Category: ARCHIVES – RABBI SOL SOLOMON

Rabbi Sol Solomon’s celebrity interviews, Rabbinical Reflections (sermons), songs, and other appearances on the show.
INDEX: http://davesgoneby.net/?p=25407

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #106 (9/7/2014): Uzi Does It

click above to listen (audio file)

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #106 (9/7/2014): Uzi Does It

aired Sept. 6, 2014 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM9w34BrJf8. AUDIO: https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27571

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of September 7, 2014.

Chuck D once rapped, “My Uzi weighs a ton.” If only Uzi submachine guns did weigh a ton, then children couldn’t pick them up and fire them. But, of course, submachine guns are made purposely to be lightweight and portable yet still cause massive damage in a brief amount of time. Like eating sugar-free Gummi Bears.

Last week near Las Vegas, a nine-year-old girl was practicing on a gun range. As Lewis Black would say, I shall repeat that. There’s an Arizona firing range, about an hour from Sin City, where tourists can go practice their marksmanship under instructional supervision. Among those tourists last week: a nine-year-old child. (Not that there are any nine-year-old grownups – unless you count kids with the aging disease that makes them look like Mr. Magoo.) This little girl was doing so well with regular weapons, that her instructor, Charles Vacca – the late Charles Vacca – said, “Oh, what the hell. Let’s give her a repeating assault weapon, and see how she does.”

She did not do well. I think most parents will tell you that a nine-year-old girl can barely control her bladder, let alone a semi-automatic machine gun. Charles Vacca instructed the precocious tyke to pull the trigger and fire off one round at the target. Which she did. But you know, bullets are like potato chips; you fire one, before you know it, you’ve emptied the whole bag. The difference between a snack food and an Israeli-made weapon of mass destruction is that a can of Pringles doesn’t have a kickback. Well, unless they’re made with Olestra. A machine gun, however, in the hands of someone who weighs fifty pounds, is gonna squeeze off fifty rounds. One of those bullets managed to find its way to the middle of Charles Vacca’s forehead, which is why he had to cancel the rest of his classes through next Thursday. His return after that depends on whether Moshiach comes on Friday and revives him.

Otherwise, you’ve got a dead guy, a child who has to go through life knowing she killed him, and a gun industry saying, “Hey, freak accident. We don’t need minimum age requirements, just height and weight suggestions.” Morons.

But there is some good that can come out of this tragic incident. When this moppet murderess grows up and goes to college, she is the last chick any frat boy is gonna date rape. (“Steer clear, bro. Remember what she did to the last guy who grabbed her arm?”) Also, in the big book of karma, you gotta figure this is payback for every deer that was ever minding its own business, frolicking in the woods and suddenly, BAM!, she’s on the hood of a four-by-four. For once, Bambi’s mother gets to snicker and go, “How’s it feel, asshole?”

Lastly and bestly, this episode does serve to showcase the glorious superiority of Israeli technology. Arabs can fire a thousand rockets out of Gaza, with two or three – almost by accident – hitting targets and causing damage. But the Uzi submachine gun? You pick that up and point, and you’re looking at a Jonestown massacre in seven seconds. That’s craftsmanship!

Anyhoo, the Arizona Last Stop shooting range where all this went down, is still open, still packed with customers, still promoting, quote, “a Desert Storm” atmosphere with a base age requirement of eight. I shall repeat that: eight. Folks, I have an eight-year-old kid, and I won’t even let her use a cheese grater. Yes, I have to tolerate chunky wedges of parmesan on my linguini, but she keeps her fingers, and I keep my sanity. Well, such as it is.

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

(c) 2014 TotalTheater. All rights reserved.

Dave’s Gone By Interview (9/6/2014): JANIS IAN & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews singer-songwriter Janis Ian

Topics include: At Seventeen, LGBT, Judaism.

Segment aired Sept. 6, 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 (8/30/2014): SANDY HACKETT & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews comedian Sandy Hackett

Topics include: Buddy Hackett, Rat Pack, comedy, Jerry Vale, George Carlin, Sam Kinison.

Segment scheduled to air Aug. 30, 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 (8/9/2014): BARRY LEVEY & Rabbi Sol Solomon

click above to listen (audio only).

Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews playwright Barry Levey

Topics include: Hoaxocaust, Judaism, New York International Fringe Festival, Holocaust.

Segment aired Aug. 9, 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 #104 (8/3/2014): Great Guns in Gaza

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #104 (8/3/2014): Great Guns in Gaza

aired Aug. 2, 2014 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/aNHPRoAQWFc

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of August 3rd, 2014.

