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Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #99 (4/20/2014): Utz vs. Butler

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #99 (4/20/2014): Utz vs. Butler

aired April 20, 2014 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/S8bUHv8TNa0

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of April 20th, 2014.

Last Monday, Michael Utz, of Culpepper, Virginia, was awarded $5,000 in punitive damages from a former fellow employee. That coworker, James Carroll Butler, also spent a month in prison back in 1999 for a little prank he pulled on Utz at the office.

Butler was mad at Utz – in a way that only people who have to work next to each other 40 hours a week, week after week after week, can get angry at each other – so Mr. Butler grabbed the office coffee pot and took it with him to the toilet. No, don’t get ahead of me; he did not pee in the coffee pot. He peed in the toilet. But then he took the coffee pot and filled it from the toilet. He then waited – tee hee, tee hee – for Michael Utz to use the pot for coffee.

Luckily for Utz, he smelled something unpleasant in the pot before he went to use it. So instead of brewing a pot of Chock Full o’ Nuts – or, more accurately, chock full of pee from his coworker’s nuts, Mr. Utz brought the coffee pot to his superior who sent it to a lab. Tests came back positive for fecal matter, and Butler was arrested, charged with a misdemeanor and given a one-year sentence with 11 months suspended. As far as his job was concerned, he was, of course…relieved. Oh, and just for the sake of irony, did I mention they both worked at a waste-treatment facility?

As anyone who has labored day-in, day-out in a cubicle, offices can be fraught with tension, jealousies, grudges and disappointments. Surrounded by strangers you’d never bother with otherwise, you’re forced to put up with the aggravations of office politics. Either that or you quit, or you get yourself fired if you want unemployment, or you whip out a semi-automatic rifle and shoot anyone who jams up the copy machine. Which is pretty much everyone.

That, of course, is going too far, but let’s face it: revenge is a dish best served piping hot. Or in this case, fresh brewed. We’ve all seen the movie “9-to-5” where they tie up Dabney Coleman and improve the workplace in his absence. And who didn’t enjoy the pranks Jim and Pam played on Dwight in “The Office?” Well, Dwight didn’t, but he deserved them.

So I’m not about to delve into the moral equivalencies of crime versus prank punishment. I’m not here to ask: What would a co-worker have to do that would make you justified for crazy-gluing their telephone receiver to the hook? Or to their ear? What would a boss have to put you through so you’d get to the point of saying, “Yes, I deleted her hard drive and replaced it with a grilled-cheese sandwich, but in fairness, that was a good sandwich”? How badly would a superior have to piss you off before you offer them piss? We all have our breaking points and our tit-for-tat total tallies.

What I do not understand is why it took five years for this incident to be resolved – to the tune of $5,000. How many man hours, how many lawyer hours, how many other cases were pushed aside in order for this to come to trial? Were there clerks of the court sitting in front of their calendars going, “Okay, we have a guy who shot three people in a hold-up, and there’s this other fella accused of planting a terrorist bomb at the graves of Afghan vets at Arlington . . . But wait, no, stop everything! James Carroll Butler took a whiz in his co-worker’s Café Bustelo. Clear the dockets! Clear the schedule! And somebody sniff the coffee maker; I don’t like the looks of that intern.”

Half a decade of legal wrangling to find out that Butler did it. Why the delay? It should have been easy to find a jury of his peers. After all, being a pee-er is what got him in trouble in the first place. Couldn’t this have been settled out of court? Maybe Utz could have crapped in a bucket and made brownies. “You eat mine; I drank yours – we’re even! Let’s shake hands. Or maybe not.”

There should be a way to resolve small disputes – or, in this case, piddling ones – without tying up tax dollars and the justice system. I’m not saying discharging in the Dunkin Donuts is acceptable behavior. It’s just that you don’t need to turn it into the next O.J. trial. Unless someone pees in your o.j..

So I suppose the moral of this story is, well, don’t urinate in the Yuban. But, also, if someone hands you a cup of joe, and you can taste Joe, report it – but also don’t expect to hit the lottery. And if worse comes to worst, and you do take a sip, even then just remember: it will still taste better than Starbucks.

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

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #098 (3/30/2014): Fred Phelps

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #098 (3/30/2014): Fred Phelps

aired March 29, 2014 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUFzUMaDkeI

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of March 30th, 2014.

