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Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #68 (5/26/2013): Angelina Jolie

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #68 (5/26/2013): Angelia Jolie

Aired May 26, 2013 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/0hEA-xui9ds

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of May 26th, 2013.

I don’t know about you, but I already miss Angelina Jolie’s boobs. They were great. They were firm, they were bouncy, there were two of them. They added to the stunning persona that was this fascinating, unstable but smokin’-hot actress. It was a sad day indeed when Ms. Jolie went under the knife to discard her dumplings.

Why did she do this – especially at a time when so many actresses are getting boob lifts and tucks and inflations and lactations? Hollywood always wants to be doing something to a woman’s boobs. Well, so do I, but at least I’m not surgically tampering with HaShem’s natural gifts. I presume, indeed I hope, that plastic surgery has become as safe as crossing the street. Still, I would think twice before running across Queens Boulevard; so you’d hope women would think three times before turning their silver-dollar pancakes into Egg McStuffins.

But back to Miss Angelina. She elected to have a double mastectomy as a preventative measure. Her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was in her mid-40s, and she lived only ten more years after that. Genetic testing proved that Jolie had a 50/50 shot of getting the same thing. So, rather than play cushion roulette, Brad Pitt’s wife went under the knife.

I admit, I’m ambivalent about this choice. Of course, it’s her body, she can do what she wants with it. I know what I’d do with her body. I know what I’d do with my body – take it down to a pawnshop and trade it in for a 20-year-old athlete’s with a working prostate. And let’s remember that Angelina Jolie has about – what, 314 kids? If she dies young, most of those children would become triple orphans. That’s a heavy thing to lay on a child, even if they’re from some brown country we don’t really care about.

But I don’t know, there’s proactive medicine, and then there’s jumping the gunboats. What would have been the harm of waiting until the first hints of cancer showed up in one hooter? Early detection, aggressive response – yes. But do you really jettison the jugs when they’re still healthy? Last month in Boston, it would have been nice if the FBI had caught the Tsarnaev brothers before they set down their knapsacks, but cancelling the Marathon on a hunch isn’t the answer, either. If I’ve got sour cream in the fridge that expires next Friday, I don’t throw it out today because I know in a month it’ll taste like New Jersey.

Again, Angelina Jolie made a personal decision that she felt was right for her medical profile. It’s not a proclamation that every woman with a headcold should go under the melon baller. After all, too many tug-happy dentists pull wisdom teeth that still have some wisdom in `em. How wise is that? I say this, because Ms. Jolie apparently has a 30 percent chance of getting ovarian cancer. So, what is she doing? That’s right, she’s yanking those out, too. Go figure, the one woman in America who doesn’t have to lose weight is gonna walk around weighing 30 pounds.

If this all pays off and she lives to 90, I’ll be the first one to doff my cap to her. Heaven knows, I’ve doffed my pants to her often enough. And we should be grateful to Angelina Jolie for her openness, for braving media scrutiny, and for showing the world her sweater-fillers many times before they wound up in a jar. In fact, if there’s a lesson to be learned from this actress’s actions, it’s that women: you only get young, nubile bodies one time in your life; show them off! Girls, go wild! Try that nude beach! Flash those construction workers! Wives, take the indiscreet cellphone pictures and tweet them to those curious 14 year olds.

If you’re an actress, do the nude scene, even if it’s not integral to the character. Showing your tits IS redeeming social value. Ladies, I know this because I’m a Rabbi. Trust me.

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

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=28968

Dave’s Gone By Interview (5/25/2013): DANNY ABOSCH & SUSAN DILALLO & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews “Fancy Nancy” theater composers Danny Abosch & Susan DiLallo

Topics include: musical theater, NYU, Fancy Nancy – The Musical.

Segment originally aired May 25, 2013, 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 on Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #67 (5/19/2013): Tax Evasion

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #67 (5/19/2013): Tax Evasion

Aired May 18, 2013 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmZ2gCJc0ro

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of May 19th, 2013.

Okay, everybody reading or hearing this: raise your hands if you like Adolf Hitler. Okay, now, raise your hands if you like leukemia. Fine, Fine. Now, raise your hands if you like the Internal Revenue Service.