If you play with fire, you’re gonna get burned. If you keep throwing gasoline on that fire, you’re gonna get burned blacker than the New York Knicks in a lunar eclipse. Or, put another way, if you beat up your wife ten times, each time she will forgive you, she’ll wear a band-aid and concealer, and she’ll live in fear until the next flare up. But on the eleventh time, if you haven’t killed her yet, she’s gonna call a friend of a friend named Nunzio, and, for a fee, he will relocate you – to the middle of the East River.

It’s the law of “enough is enough.” If you are the nation of Israel, and surrounding your borders are a people who have sworn to drive you into the sea . . . These people fire rockets, indiscriminately and daily, into your heimat. If you’re Israel, you tolerate a dozen rockets, a hundred rockets, a thousand fakakteh rockets that usually land in the middle of nowhere, thank God. But rocket number 1,001? It’s time to pull your Incredible Hulk costume out of the closet and kick some ass.

Three weeks ago, as I’m sure you recall, three innocent Jewish teenagers were slaughtered when they hitchhiked a little too far into Gaza. This was not just another act of violence – you know, like Saturday night in Chicago – this was a flashpoint. It was the moment the Israeli government could say, “You know what? We give the Palestinians the Gaza Strip in exchange for peace, and they give us our teenagers back in pieces. Enough with their rockets, enough with the terrorism, enough with the bullshit about Hamas being a legitimate political organization; it’s time to open up a can of whoop-tuchas on this enemy that means us only harm and destruction. Bring it.”

In my previous Rabbinical Reflection, which I’m sure you’ve nearly memorized and put on flash cards for easy reference, I urged the IDF to take action in Gaza. To avenge the death of those boys and give the camel jockeys payback for years of tears, fears and jeering Emirs. I am thrilled, therefore, that Benjamin Netanyahu gathered up his army into a white-and-blue fist, and they’ve been pounding the Gaza goons ever since.

Dead civilians? Unfortunate casualties? For sure, and what a shame. It’s called collateral damage, and every war has `em. And the Arab teenager that Israeli extremists abducted and killed in retaliation? No one’s proud of that. I’ll even go as far as saying that Israel hasn’t gone out of its way every single time to make sure they’re only blowing up militants and not bystanders two feet away from militants. But when did the Arabs ever make a distinction between soldiers and regular folk? Bombs on buses? Shrapnel in cafes? Mass murders of Olympic athletes and commercial airplanes slamming into the tallest buildings in New York? It’s a good thing I’m not an army General, because I’d napalm every speck of Gaza with a tent on it.

And where does American stand in all this? It’s honestly hard to tell. Barack Obama and John Kerry are talking the left-wing, liberal talk of “stop the fighting now, it’s a humanitarian crises, Israel and Hamas need to cease fire immediately and sit down at the table because there’s wrongs on both sides” – all the typical crybaby blah-blah that negates the basic fact that Israel tends to be in the right 90 percent of the time. 

However, words and actions are entirely different things, especially in diplomacy. And for all the handwringing blather as a sop to the “Democracy Now” crowd, the Obama administration has, until this point, watched from the sidelines and let Israel do what it has to do. Thank you, Mr. President. If our Secretary of State wants to appease the Muslims by making noises about how Israel is being too harsh and causing too much suffering to the poor, innocent Palestinians, no problem. Just give Yisroel time to collapse the tunnels, kill the killers and drag Hamas, begging and desperate, to the outhouse of surrender. By eliminating terrorists and religious fanatics, Israel is doing America favor after favor, and I honestly believe Obama and company realize that – no matter how many times Republican bloggers call him “Hussein” and make him sound like the love child of Josef Stalin and Ayatollah Khomeini.

It’s the nature of Israel that whenever we do strike back against those who oppress us, we have to apologize for killing more of them than they of us. When our missiles hit their targets, when 100 Palestinians die for every Israeli soldier, that’s unseemly somehow. It should be more balanced. We should die more just to ratchet up the sympathy vote. Sorry, Charlie. The goal is to weaken Hamas and make Israel safe from attack. If that means bombing Gaza back to the stone age, so be it. Besides, Arab children have proven quite skillful at throwing stones, so it’s right up their alley. Just don’t expect to throw stones at Jews anymore, because we will fire them right back at a hundred times the speed.

Go Israel! Go Bibi! And remember what Abba Eban said, “It is better to be disliked than pitied.” I’m both, but I’m beyond giving a crap.

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=27580

Dave’s Gone By Interview (8/2/2014): GEORGE BALL & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews actor-singer George Ball

Topics include: Amanda McBroom, Jacques Brel is Alive and Well…, Robert Goulet, David Letterman.

Segment aired Aug. 2, 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 #105 (8/31/2014): Eventful August

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #105 (8/31/14): Eventful August 

aired Aug. 30, 2014 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJUCZgwGJnI

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of August 31st, 2014.