The most hated man in America – well, besides me – is dead. Fred Phelps, the founding pastor of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, passed away of natural causes on March 19th. Somehow, he made it to 84 years old without enemies taking a bat to his head or sprinkling anthrax in his undershorts.

Now, we can’t expect right-wing Christians to be forward-thinking or even moderate about such issues as abortion, gay rights and Lady Gaga. Bible thumpers aren’t wired like that, and if they wanna tie a straitjacket around the Old Testament and interpret it the way Muslim extremists bungle the Koran, that’s their business. The reason Freddy Phelps was so loathed is that he went out of his way to spread hatred, and he targeted people who were guilty of nothing more than living their lives differently from what he thought the bible recommended. Fred Phelps was not a live-and-let-live kinda guy. He was more a “hurt and disrupt” sort of person.

He didn’t start out that way. In 1954, on the day Brown beat the Board of Education, Phelps, who had a law degree, took it upon himself to fight civil-rights cases. I mean, on the black side – really! Really! Of course, a few years later, he was disbarred for corruption, but there was something righteous in the guy before he turned self-righteous. Back in the early `90s, he ran for governor, senator and mayor – on the democratic ticket. He lost and lost and lost, and maybe that’s what set him off on the path of bitterness and bile.

Whatever goodie points Phelps racked up defending schvartzes in Kansas have long been pissed away in his tirades and protests against homosexuals. To preach in a sermon against the sin of being a buttmuncher is one thing. To send your followers out in public on streetcorners with signs that read “God Hates Fags” is another thing. But to bus your parishioners to funerals… that takes balls the size of planets. These Westboro wackos would send – or threaten to send – protesters to everything from the Boston Marathon bombing funerals to school-shooting victim burials, warning everyone that God Hates America, which is why He kills people so randomly.

On the web, these Baptist boneheads post gleeful messages anytime an American soldier gets killed overseas. “You see?” they say. “That’s God showing how much he hates gays and lesbians.” This has about as much logic as a guy tripping over a curb and thinking, “Hmm, I know why this happened. Somewhere in the south of France, a farmer is raising too many geese.”

Here’s the truth, Fred Phelps, wherever you are down there. God does not hate fags. Well, maybe Perez Hilton, but otherwise, no. If he’s mean to them, it’s because he’s mean to everyone because he’s the Old Testament fire-and-brimstone rageaholic we all know and love. And as far as God hating lesbians, well, if man is made God’s image, that means God is a lot like man. And let me tell you: men love lesbians. Case closed.

Do I have a personal vendetta against the WBC? Well, it’s not enough they hate gays; they hate Jews, too, saying we stole Israel and killed their favorite Jew – the one on the cross with the big mouth and the death wish. Westboro put up videos calling us filthy Jews and Christ killers and fag enablers. All the way back in 1996, Phelps led a protest against the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC – possibly the only decent institution in Washington DC – writing, and I quote, “American taxpayers are financing this unholy monument to Jewish mendacity and greed and to filthy fag lust. Jews, thus perverted, out of all proportion to their numbers energize the militant sodomite agenda… Jews are the real Nazis.” And that was just his warm-up joke.

But seriously, now that Fred Phelps is becoming fertilizer instead of spewing it, the question is, how do we react? I ask this because Passover is coming in a couple of weeks, and during the Seder, we spill ten drops of wine when talking about the Egyptians, because we’re not supposed to be a hundred percent happy when our enemy is vanquished. Even though the Egyptians enslaved us, treated us like cattle, turned us into fifth-class citizens in a country where we’d been welcomed just a few Pharaohs earlier. Even though we were overjoyed to escape and watch the slave owners get what was coming to them…still, death of the first born is a heavy price, and they are God’s creatures, too, so…hold off on the noisemakers a bissel. Fireworks and disco dancing – no problem, but in moderation.

That can be a hard principle to accept, however, in modern times. On May 8th, 1945, don’t tell me every surviving Jew in the world didn’t want to drown every last German in the Danube. When bin Laden bought it, I danced a hora in the living room and flushed a Koran down the toilet. I admit it: I was flooded with emotion, and then just flooded – it’s a thick book in a very old toilet. But the point is, I understand the desire to rejoice at the finish of Phelps. He’s not having a funeral, but if he were, what release and elation to show up where they’re shoving him in the ground and jeer at his inbred followers. Curse at them, mock them, drown them out with glam rock, have gays and lesbians kiss and roll around – especially the lesbians…yeah – find the triggers for these ludicrous people and pull those triggers till they go off.