I am guessing that not one hand went up for all three of those plagues upon the universe. Hitler’s dead, and leukemia comes from God, but the IRS . . . That is a man-made horror that, like so many government programs, began as a good little fish, then ballooned into a whale, and eventually morphed into a poison octopus.

Nobody likes paying taxes, but intelligent people who don’t throw tea over the sides of boats realize that roads, bridges, schools, police, parks, community groups and concert halls are made possible, in part, by the chunk of money Uncle Sam takes out of our paychecks. Now, old Uncle Shmuel may take a lot more than he needs, and spend a ton more than he should, but most of us understand the need for a reasonable taxation with representation.

What we don’t want is to be hounded, or audited, or visited by white men in black suits with affidavits in one hand and padlocks I n the other. What we also don’t want is for the IRS to play favorites. When a billionaire fills his return with enough loopholes to fit a dozen city buses, this is bothersome. When the working poor break their backs for companies that break the bank – and then get tax breaks, something’s broken. And when charities and non-profits and religious institutions come pleading for special cuts, they damn well better make the cut.

So for the past couple of years, the IRS has been targeting certain organizations that asked for tax breaks but may not have been exemplary examples for exemption. Unfortunately, the groups Uncle Shmuel went after tended to be right-wing, conservative, tea-party lobbyists. When names would crop up like “Patriot” or “Constitution” or “Basement Stockpiled with Canned Meat,” the IRS would look extra hard at their requests and returns.

This, of course, is not right. In a country where all men are created equal – and some of the women, too, if they wear jeans – all tax-paying citizens should be treated equal . . . ly. I don’t know about you, but I want the flag-waving, gun-carrying, Sarah Palin Fan Club scrutinized extra-carefully. However, it’s only fair that the solar-paneled, vegan, hemp smoking, Arianna Huffington Fan Club be vetted with the same vigilance.

Almost every western religion follows a variation on the same creed: Do Unto Others. In America, we pay dues unto others, and we should expect the government to give us our due, even when we’re dunned. Just the way a black guy shouldn’t have to be more, or less, worried about the cop car driving behind him than a white guy, and just the way a young male Muslim getting on an airplane shouldn’t have to endure anything more involved than a screening, a wanding, a pat-down, a dog sniff, a full cavity search and three dunks on a waterboard, so it is that a 501c4 group trying to put prayer in schools should get the same treatment as a group trying to keep guns out of schools.

Having said all this, I do have to make a full-disclosure and say that my synagogue, Temple Sons of Bitches, does not pay taxes. Not only are we a religious institution, but we’re so poor, we start the Sabbath on Thursday afternoon just as an excuse to shut the lights off. We’re so poor, we had to sell our Torah and use a kindle. We’re so poor, on Purim we dress up as tramps and the homeless; the rest of the year, we dress worse.

Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating but shhhhh! Don’t tell the IRS. And I won’t tell them about your questionable deductions and second set of books. See? That’s how this country should work: everyone gets away with the same percentage of fraud. God bless America, and God help the IRS.

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

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=28973

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #66 (5/12/2013): Jodi on HLN

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #66 (5/12/2013): Jodi on HLN

Aired May 11, 2013 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/igCxYCb4zLo

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of May 11th, 2013.

After four months of testimony and two days of deliberation, an Arizona jury found Jodi Arias guilty of first-degree murder. The next step is deciding whether she’ll get the death penalty for whacking her boyfriend, Travis Alexander.

Demure, bespectacled, cute and goofy, Arias tried to prove she killed in self-defense. But considering that her significant other was stabbed multiple times, shot, and then almost decapitated, the defense of “he hit me one time too often” seems just a little suspect.

My heart goes out – no, not to the victim, but to the HLN cable network. What will they do now that their only form of programming for the past half a year has been snatched from them? If it wasn’t for Jodi Arias, HLN would be showing disputes in traffic court. I can just hear Nancy Grace now, “Twelve minutes past the meter! Why didn’t they boot his car? Someone in law enforcement dropped the ball; where’s the justice?”

HLN was so addicted to Jodi Arias that when those Russian kids bombed the Boston Marathon, and then a giant fertilizer factory exploded in Texas, and every other channel in America was, like, “We should cover this,” HLN said, “Ooh…Jodi is dabbing her eyes and showing emotion – we can’t cut away now!”

