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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.

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=28994

Dave’s Gone By Interview (3/30/2013): ROSLYN KIND & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with actress and singer Roslyn Kind

Topics include: music, concerts, acting and Kind’s half-sister Barbra Streisand.

Segment originally aired March 30, 2013 on the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

Note: Interview 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.

Complete Original Broadcast:http://www.totaltheater.com/?q=node/5032

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 #61 (3/17/2013): Sugar Sugar

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Aired March 16, 2013 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/NUaspXp3-Kw

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of March 17th, 2013.

How big is too big? This is a question asked by real-estate agents, businesses and gay men since time immemorial. Now the same question is being put to soft drinks – at least in New York. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, or, as I like to call him, Big Brotherberg, wants to make it illegal for restaurants to sell sugary beverages in containers bigger than 16 ounces. Places like McDonald’s and 7/11 and even Starbucks, with their grande-vente-sabado-gigante-ultra-maxi-mocha-poppachinos – would be subject to fines unless they gave customers less goliath-sized portions.

To give Big Brotherberg his due, his motivations are truly admirable. Obesity is a huge problem in this country. Not just that fat people are unpleasant to look at, or sit next to on a bus, or listen to when they’re not being jolly; no, it’s that bad eating sends healthcare costs through the roof. Billions of dollars are funneled into treating heart disease and diabetes and tooth decay, and Ritalin for kids who are so hopped up on sugar, we confuse their natural exuberance for ADHD.

The rationale of a soft drink ban is that if you put less crap in front of people’s mouths, they will pour less garbage into their guts. Psychologically, this is absolutely sound. If we see six pieces of cheese on a plate, we’re probably gonna eat all six even if we stopped being after hungry after four. And have you been to a supermarket lately? Shopping carts are bigger than Buicks. Why? Because the cart looks empty and lonely with only half a dozen items in it. But with 15 items, we consummate our urge to consume.

So the logic is, if you give people 16 ounces of Dr. Pibb with their 8,000 calorie happy meal, they’ll get used to having a little less fructose with their fries. And right there, that’s 200 calories staying in the fountain and out of your colon. It’s a really great idea – if it were voluntary. If chain restaurants and family-style eateries said, “Hey, we’ll charge a little less, and we’ll serve a little less.” Maybe, eventually, people will go back to portion control the way it was before America supersized everything from street pretzels to porn stars’ boobs.

But wait a minute – Americans have already been downsized, and it hasn’t done a damn thing to shrink their waistlines. For years, snack companies have been slicing candy bars just a notch smaller for the same price, hoping we won’t notice. Potato chip makers have kept their bags the same while putting fewer spuds in it. They’re just being health conscious, right? And it’s really made such a difference to people’s buying and eating habits, right?

But more than that, if we’ve learned anything from the failure of prohibition or Nancy Reagan’s war on pot, it’s that banning vices does not work. It just drives the market underground and turns cravings into criminality. And I don’t care how well-meaning his motivations, New York’s mayor is overstepping his bounds. If a mother tells a ten year old, “I’m doing this for your own benefit,” well, sure; she’s a mom and he’s ten. If a government official tells you, “I’m doing this for your own good,” you know it’s only a matter of time before everyone visiting City Hall has to bring frankincense and a sacrificial goat.

I realize my opposition to the soda ban can be viewed as contradictory to my support of reasonable gun control. After all, how can I support 32 ounces in a big gulp if I’m against 32 bullets in a chamber? The answer is, which would you rather come across: a psychopath pointing a semi-automatic at a classroom, or a chubby guy with a Mountain Dew asking you the time because his wristwatch doesn’t fit anymore?

In striking down Mayor Brotherberg’s soda ban last week, Judge Milton Tingling – love that name! – Judge Tingling said the law was arbitrary and capricious and virtually unenforceable. It’s also insulting to grownups who wanna make their own choices. Even worse, it turns presumably smart people into retards. Restaurants are complaining, “Oh, no! We can only serve 16 ounces now, we have to get smaller cups.” News flash: 16 ounces fits even better in a 24-ounce cup than it does in a 16. You can actually walk past the counter without spilling Pepsi on your fingers.

Most aggravating is the unfairness. If you can go in a bodega and buy 20 cartons of cancer-causing cigarettes; if you can pop in a liquor store and buy beer by the keg; if you can visit your local topless bar and get twelve lap-dances (and by the way, I recommend Tina; she does this thing with her kegels), if you can saunter into a supermarket and buy a 2-liter 7-Up for one-fifty – if you can do all of this – why turn fast-food managers into cup cops?