A bigger man than I would say we must take the high road, lead by example, and don’t sink to the Westboro level by stooping to their tactics. But that would be a bigger man than I. I’m a small, angry Jew, and I hate these fucking people. If you find where they’re burying Phelps, or holding one of their protests, go with a rainbow banner in one hand and a spray can of piss in the other. But most of all – and I wish I had written this so I could take credit, but blessed be the man or woman who wrote: “Live your life in such a way that the Wetsboro Baptist Church will want to picket your funeral.” Isn’t that great? And then, during shiva, bend them all over and show them exactly what you can do with a yahrtzeit candle.

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

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27696

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #097 (3/23/2014): Hearing Voices

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #097 (3/23/2014): Hearing Voices

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

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

When it’s raining outside, and I have to go driving somewhere, I hate it. Because the roads are slippery, it’s hard to see, I’m stepping into puddles getting in and out of the car, and, at night, you can hardly see where the yellow lines are on the road, so you’re all over the place. Rain makes everybody drive like people from Massachusetts. Worst of all, when there’s a downpour, you have these great honking rivers in the street, and you try your best to steer clear of them so you don’t flood your brakes.

This is a normal response to automobiles and water. And yet, there are women – crazy women – who feel compelled to drive their vehicles into the ocean, usually with other family members in the car. Where is this coming from? It happened again just two weeks ago. A pregnant mother of three from Florida was having trouble with her husband, so she packs the kids in the minivan, and on the way to her sister’s house, she says, “Oy, I forgot to pack lunch. Let’s go get some fish . . . from the source.”

She drives to Daytona Beach, and even the kids realize something’s wrong, especially when she stops at a traffic light to put on scuba gear. Her oldest son tries to wrestle the steering wheel from her, but she still manages to dunk the car in the ocean. Lucky for the children, witnesses were there; they swam over and pried the kids out of the back seat. Meanwhile, mama starts walking down the beach in a daze, which is where police pick her up and arrest her for attempted murder, child abuse and blinding a school of trout with her headlights.

Now, this nutjob, Ebony Wilkerson, had already been under psychiatric evaluation. In fact, the cops stopped her just a few minutes earlier when her sister called them and said, “Stop her, lock her up, she’s crazy.” The police realized Ebony was a few tentacles short of an octopus but couldn’t hold her on anything because she was calm and seemingly in control. Which is good because you need to be in control when you’re getting your Dodge Caravan to do the backstroke.

What puzzles me about all of this is that she was hearing voices, and that she talked to both Jesus and demons. What is it about voices in people’s heads? Why do they always tell crazy people to do bad things? How come you never get a psychotic who says, “I was home alone in my bedroom, and my cat told me to donate clothing to UNICEF.” Where are the strange voices that convince a schizophrenic to pay a meal forward at the local TGI Fridays? Why is it always, “Go shoot some woman in a car?” Or “You. Rifle. Rooftop – 20 minutes”? Or “pack your kiddies in the van and visit Seaworld – with permanent free admission.”

We need to round up all these disembodied voices and give them a good talking to. Show them that there’s more to life than causing death. Maybe these voices are frustrated by being invisible, or illogical. I mean, how would you like to be coming out of the mouth of a dog that lives with an owner like Son of Sam? I feel bad for Jodie Foster’s voice. Not only is it raspy and with a speech impediment on those esses, but she loaned it out to some wacko who tried to kill President Reagan.

As of this writing, Ebony Wilkerson is being held on more than a million dollars bail, and already the pundits are discussing whether to deal with her as a criminal or a crazy person. Legally, alas, it’s kind of hard to do both. Of course she wasn’t in her right mind, but you could say that about anybody who tries to take a life. Or listens to smooth jazz. I just hope some scientist somewhere comes up with a pill that a lunatic could take and it scrambles the voice in their head, the way cable TV used to scramble the porn channels. (Not that I would know about such things…) But the pill would function as a prophylactic buffer. A few words and phrases would be allowed – so the lunatic would still have someone to talk to – but they’d be words like rainbow, unicorns, herbal-essence shampoo. However, words like murder, devil, car keys, Second Amendment – these would be so garbled, by comparison they’d make Ozzy Osbourne sound like Charles Osgood.