Well, it’s been an eventful month in World Woebegone. What should have been a nice, relaxing laze through the end of summertime – or for those of you in New Zealand, your last good shot at a snowball fight – instead has been an August fraught with war, tumult and misfortune.

Closest to my own heart, of course, is the battle raging between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza. When last we checked in together, Israel was mourning the loss of three innocent hitchhikers who took a wrong turn at Albuquerque. That was followed by Palestinians firing rockets at Israel – actually it was preceded by and followed by Palestinians firing rockets at Israel. Which led to Israel saying “enough’s enough.” 

Which led to massive bombings, more rockets, a couple of psychotic Israelis killing Arab children, a few cease fires that lasted long enough for the Arabs to import more rockets, lots of dead Arab terrorists, Hamas militants and semi-innocent-semi-civilians, too many dead IDF soldiers, and a battle that President Obama has been kind enough to let Israel wage without much interference beyond the occasional “naughty-naughty.”

My feelings about the Gaza situation have been spoken so many times, I feel like a “Murder She Wrote” rerun on the Hallmark Channel. Still, I’ll say it again: tiny little Israel shaved off a sliver of itself to give the Arabs in exchange for peace. What do the Palestinians give us in return? Thousands of attempted murders by rocket attacks, punctuated by the occasional real murder, just to break the monotony. How does Hamas expect to give the Palestinians a permanent home if they’re such horrible tenants when they rent?

And to all the left-wing ignoramuses – ignorami? Ignoramians? – okay, morons, who march in Times Square and the garment district with their Arab flags and their Zionism-is-Nazism banners and their screaming about Israeli war crimes, I will say once again: when the Arabs stop terrorizing Jews – and every other culture in the Western World, we’ll stop killing Arabs back. And if they don’t like living in or near Israel, there’s plenty of Arab land in the Middle East where they can worship Islam, stone their women and cut off each other’s hands for picking their noses.

Oh, and for all those “Democracy Now” types bashing Israel for killing Arabs, guess how many Arabs were killed by Arabs in Syria? 191,000, give or take. Meanwhile, Iraq is falling apart, so we have to go back there because of militant Mohammedans, and in response, a Syrian terrorist cut off the head of an American journalist and put it on youtube to see how many likes he could get. Some say the video is a fake, but even if it is, somebody got his head handed to him.

And speaking of violence: it just wouldn’t be a summer in the American south without racial tension, would it? So a black guy shoplifts from a convenience store, roughs up the owner a little bit when he tries to resist, gets stopped by a cop for reasons that have nothing to do with the crime, starts charging at the officer – or surrendering – depending on whose story you believe, and gets a half a dozen bullets in his head for his troubles. 

Are the blacks upset? You bet. The guy had no knife, no gun, no nothing. Instead of his deadliest weapon, the cop coulda reached for a taser, or his nightstick. Then again, Michael Brown coulda reached for his wallet instead of stealing those cigars. He’s lucky the store owner didn’t blow his head off before the po-po did.

Obviously, police have a trigger-finger problem, especially when it comes to foreigners or people whose skin is darker than your average manila file folder. So if this whole Ferguson, Missouri calamity leads to better policing, I’m all for it. But when I see protestors willing to believe everything bad about American cops and everything angelic and wonderful about Michael Brown, my eyebrow rises. And when I see other protestors somehow equating Israel’s retaliation against Hamas with the death of this teenager, my gorge rises. And when I see actress Penelope Cruz denouncing Israel for committing genocide, my dick rises. I can’t help it, it’s Penelope Cruz. But the bitch really needs to show more tits and less mouth. I hope she chokes on her Nescafe.

Speaking of choking, a fond farewell to Robin Williams, actor, comedian and apparently all-around good guy. He really wasn’t that funny, but he made such a constant effort to be funny that you had to give him props and marvel at his gusto. I liked him in “Mork and Mindy,” I loved him in “Awakenings,” and I’ll miss his risk-taking performances as much as his more patented standup. Yes, he suffered from depression, but if you made “Patch Adams,” you’d be depressed, too.

We also had a suicide by Nascar, with Kevin Ward, Jr., stepping out of his vehicle to confront driver Tony Stewart for sending him into a spin. Okay, here’s a math problem everyone: If you stand in front of a car going 250 miles an hour, what are the odds of getting hit by a car going 250 miles an hour? I’d say 100 percent, Alex. Maybe Kevin Ward was too angry to think straight, but he was certainly too dumb to live.

Then again, the state of our government could make anyone suicidal. The Republicans keep vowing to impeach the president for being Karl Marx, while 2016 GOP front runner Rick Perry gets indicted for being Machiavelli.

