawyers and endure his name being dragged for months through courts and headlines. And if he’s fully exonerated, the muttering won’t stop: “Oh, he probably did it. Those famous people get away with everything.”

At the same time, so many women, so many similar incidents, so many pointing fingers. Or something stubby pointing at their fingers. Janice Dickinson may be out of her mind, but was her night with Fat Albert what drove her there? And what about Judy Huth, the first accuser to actually subpoena his penis? Last week, Huth filed a lawsuit against the “I Spy” guy for drugging and raping her when she was 15. Too many years have passed for a criminal trial, but at least she’ll have her day in court — though it will still be a case of “he said, she said, he said, she said, he said, she couldn’t say because her mouth was full.”

Cosby is counter-suing, possibly because at this point, he realizes that “no comment” and “I didn’t do it…that time, or that time, or that time” won’t be enough to convince a cynical public – or all the movie and TV people he’s trying to make deals with. They’re all pulling out. Okay, you have five seconds to make your own joke about that, but seriously, Bill Cosby obviously had enough cash, power and influence in the last 40 years to make evil deeds go away. But did he? The burden of proof belongs to the accusers. It’s a little too late for DNA, hotel registries and presidential dry-cleaning bills, so their memories of couches, beds, baths and beyonds better be unimpeachable.

And by the way, I’m really not one of those people who blames the victims – or alleged victims – in rape or sexual-assault cases. But this woman who’ll be suing Cosby four decades after the fact… She was 15 years old when she met 40-year-old Cosby in the park. He took her and her friend to a tennis club where he bought them drinks – and I don’t mean Gatorade; more like a Get-`er Aid – and then he asked them back with him to the Playboy Mansion. I don’t care how naïve girls were back then, if you’re a teenager, and a guy your dad’s age asks you back to the Grotto, what the hell do you think is gonna happen? You think he wants to hear how you’re doing on the debate team? Well, in this case, yes! She helped him master-debate. Supposedly against her will. And against his willy.

And people scratch their heads. “If even half the allegations from different women are true,” we think, “how’d he get away with it? How did he get to be Cliff Huxtable instead of Inmate #42837?” But then again, look at Jimmy Savile over in England, and Rolf Harris in Australia. Beloved entertainers who did more – and worse – than Cosby, and didn’t hit the skids until years after their indiscretions. So, alas, there is precedent for extreme crime and delayed punishment.

What a rotten year it has been for comedians. David Brenner dead from cancer. John Pinette dead from weight issues. Joan Rivers killed by minor surgery. Robin Williams going through a period of belt tightening. Carlos Mencia…still not funny. And now, one of the top five greatest comedians of all time, Bill Cosby, not exactly having the last laugh.

I still hope none of this is true, and these are just gold-diggers or mass hysterics or bitter has-beens who never got the ingénue roles and music careers they wanted. But the realist in me realizes that the star of “Mother, Jugs and Speed” was a mugger with drugs and spooge. I know you were in “Let’s Do it Again” – but did you have to do it again and again and again? Oh Bill, how could you disappoint us this way? After all, it takes a special kind of genius to do something even more vile, even more unspeakable and horrible than “Leonard Part 6.” And no, I won’t be giving my children your chocolate pudding pops.

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

(c) 2014 TotalTheater. All rights reserved.

Dave’s Gone By Interview (11/1/2014): IAN FINKEL & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews musician & novelist Ian Finkel

Topics include: Fyvush Finkel, xylophone, novels, Jerry Lewis.

Segment aired Nov. 1, 2014 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

Sad Note: Our friend of the Daverhood, Ian Finkel, passed Nov. 16, 2020 at age 72.

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)2014 TotalTheater Productions.

More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
More information about Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #109 (10/19/2014): EBOLA

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #109 (10/19/2014): Ebola

aired Oct. 18, 2014 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmaLeEb1jhA&feature=youtu.be

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of October 19, 2014.

A year ago, if someone came up to me and asked, “Have you ever heard of ebola?”, I would have said, “Sure, I’ve heard of ebola. I’m ebola. I go to the alley every weekend, and my high score is 230.”