Mayor Brotherberg, if you truly wanna cure obesity, stop this nanny nonsense and make real change. New York City is so crazy expensive, poor and middle-class families can’t afford fresh, organic produce. Try giving people real salaries and livable budgets, and they’ll eat in better restaurants. They’ll save Burger King for a once-in-awhile guilty pleasure instead of eating there three times a week because it’s the only thing a single mother has time, energy or money to manage.

As far as portion control, tell ya what Mayor. Next time you try to get some cash out of your bank account, I want the bank manager to tell you, “No, you don’t need $30,000 at one time. I’m cutting you off at 20; you can come back tomorrow for the rest. I realize it’s your money, but I don’t trust some of the business deals you might make, so . . . I’m doing this for your own good. Have a nice day.” That noise you’ll hear from Bloomberg’s throat will be a very big gulp, indeed.

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

—> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=28998

Dave’s Gone By Interview (3/16/2013): DEBBY BOONE & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews singer Debby Boone

Topics include: theater, music, Boones & Ferrers

Segment originally aired March 16, 2013 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

Please Note: Interview 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)2013 TotalTheater Productions.

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 Interview (3/16/2013): JULIE HALSTON & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews actress Julie Halston

Topics include: Charles Busch, Classical Julie, Vampire Lesbians of Sodom.

Segment originally aired March 16, 2013 on the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

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 #60 (3/10/2013): Whose Line Returns

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #60 (3/10/2013): Whose Line Returns

Aired March 9, 2013 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/Yhyv7lhIT6E

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of March 10th, 2013.

A bit of happy, wonderful news from the world of television: “Whose Line is it Anyway” is coming back for a summer run. That delightful show, where improvisers take suggestions from people and do crazy things with them – kind of like Congress – it’s been off the air for six years. Even though reruns make it feel like it was just last Wednesday.

Still, the CW Network, which is co-owned by CBS and Warner Brothers – CW – that’s how they got their initials – did you know that? It’s a good thing it wasn’t Fox and Universal. Anyhoo, they’ll be airing the brand-new season of “Whose Line is it Anyway.” And it’ll be just like old times. Ryan Stiles, Colin Mochrie and Wayne Brady will all be back to do their thing. Which means Ryan will be genius, Colin will be bald, and Brady won’t be that funny but he can sing the phone book and shake his tush for the ladies.

Drew Carey will not be back to host, and let’s face it, that’s a blessing. He meant well, but he was the weak link when he was in scenes. And when he wasn’t, the camera would spend half the program showing him laughing instead of showing us what he was laughing at. If I wanna spend a half hour watching someone giggle like an idiot, I’ll go visit my uncle Brian in the mental home. And the tragic part is he works there in personnel. But I digress.

For all its flaws, “Whose Line is it Anyway” was an oasis of old-fashioned entertainment. And by old-fashioned, I don’t mean like barbershop quartets and public hangings. I mean simple, live-by-your-wits live performance. Look around: all the sitcoms now are shot like movies, all the movies look like video games, and all the video games look like the end of the world. “Whose Line” is just four brave souls and a piano-playing lesbian. How can you beat it?

I admit, I have had my secret dreams of being part of an improv troupe. I’m quick-thinking, I’m funny, I can imitate noises. Here, listen, listen: shhhhhhh – that’s a shower. Shhhhhhhhhh. Not bad, right. Sssssssssssss. That’s a bicycle tire running out of air. Or my Cousin Velvel pishing his pants. See? My talents are protean.

I can also spin comic monologues out of thin air. Here, wait wait. Okay. Hi, my name’s Rabbi Sol. Great to be here. Hey . . . how about those . . . sports teams. You ever notice how they, uh, play sports? One time I met a friend, he was going off to play tennis – no wait, softball. I was like, “Hey, friend. Where you going?” And he’s like, (different voice) “I’m going to play softball.” And I’m, like, (different voice) “Why” – no, wait, that’s his voice. I’m like, “Why?” And he says, (different voice) “Because I like it. Football’s too dangerous.” And then he hurts himself. See? My stories have an arc!

But I know improvisation is really about the other person, working with your partner to create magic. So let’s do this. You say something funny, and I’ll build on it. Go ahead: Uh huh, yes, and . . . Yes, and . . . Yes and . . . And how long have you been a gynecologist? The ostrich farm. Aaaand scene.