We lost a nice Jewish girl named Betty Jane Persky who grew up to be Lauren Bacall, and the month of August also gave us a 6.0 earthquake in Northern California, causing millions of dollars of damage to vineyards in Sonoma and Napa Valley. Great, just when we need to get rip-roaring drunk to forget all the crap that’s happening, God smashes the bottles.

So where will we be a month from now? Will Russia invade the Ukraine? Will September 11th come and go without ISIS offering us an anniversary gift? Will Malaysia start making airplanes out of rubber, just in case they have to bounce? Hang on, my friends, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

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=27576

Dave’s Gone By Interview (7/19/2014): JOHN BUCCHINO & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews songwriter John Bucchino

Topics include: A Catered Affair, Urban Myths, Stephen Sondheim, Stephen Schwartz.

Segment scheduled to air July 19, 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 (7/5/2014): ERIC ANDERSEN & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews singer-songwriter Eric Andersen

Topics include: Janis Joplin, Beat poets, Naked Lunch, music, Norway, Townes Van Zandt.

Segment aired July 5, 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 #103 (7/6/2014): Brothers’ Keepers

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #103 (7/6/2014): Brothers’ Keepers

aired July 5, 2014 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/fS3rlY_ICn0

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of July 6th, 2014.

This is for all the Israel bashers, Palestinian apologists, Muslim excuse makers, and other misinformed idiots of the world: Israel is mad as hell, and they’re not gonna take it anymore. Nor should they. You wanna talk peace? You wanna talk statehood? You wanna talk dismantling settlements? Go ahead. Press your lips to your asshole, and talk all you want.

Meanwhile, Israel is going to open a can of whoop-ass on Hamas, and it’s lonnnnnnng overdue. What’s the latest abomination? Three teenagers, 19, 16 and 16, were hitchhiking in Israel. They were kidnapped, they were brought to the West Bank – which, I remind everyone – is also a part of Israel. At some point over the last two weeks, they were murdered there, in cold blood, and the bodies were found on Monday in a shallow grave. These young people were not spies, they were not terrorists, they were not rabble rousers, and judging by their outcome, they were not great judges of character, either.

Hamas was founded in 1987 as an offshoot of the so-called Islamic Brotherhood. Their goal was to push Israel into the sea. Not just take over the West Bank and Gaza, but the whole country, that Palestinians could then turn back into a pre-historic sandpile. For awhile, Hamas made believe it was interested in negotiating. Maybe there could be a two-state solution. Maybe Israel could push back to its pre-1967 borders, and tolerate the occasional scud missile and exploding restaurant, just for old times’ sake. But just this year, Abu Marzouk, the deputy chairman of Hamas told an Arab newspaper, quote, “Hamas will not recognize Israel. This is a red line that cannot be crossed,” unquote. That’s okay, Abu baby, Israel recognizes you, and your cohorts. And when they see you, they’ll put a bullet in your head.

How many times, how many years have I spent saying that radical Islam is a scourge, that these Arab countries cannot be trusted, and that Israel has a right to defend itself by any and all means possible – including tickle torture and episodes of “Teen Mom.” If the Palestinians want to live somewhere, let them knock on the doors of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait – we’ll see how welcoming their Arab neighbors are to these tired, huddled masses, yearning to move out of democracy and into Sharia law.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hamas will pay for its killing. These boys, he said, “were kidnapped and murdered in cold blood by animals” – that’s his word, not mine. Well… and mine – animals! And may the punishment not only fit the crime but outscale the crime by 3000 to 1; a thousand times the pain for each of the three innocents murdered by people who use Mohammed as a weapon and Allah as an excuse. Meanwhile, Israel needs to build more settlements in the territories – not take them down, build more. Because we won that land, rightfully and righteously, in wars brought upon us by the children of Hagar. And I don’t mean Hagar the Horrible; he’s a Viking and really not that horrible. His wife’s a little unpleasant, but even she and he together are not comparable to the lawless, soulless, terrorist slime that squats on 98 percent of the Middle East.

But I will say this for the other two percent. It’s been reported that some Palestinians, and even the Palestinian Authority, helped out during the two weeks of searching for these missing boys. There was actual cooperation during the rather beautifully named “Operation Brother’s Keeper.” Certainly, gratitude and good wishes go to everyone, whatever their background, who tried to lend a hand. But, of course, Arabs being Arabs, after a few days of house-to-house searches and bad traffic and inconvenience, the rank and file turned to rebellion and violence and wishing the Israelis dead.

Well, back atcha, towelheads. Let the rockets fly, let the round-ups begin, let the falafel balls fall where they may. In the Book of Deuteronomy, God says, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” Get ready, Hamas, `cause payback’s a bitch.

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=27586