And what the hell does HLN stand for, anyway? It used to be CNN Headline News; CNN – Cable News Network. There was a logic to the acronym. Just like an IUD is an intra-uterine device, and my BVD’s were first produced by Bradley, Voorhees and Day, and IBM stands for when I go to the bathroom and make number two, HLN should signify something intelligent. HN would stand for Headline News. So what the hell is up with the “L”? I think HLN stands for, “Hey, Listen, we have Nothing to offer except five months of Jodi Goddamn Arias.”

Now, there probably will not be a trial of that Tsarnaev animal, or of that Aurora shooting lunatic. If they take a plea, HLN ratings take a dive. But somebody’s bound to kill somebody soon. And maybe they’ll look like a hot librarian. And maybe they’ll hire enough lawyers to push the trial into sweeps week. And maybe there’ll be a confession video and experts in forensics, and lawyers who rhyme. So that when we start bombing North Korea, and Syria sends chemical-tipped missiles over Tel Aviv, while a 9.3 earthquake caused by global warming pushes Los Angeles into the Pacific Ocean, by God we’ll have something interesting to watch on television. HLN – Here Lies News or How Low? Neverending.

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

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=28977

Dave’s Gone By Interview (5/11/2013): CARL REINER & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews comedy legend Carl Reiner

Topics include: The Dick Van Dyke Show, Your Show of Shows, Mel Brooks, David Burns, George Burns, Estelle Reiner, family.

Segment originally aired May 11, 2013, as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

Sad Note: Our Friend of the Daverhood, Carl Reiner, passed June 29, 2020 at age 98.

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

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #65 (5/5/2013): Joking Around

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #65 (5/5/2013): Joking Around

Aired May 5, 2013 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/Vb03UPLHc2U

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of May 5th, 2013.

So many of my friends and family and colleagues have been having a difficult year, I thought it would be fun to take a breather and do what I love more than anything. No, not eating herring in wine sauce while watching Jerry Springer. I mean telling jokes. Cracking a couple of funnies, and then analyzing and learning from their wisdom.

A priest and a Rabbi are next-door neighbors, so they decide to buy an automobile together for carpooling to work. They come out of the dealership with a spanking-new Nissan and bring it to the priest’s driveway. The priest goes into his house and comes out with a bowl of water. He begins sprinkling this all over the hood.

“What are you doing?” the Rabbi asks.

“It’s a new car,” says the Priest. “It needs to be blessed and baptized.”

Soon, the priest finishes his blessing, only to see the Rabbi coming out of the garage with a hacksaw.

“What’s that for?” says the priest.

The Rabbi begins sawing two inches off the tailpipe. “You have your rituals; I have mine.”

From this joke, we learn that every religion has its own seemingly archaic and silly practices. We do what we do because our parents did them, and our grandparents did them, and we’d feel a little queasy if we didn’t continue the tradition. Like serving fruitcake at Christmas or raisin kugel on Passover. Nobody wants these things but . . . they have to be done.

What I like about this joke is that it’s also about one-upsmanship. When the Priest does his thing, the Rabbi is forced to be riding in a baptized car. Only fair that the Rebbe gets to say, “This is my vehicle, too. If I have to ride under your holy water, you gotta live with a snipped tip.” I just wonder: if the Nissan lasts for 13 years, will the Rabbi throw it a huge party with long speeches, a lousy deejay, and the car jacked up on a hydraulic lift and carried around the room by drunken mechanics? “Today I am a hybrid.” And years later, when the engine dies, the Priest can hang a cross on the rear-view mirror and read selected passages from the manual, while the Rabbi puts the car in salvage with a closed hood and a tfillin bag in the glove compartment. Again, fair’s fair.

A robber breaks into the house of an Orthodox Jew. No one’s home, but the thief hears a voice say, “Be careful. HaShem is watching you.”

The thief whirls around. “Who said that?”

“Be careful. HaShem is watching you.”

The thief notices a parrot in a cage. He sighs with relief. “Stupid parrot. Tell me, birdie, what’s your name?”

“My name is Moses,” says the parrot.

“Moses?” says the thief. “Who names a parrot `Moses’?”

Says the bird, “Same person who named the rottweiler behind you `HaShem.’”