It is my hope that one day we’ll have a better understanding of the true workings of the human brain – especially how a switch gets flipped, and suddenly, a normal person goes stark-raving Wilkerson. Until then, maybe Pfizer can work on that pill idea, GM can build cars with water wings, and maybe God can make some women a little less meshuggeh. I know, tall order – but He’s God; it’s what He does. Unless there are voices telling him not to… Oy.

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

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27701

Dave’s Gone By Interview (3/22/2014): JOHN GORKA & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews singer-songwriter John Gorka

Topics include: music, Bright Side of Down, Dave Van Ronk, Godfrey Daniels.

Segment aired March 22, 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.

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 #096 (3/16/2014): Purim Jokes

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #096 (3/16/2014): Purim Jokes

Aired March 15, 2014 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS7bF_9K-p8&feature=youtu.be

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of March 16th, 2014.

So many of my recent sermons have been about serious matters – dead people, racism, World War II, chocolate-covered potato chips – that I thought it would be fun to lighten the load a bissel and tell a couple of jokes. Of course, I will analyze the jokes for their deeper meaning and moral content because, as you know, Jews can’t leave anything alone.

Our first joke takes place in Alabama, where a good looking young farmer drops his SUV off at the gas station for a tune-up. The mechanic offers to drive him home, but the guy says, “Nahh, it’s not far. I’ll walk.” So he does, but on the way, he passes a hardware store. He stops in and buys a bucket and a can of paint. A block later, he passes a feed store. In he goes, and he comes out with two live chickens and a goose.

Now he’s outside the store and struggling to manage the paint, the bucket, the animals while walking. That’s when Mrs. Greenbaum sees him and comes over. “Excuse me, young man,” she says, “but I’m a widow and scared to walk home by myself. I’m on Camden Street six blocks away; would you mind?” The farmer says, “I’d be happy to, but you gotta help me with these things.”

Mrs. Greenbaum says, “Why don’t you put the can of paint in the bucket? Then carry the bucket in one hand, the goose in the other, and put a chicken under each arm?” “Great idea!” says the farmer. “Let’s go.”

So they walk a block, and the farmer points between two buildings. “I know a shortcut,” he says. “We go through the alley, and you’ll be home in no time.” “Oh, no,” says the old woman. “A dark alley? How do I know you won’t pin me against the wall and have your way with me?”

“Are you kidding?” says the farmer. “I’m carrying a bucket, a gallon of paint, two chickens and a goose. How could I possibly molest you?” “Simple,” says Mrs. Greenbaum. “Put the goose down, cover the bucket, put the paint on the bucket, and I’ll hold the chickens.”

Now, what do we learn from this joke? Well, we learn how to hold two chickens, a goose and a can of paint, but we also learn that just because someone’s an old maid doesn’t mean she can’t be made. Some women age like a vintage Bordeaux. Others smell like a vintage bordello. Some ladies get better with age. Some get bitter with age. Some take such pride in their appearance, they’re very close to vain. Some have varicose veins. Anyhoo, everyone ages at different stages, and you’re only as old as you feel. I have it on good authority that when Methuselah was 912 years old…he didn’t look a day over 840.

Anyway, Mr. Pincus is in the hospital, on his deathbed, with his family gathered around him and the nurse hovering nearby. Pincus calls his wife and four grown children over. “Myrtle,” he says, “I want you to take the house on Third Avenue.” To his oldest son he says, “Richard, you get the house on Braden Lane, and your brother takes the co-op across the street.” To his two daughters, Pincus says, “The luxury apartment building on 28th Street? That gets shared between the two of you.”

Exhausted, Pincus closes his eyes slips into his final rest. That’s when the nurse motions his wife over and whispers: “I’m sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing. Your family is so lucky. Your husband must have been some kind of mogul to leave you all that property!” “Mogul?” says the wife. “The schmuck delivered newspapers!”