How far we have come in such a short time that ebola has mutated from an obscure, 15-year-old virus to an American panic attack. In just two months, we’ve gone from, “Oh great. Africans are dying from something besides starvation and AIDS?” to “Close the schools, block the airports, fumigate the national parks.”

On some level, all this caution is good. Perhaps we learned from the AIDS years the penalty for looking the other way when horror happens to someone else. In 1984, Ronald Reagan and Ed Koch could blink at HIV and say, “Ehh, it’s a faigeleh plague. Maybe it’ll thin the herd.” Thirty years later, we look at Africa and go, “It’s not in our backyard yet, but we live in a small neighborhood.”

So missionaries and do gooders trek to Liberia and Nigeria and Sierra Leone to help contain the contagious. Good for them. Woulda been better if they’d gone with a one-way ticket. They come back to the United States, unaware that they’re infected. See, ebola is a disease that takes a while to show how insidious it is. Like marriage.

Anyhoo, what a shock! The missionaries and nurses come back on our soil, and we get our first cases in American hospitals, where the protocols are fammished because nobody knows what we’re dealing with yet. Some genius physician says, “Let’s bring the sick people over here because we can treat them better. How do we keep a zillion other people from being exposed? We’ll work that part out later.”

The minute we started bringing carriers over here, you knew and I knew it was only a matter of time before somebody sneezes, someone else inhales, they cough on a third person, and boom, you’ve got school crossing guards in Hazmat suits. How is that I can’t even put a bandaid on myself without fainting, but I know more than The Center for Disease Control?

What I admit I don’t understand is how this disease is spreading so fast. Ebola is not a virus like the chicken pox where a four-year-old bumps into a five-year-old, and soon both of them are home with mommy allllllll day long. Instead, Ebola is like AIDS in that it takes serious physical contact to pass the pandemic from person to person. You don’t get AIDS just from holding someone’s hand. Well, unless you’re holding it halfway up your tuchas. And even then you have to have an open sore for the bad germs to climb into.

Ebola is not carried by air or water, you don’t catch it from mosquitoes—in fact, patient zero apparently got it from a bat. So, if you’re a baseball player, watch out.

We can beg the ebola victims, or anybody coming from West Africa, don’t kiss anybody, don’t shtup anyone, don’t go on the subway and wipe your boogers on the grabby pole—tempting as that is. If you’re from some country where ebola is spreading like Iggy Azalea, go directly to a hospital or, better yet, turn around and get a boarding pass for the first plane back to Lagos. By the way, you have an uncle there who left you $3 million. All you have to do is bring a thousand-dollar downpayment to this lawyer on the internet.

But I digress. President Obama has chosen an ebola czar — I think I once dated a girl named Ebola Czar — but the dawdler in chief is stopping short of a travel ban. Which basically means: Dangerously ill people, keep coming over here, we’ve got a guy with a suit and a desk. Meanwhile, Frontier Airlines is dealing with a stupid nurse who flew from Dallas to Cleveland during her incubation period, and a Dallas hospital worker who’s stuck on a ship that can’t dock because he might be a carrier. (sings) “The blood Boat.”

And yet, through all of this, getting hysterical does nobody any good. The vast majority of people don’t go around handling blood and sputum and hypodermic needles all day. Unless they’re Andy Dick. So calm down. Take your vacation, go to school, eat at the cafeteria. Be happy that some African countries are closing their borders and keeping containment, and do not allow undue worry to keep you from enjoying your day. After all, life is just a bowl o’ cherries. If cherries carried ebola, then we’d have a problem.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York. (Coughs) Just a cough.

(c) 2014 TotalTheater. All rights reserved.

—> https://wp.me/pzvIo-22F

Dave’s Gone By Interview (10/18/2014): BRAD ZIMMERMAN & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews actor Brad Zimmerman

Topics include: My Son the Waiter, Judaism, George Carlin, Joan Rivers, acting

Segment scheduled to air Oct. 18, 2014 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)2014 TotalTheater Productions.

More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
More information about Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com

Dave’s Gone By Interview (10/11/2014): VICKY KUPERMAN & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews comedian Vicky Kuperman

Topics include: comedy, Russia.

Segment aired Oct. 11, 2014 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)2014 TotalTheater Productions.

More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
More information about Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com