What we learn from this joke is that wrongdoing has its consequences, even if they are not immediately visible. This criminal chooses a house because he thinks it’s empty; easy to steal from, easy to escape. He is disabused of this notion first by a little birdie and then by a dog that, presumably, will tear him a new one from nose to pupick.

So, the next time you want to do something wrong, and you assume you’ll get away with it because no one’s around or they’re not paying attention or you don’t even care, just remember, there’s a dog named “God” waiting in the yard for ya. He may not maul you immediately, but he remembers your smell. And years later, you’re gonna meet that dog again in a dark alley. You can move toward the light at the end of that alley, but you gotta get past fido first. If you did some small bad things, maybe the dog’ll pish on your leg and let you pass. If you really hurt people, well, there are worse things than having a wild animal rip you open and chew on your intestines. I’m not sure what those worse things would be, but they must be out there.

Last joke: “Mr. Feinbaum,” says the Rabbi. “It’s been years since you’ve come to Saturday services. So nice that you came this morning. To what do I owe?”

“Actually, it’s very shameful,” says Feinbaum. “The only reason I came was: I lost my hat.”

“Your hat?” says the Rabbi. “I don’t understand.”

“Earlier this week, I lost my hat. I thought I would come to shul, look on the coat rack and steal someone else’s. But then I heard your sermon, all about the Ten Commandments, and I immediately changed my mind.”

“That’s wonderful,” says the Rebbe. “See the way HaShem works? But tell me, what part of the sermon got to you? Was it when I was going over `Thou Shalt Not Steal?’”

“Actually, no,” says Mr. Feinbaum. “When you came to, `Thou Shalt Not

Commit Adultery,’ I remembered where I left my hat.”

When I tell this joke, my congregants sometimes ask me, “Rabbi, which is worse? Stealing or committing adultery?” I have to think about this because in many ways, they’re similar. They both involve disruption and deceit. It’s just that in one, you’re taking something away, and in the other, you’re putting something in. With stealing, you remove something valuable and appreciated. With adultery, you take something that’s no longer appreciated and of rapidly diminishing value. Finally, with stealing, you hurry to a pawn shop to get rid of the spoils. With adultery, you hurry to a clinic to get rid of the rash. Not that I would know such things from personal experience, of course. I am, of course, proudly faithful to my dear wife, Miriam Libby, a strong, opinionated Jewish woman. So who needs a Rottweiler?

I’m kidding, honey, I’m kidding! This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=28981

Dave’s Gone By Interview (5/04/2013): YVONNE CONSTANT & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews cabaret chanteuse Yvonne Constant

Topics: Broadway, La Plume de ma Tante, The Gay Life, Johnny Carson.

Segment originally aired May 4, 2013, as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

Note: Yvonne Constant passed Feb. 28, 2023 at age 87.

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

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #64 (4/21/2013): The Brothers Tsarnaev and the “M” Word

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #64 (4/21/2013): The Brothers Tsarnaev and the “M” Word

Aired April 20, 2013 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPaOUN4N1Io

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of April 21st, 2013.

What a sad and tragic week it has been. As we all know, the guy who played Lumpy on Leave it to Beaver has died. But beyond that, welcome to the new world order of bombs to the left of us, bombs to the right of us.

Following the events of the Boston Marracre, everyone’s wringing their hands and their tallises, going “what a sick world this is,” “violence is taking over.” I’m not disagreeing that there are meshuggenah murderers in society, but ask anyone in Europe from the 60s and 70s, what it was like with the Basque Separatists and the IRA and the SLA and the NRBQ – you couldn’t walk by a mailbox for fear of the thing exploding. And, of course, Israel has lived for decades with bombs going off in restaurants and missiles flying in, special delivery, from their neighbors. I dare say, it is almost surprising we haven’t had more terrorist acts in recent times, which is a credit both to vigilant police work and the high price of pressure cookers as Walmart.

It is true that in this age of free information, you can find terrorist cookbooks all over the internet. Take a stick of dynamite, unsalted, add four tablespoons of rusty nails, sprinkle with fertilizer, set timer to 3 minutes, walk away. Serves 180. Caution: served very hot.

Should this kind of information be widely available? Hard to say. You can go on the web, look up how to build and wire a desk lamp, then take the lamp and bash your husband over the head. You can’t necessarily blame the messenger. Then again, all too often, the messenger is Al Qaeda, and unlike a lamp, you can’t use a pipe bomb to read by.