Now, what do we learn from this joke? Well, although the punchline belies it, there’s something to be said for a man who takes pride in his work, even if that job doesn’t have the cachet of architect or stockbroker or, of course, Rabbi. Mr. Pincus may die on Friday, but that doesn’t mean the Hendersons should miss their Sunday funnies. It behooves all of us to ask, “How much pride do we take in our labors?” It behooves us to wonder whether a job well done is its own reward. It behooves a horse when you cut his legs off.

But seriously, our last joke is about the Weinblatts, who join a new temple, get involved, and go to the monthly luncheon. At lunch there’s a raffle, $20 a ticket. Third place goes to the Shpielmans, who win a big-screen color TV. For second place, the Weinblatts hear their number called. They run up excitedly only to be handed a box of muffins. They try to be gracious, but on the way back to their seats, Shpielman says to his wife, “Muffins? Third place, they got a TV; second place is a lousy box of muffins?”

“Shh,” the wife says. “The muffins were baked by the Rabbi’s wife.”

“Shtup the Rabbi’s wife!” says Weinblatt.

His wife says, “No, that’s first prize.”

There is some ambiguity to this joke because the punchline intimates two different funny things: first, that the Rebbetzin is a slut who will put out for the sake of the temple. The second, which pulls our focus from the first, is that the Rabbi’s wife is such a meeskeit, or such a lousy lay, that her cookies are worth more than her cootchie. But again, it comes back to age. When you’re my age, a nice, moist, chocolate-chip muffin beats two-and-a-half minutes of sweating and grunting. Of course, if it’s a bran muffin, I wind up sweating and grunting anyway, so it’s kind of a push.

Anyhoo, it’s time for me to push off, but not before I wish you all a very merry and playful Purim. Wear a costume so ridiculous, Miley Cyrus would be jealous. Drink so much you can’t tell the difference between Kim Jong-un and…everybody else in Korea. Enjoy the holiday, and remember: hamantashen only looks like a vagina. For the smell you have to boil a trout.

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

Dave’s Gone By Interview (3/15/2014): KATHY GARVER & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews actress Kathy Garver

Topics include: Family Affair, Cissy, child actors, Horrorween.

Segment scheduled to air March 15, 2014 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

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 #95 (3/9/2014): Upskirt

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #95 (3/9/2014): Upskirt

aired March 8, 2014 on Dave’s Gone By. Watch on youtube: http://youtu.be/YmZDoGW6M40

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of March 9, 2014.

Say you’re sitting on a train, or, if you’re on my budget, a bus. You’re standing, holding onto a Pole – or an Armenian – and people are seated in front of you. Among them, a nubile young lady dressed in loose-fitting spring attire. I don’t care if you’re Charlie Sheen or Pope John XXIII, you’re gonna cast your eyes down that blouse in the hopes of seeing cleavage or boobage. If you’re a little pervier and you happen to be sitting in the row of seats parallel to the little chickie, you might even cast a glance when she crosses her legs, just to see if what she’s hiding down there is a peach or a porcupine. It’s sexist and disgusting, but it’s human nature. And human males being what they are, with technology being what it is, some guys get their jollies by surreptitiously whipping out a cell phone – thank God, that’s all they’re whipping out – and snapping photos of visible snappers.

Does this violate the privacy of women who are being unknowingly immortalized by T-Mobile? Of course, it does. And lawmakers in Massachusetts have put their feet down over what women can expect when they put their feet up. Any candid cameraman taking an upskirt or a down-blouse now faces two years in prison and a hefty fine – even heftier if the girl, God forbid, is underage. These rules were rushed into law following the state Supreme Court’s decision on a case that went the other way. A guy who was set up in a sting operation was caught taking snapshots – or snatchshots, but since this was in a public place, the Supreme Court couldn’t brand him as a Peeping Tom. He was more of a Clicking Harry or a Snapping Dick.

But now, with iPhones so prevalent and women wearing outfits that show enough to make men rise higher than a havdala candle, new rules are needed every day to secure privacy and safety for females. If that sounds a bissel nanny-state for conservatives, put the shoe on the other foot – or the panties on the other gonads, to be precise. Imagine you’re on the train in the summer, wearing shorts, and try as you might, your nutsack will just not stay in the crease. You push it in, it pops out; you cover it up, it slides over. Something about shorts in the summer; it turns your balls into a lava lamp. How would you like it if some creepy woman came up to you with her smartphone and went, “Say cheese!”? Horrible, even if, in summertime, you actually do smell like cheese down there.