Of course, to be on a show like “Whose Line is it Anyway,” you also have to be musical. You have to take a topic and instantly fashion it into a song. I can do that! Here:
Doi doi doi doi-doi-doi-doi-doi-doi-doi.
I went to the synagogue to pray to HaShem.
There were many people there, I said hello to them.
They threw me on the beemah and started feeling up my crotch.
And when it was over I was missing my tallis and my watch.
My tallis, my wallet, and my watch. Yeah!

CW, you have my resume. I’m sure the show will be great as it is, but there’s always room for . . . improv-ment.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York. You may now read the Talmud in the style of your own devising.

Dave’s Gone By Interview (3/9/2013): DAVID HERSKOVITS & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with theater director David Herskovits

Topics include: Target Margin Theater Company, Yiddish Theater.

Segment originally aired March 9, 2013 on the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

All content (c)2013 TotalTheater Productions.

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

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #59 (3/3/2013): Disappearing Delis

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #59 (3/3/2013): Disappearing Delis

Aired March 2, 2013 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/dXEmeT2NOd8

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of March 3rd, 2013.

Oh, woe is me. Woe are all of us. There was a story in the Los Angeles Times this week about the decline of the Jewish deli in American life. The story bemoaned the closing of the 50-year-old Junior’s Deli in L.A., and the 75-year-old Stage Deli in New York. There used to be thousands of delicatessens in Manhattan, now there are dozens. And delis are being deleted from other major cities, too.

Why is this? All sorts of reasons. Changing demographics, the generation that grew up feasting on tubes of salami is now eating through a tube, and the younger people have so many choices of where to eat and what to eat. It’s hard to blame them when they don’t go for the old pickles-on-the-table, toothpick-in-the-brisket standbys. Also not helping is our so-called health consciousness, which sees fatty meat and red meat and cured meat and smoked meat as the four horsemeats of the apocalypse. Oh sure, McDonald’s and Burger King aren’t exactly dishing out broccoli quinoa, but you can buy a happy meal for five dollars. Try finding a heaping brisket sandwich for less than a sawbuck.

Deli owners complain they have to increase prices because food costs keep rising, rent goes up, and insurance is through the roof. Which, if you figure every third person in a Jewish deli is a candidate for a bypass or old enough for a plot in Baron Hirsch, you can see why.

Some delicatessens are going with the flow. They’re serving egg-white omelettes, they’re offering Cajun burgers, they’re doing paninis instead of blinis. The co-owner of Canter’s restaurant told the L.A. Times, “You don’t need to just have rye bread and pastrami to have a deli sandwich.” I agree. You also need Russian dressing and potato salad.

Yet we have to endure stories about delis in San Francisco bringing in homemade sodas and drinks – and removing Dr. Browns. A deli without Dr. Brown’s cream or black cherry soda? Is the world truly coming to an end? My God, Dr. Brown’s are the people who made a soda out of celery. The single most useless, hated vegetable on earth, and some genius at Dr. Brown’s made a delicious – well, tolerable – carbonated beverage out of it. And they say deli’s not health food. Pooey!

Look, I understand the need to change with the times, but you don’t fix what isn’t broken, and a good pastrami sandwich, cut thick, on fresh rye, with a shtickel of red pepper, is going to outlast doomsday – let alone garden burgers and tofu chicken. Things are cyclical, and just the way Yiddish has been brought back around by a new generation of Orthodox Jews, and just like record albums are selling again thanks to audiophiles and scary black people, I believe the virtues of an old-fashioned Jewish deli are bound to rebound in the public imagination. Much the way a chopped-liver sandwich ricochets from your stomach to your heart to your throat to your intestines to your eyes. You eat it once, you’re still eating it three days later – that’s value!

So let us not yet say kaddish for kishke and hymns for Hebrew National. Let us hope that owners of Jewish and Kosher delis – which are not the same, by the way. If someone hands you a corned beef on white toast with Swiss cheese over it, you’re probably not in a kosher establishment. If somebody hands you a pastrami with ham over it, you’re probably in hell. But either way, let us hope the deli owners find a way to keep prices down, quality up, hot dogs on the grill, pickles on the dill, kasha and knishes, herring and whitefishes, Cel-Ray in our glasses, and cellulite on our asses.

Anyone who has a belly knows the beauty of a deli.

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

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=29226

Dave’s Gone By Interview (3/2/2013): CHUCK MUCKLE & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with actor and singer Chuck Muckle.

Topics include: At Wit’s End, Oscar Levant, Robert Goulet, John Astin.

Segment originally aired March 2, 2013 on the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

All content (c)2013 TotalTheater Productions.

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