Watching the events in Boston, how careful we all were, all week long, not to use the M word. Not to blame the religion of peace. When the New York Post all but hanged two Saudi nationals who turned out to be 100% innocent, the paper was pilloried, and rightly so. Days later, we find out that the real perpetrators were originally from Russia. Okay, not Iran. Not Pakistan. Reserve the judgment. And they’d been in this country since they were-pre-teens. Bodybuilding, boxing, partying, lying to their relatives – typical American college doofuses.

But over the past two years, the brothers had a religious experience, and discovered what? Judaism, no. Sufism, no. Zoroastrianism? I don’t even know what the hell that is. No, they chose Islam. Surprise!

We tried, didn’t we folks? We made our best efforts not to blame the Arabs, not to pin the tail on the Muslims. We should’ve known better. Mohammedian madness strikes again. What is it about that fakakteh religion? What do these people put in their goat stew that turns young men into homicidal maniacs? Maybe we’ll find out soon from this wounded younger brother; maybe we won’t find out until some fellow prisoner at Sing Sing rapes it out of him.

Really, the best news about both of these animals being caught is that they had not taken credit for the marathon bombs. Usually, the Talibastards are jumping up and down and can’t wait to say, “We did it Western pigs. God is Great; carnage is greater.” But these Chechen chuckleheads merely strolled away. That is undoubtedly because they planned more damage to do; a couple o’ dead joggers was just a trial run. The FBI and the Boston police had to get these guys, and they did, for which America owes them tremendous thanks.

But it’s just a matter of time before the next brainwashed kids, or terror cell, or sand-covered douchebag on a prayer mat tries again. Come to think of it, there’s nothing all that dangerous about a bomb-making cookbook written by some half-brained chemistry student. The hazardous book was written 1400 years ago by a bunch of quarter-brained Caliphates in Persia. It’s brutal, it’s destructive, and it fits all too easily in a knapsack.

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

—> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=28985

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #63 (4/14/2013): Jew in a Box

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #63 (4/14/2013): Jew in a Box

Aired April 14, 2013 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/r95LRvs7oUk

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of April 14th, 2013.

What’s even creepier than a jack-in-the-box? A Jew-in-a-box. What’s creepier than a Jew-in-a-box? A Jew in a box in a museum in Germany. No, they’re not doing a revival of “Man in the Glass Booth” – though they should, because I hear Gilbert Gottfried is available. No, instead, the Jewish Museum in Berlin – I know, Berlin is a Jewish Museum, or is that mausoleum? – anyhow, the Jewish Museum of Berlin has an exhibit about Jews called “The Whole Truth.” And they’ve got funny yarmulkes and displays about Kosher cooking and circumcisions – hopefully not the same display.

But the exhibit garnering the most attention and controversy – to the point that the New York Times featured it last week – was of a live Jewish man sitting in a glass box. This young man sits on a little cushion, takes questions, and is just observed by visitors to the museum. Responses to this bit of performance art ranged from whimsical appreciation to scoffs about bad taste. One woman said her ancestors spent enough time in German boxcars, she didn’t need to see a living Jew in a terrarium.

I am mostly on the side of the museum in this. I’m for anything that rubs the Germans’ faces in Forties. But the exhibit also asks a legitimate question: after the Holocaust and the near-annihilation of every Jew in the region, how does the country respond to a new crop of Yiddlach living and working in their midst?

You might ask: Rabbi, aren’t you shocked by the idea of displaying a middle-class Jew in a Lucite case, or, as one might call it, Peasant Under Glass? The answer is no. Every other city has a Holocaust museum now. Pretty soon they’ll have drive-in McDachaus. So to make an impact, you need to do something startling and transgressive. Let’s not forget, the Shoah began in earnest on Kristallnacht – the night of broken glass. So putting a Jew behind glass has a little bit of the “nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah, you can’t get me” about it.

More importantly, though, isolating the Jewish person this way makes a statement about how people of any culture view outsiders. Pass by a bum sleeping on the streets of New York; how do you look at him? Kind of like a tarantula in a zoo exhibit. It’s ugly, unsettling, fascinating from a distance, but you wouldn’t want to find it in your bathroom. Go look at the crowds in San Francisco’s Chinatown. If you’re Chinese, they’re kin; if you’re not Chinese, it’s like watching ants. Well, slant ants. And how do WASPs look at Somalian workers in Colorado? The same way Jews look at shiksehs in Loehmann’s. Aliens among us.