These days, we all tolerate a certain level of big brothering to stop terrorism and help insurance companies figure out who caused the fender-bender. But we also should have a reasonable expectation that a public place won’t become a pubic Facebook. That someone won’t put our hooters on computers or turn our meats into tweets. I think Massachusetts lawmakers made the right decision, and when it comes to upskirt photography, we have to view the picture as a whole, and not beat around the bush.

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

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27788

Dave’s Gone By Interview (3/8/2014): ARMANDO RIESCO & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews actor Armando Riesco

Topics include: The Happiest Song Plays Last, Adult World, Oliver Stone, Steven Soderbergh, Puerto Rico.

Segment aired March 8, 2014 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

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 #94 (3/2/2014): Kiev

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #94 (3/2/2014): Kiev

aired March 1, 2014 on Dave’s Gone By. Watch on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87QQA37F1oY&feature=youtu.be

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of March 2, 2014.

You say you want a revolution? Well, you know, we all want to change the world. But we’re too fearful and set in our ways to do anything. I’m too lazy to change my cable company let alone start a political movement. At my age, I’m lucky if I can start a bowel movement.

But revolutions do still happen. Bloodless ones, like Czechoslovakia. Political ones, like South Africa. Unstable ones, like Egpyt. Musical ones, like Prince and.

It seems every month, some country in the middle east is having a coup, or a march or a toppling or a something. And now, Ukraine is getting in on the action. Its own country since breaking off from Russia in 1991, Ukraine was under the thumb of corrupt Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, who was a yanuka-bitch to the opposition. What really frosted the Ukranians’ blinis was Yanukovych moving toward closer ties with Mother Russia, whereas the people wanted to throw in with the European Union. Because that’s done so well for Greece and Iceland.

But seriously, how can one not be encouraged when the people of a repressed country want to be more like us – and they get up the courage and organization and bottle rockets to do it. After days of rioting and cease fires – where everyone fired and no one ceased – the instability pulled Yanukovych from power and popped his opposition from prison. It wasn’t a bloodless coup – a couple dozen protestors paid the ultimate price. Well, no, the ultimate price would be having to spend a Siberian winter locked in a room with the hosts of “The View,” but still, blood was shed for the sake of the people’s will.

Meanwhile Vladimir Putin, who pulled off a bloodless Olympics, isn’t taking any chances with his grip on power. He’s having the military run drills along the border with Crimea, because people in the Southern Ukraine, many of whom were ethnic Rooskies, are split between liking Sister Europe or loving Mother Russia. The west is afraid Putin will climb into Crimea, which could lead to a civil war or a re-annexation.

This would be a great loss for the region because Crimea is a noted vacation spot – the Ukrainian Aruba, as it were. Because it’s got mountains and the Black Sea, grassland and caves, there’s something for everybody. It’s like an all-natural Epcot. In fact, back during the Soviet era, this is where workers used to come for R&R, where they could enjoy the salt-sea air and the therapeutic mud. I’m not kidding. You’ve heard of people bathing in hot springs? Crimea is where people go to slather themselves in volcanic mud. If you think that’s a crazy way to attract tourists, just remember, we have Dollywood.

President Obama is taking a wait-and-see approach with Kiev, which could go all sweet and democratic, or turn into a war zone. Kind of like what’s happening with Detroit. Since the Cold War is over, we don’t really have a beef with Russia, and one of the three opposition parties that brought down Yanukovych is anti-Semitic, so who knows if we’ve jumped out of the samovar and into insanity?

All I know is, the way Jews were treated in that part of the world for most of the 20th century makes me wary and somewhat unsympathetic to the plight of the Ukranians. If they become a shining example of freedom? Great. If they have to suffer a bit along the way? Well, Crimea river.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from: me Rabbi, U-kraine, Temple
Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27794

Dave’s Gone By Interview (3/1/2014): SHERRY EAKER and Rabbi Sol Solomon

click above to listen (audio only)

Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews producer Sherry Eaker

Topics include: Bistro Awards, Backstage, Broadway, theater.

Segment scheduled to air March 1, 2014 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

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