Put another way, we’re all living under someone else’s glass box. Say you’re a stranger knocking on my container, and you say, “Hi. Tell me about yourself.” We might start talking and sharing experiences until – gasp, great revelation – you’re just like me, and I’m just like you – well, maybe not exactly like you because I have a foot fungus thing that my dermatologist is checking into, but other than that . . .

I do think the Jewish Museum in Berlin missed an opportunity with “The Whole Truth” if they’re trying to display an average Jew. For sociological purposes, why not put the Hebrew in his natural habitat? Don’t plunk him in a sterile cube, show him in a delicatessen asking for more coleslaw. Show him at an Orioles game deciding whether to go to the bathroom at the bottom of the sixth or wait till the seventh-inning stretch.

Show him at a Young Israel mixer deciding whether the girl with the diet Coke is worth dancing with or should he take a run at the skinnier chick who’ll probably shoot him down but just might be on the rebound and therefore needy. These are the true quandaries facing Jews in the modern age.

Should the museum ever ask me, I would be happy to participate in their exhibit, even in the glass box. Just give me a plate of herring, a Dr. Brown’s cream and a five-ounce nasal spray, and let the young Berliners come. If they ask me, “What is it like being a Jew in today’s Germany?” I would just say, “Wouldn’t your great grandparents like to know.”

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

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=28989

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #62 (4/7/2013): Roger Ebert

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #62 (4/7/2013): Roger Ebert

Aired April 7, 2013 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAn_bgyfJ7s

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of April 7th, 2013.

Hail and farewell to the respected, prolific and popular film critic, Roger Ebert. On Thursday April 4th, two days after saying he wanted to take things a little slower, he instead came to a complete halt, with cancer doing him in at age 70.

Anyone who loves movies is going to miss Roger Ebert, not just because he warned you what was a stinker before you laid down your six dollars. And then $10. And now $19, or 25 if you throw in popcorn. And not just because Roger could talk intelligently without being patronizing – something I haven’t mastered in 53 years. And not just because Roger’s love for good movies came through even when he pooped on bad ones. The biggest legacy of Roger Ebert – and Gene Siskel – was in remaking the idea of “what is a critic?” Admit it. Before those two, you probably thought of a movie or theater critic as this dreary, sepulchral, Ichabod Crane type, with a Bostonian accent, his nose in the air and his pen in someone’s back. He was better than you, and he sure let you know it. Or he talked so far over your head, sparrows would crash into his verbs on their way to Capistrano.

But not Roger and Gene. Of course they were smart, but they were next-door-neighbor smart, not nuclear physicist smart. And when they explained why Blake Edwards was a genius and dead teenager films are a scourge – even if you didn’t agree, you appreciated their conviction and knew they were treating you like a grownup. Roger may have won a Pulitzer, but he never came off like a pudknocker.

Oh sure, Ebert’s weight made him an easy target for many years. At one point, he was so out of shape, it seemed a miracle he could even lift his thumb. And then, he had to give up TV because of the Big C. The first time I saw a picture of him after all those operations, my jaw dropped. Well, not as low as his, but it was still a shock. And yet, he continued to write. A man who came of age in a time of typewriters and telexes kept himself relevant in our age of tweets and tablets. In fact, he posted more movie reviews last year than he did any year before that. If I had to give that many sermons in a year, my brain would turn to gefilte fish.

And if my cranium did become an amalgam of whitefish, pike, sawdust and carp, would I have the guts Roger Ebert had in being so visible? Of going on Oprah with his new voice or on the internet with his fake chin? If I get a pimple on my nose, I hide for three days.

Among the many quotable quotes of Roger Ebert, he once said that “your intellect may be confused, but your emotions will never lie to you.” Well, I may not be able to follow another Charlie Kaufman movie, but I’m sad that we lost Roger Ebert. I think of Gene Siskel in heaven, waiting all these years for the day he could go, “Awright. No cameras. No censors. Rog, let’s really talk about `Cop and a Half’” Go at it guys; no one did it better.

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

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