Rabbi Sol Solomon’s celebrity interviews, Rabbinical Reflections (sermons), songs, and other appearances on the show.
INDEX: http://davesgoneby.net/?p=25407
Rabbi Sol Solomon, joined in-studio by his dear wife, Miriam Libby, interviews pediatrician and nasal-irrigation expert, Dr. Hana Solomon.
Topics include: noses, Neti Pots, the Holocaust.
Segment originally aired June 2, 2012 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.
All content (c)2012 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #41 (5/13/2012): Arresting the Molesting
Aired May 12, on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: Arresting the Molesting
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of May 13th, 2012.
Did you see the New York Times article on Thursday about Jewish men and children in the ultra-Orthodox community? Very touching story. Very touching – the men were touching the boys, the men were touching themselves. Years of molestation and abuse – just as it’s been in the Catholic Church, just as it’s been in every community, religious or otherwise.
And what the newspaper article points out, alas, is that not only do fear and shame keep victims from coming forward – not to mention coming – but intimidation from neighbors and even rabbis has protected the guilty and rendered the innocent helpless. Some kid will get molested, he tells his parents – if he has the guts – and do they go to the police? No. They go to the school, to the rabbinate. And for the sake of keeping the community isolated, everything is hushed up. Maybe the perpetrator is reprimanded, maybe not. In some cases the parents are offered literal hush money, so the child can pay for therapy but otherwise keep his mouth shut. Well, unless it’s around the schlong of his Rebbe.
These Jewish leaders are so afraid of the outside world, so loathe to put one of their own in the hands of a goyische tribunal, they will beg families not to press charges, not to do anything that might reflect badly on their little shtetl. Even worse, threats are used. Jews who speak up are ostracized by their neighbors, harassed by phone calls, evicted by their landlords, warned that if they continue to prosecute, their children will be expelled from school and forced to wear their payes in the shape of a vagina.
As I said, this is no different from the Catholic priests, who close ranks around a pervert, move him to another parish, and spend their afternoons draining splooge out of the holy water. It is no different from black ghettoes, with the crack and the meth and shootings and the stabbings and the grape soda. Do they work with the cops? No, police are “the man,” or, to be more grammatically correct, “the men.” To be fair, police brutality, racism and corruption have not exactly earned the trust of the schvartz community. So approaching them is like a chicken saying, “Hey, Mr. Fox. We have a fire in the hen house; come fix!” But what happens is – by refusing to cooperate with a former enemy, black neighborhoods crumble from the enemy within.
Jewish Lubavitch and Satmer communities may not be falling apart on the outside – in fact they’re booming – but if they refuse to address hurtful criminal activity, they will shrivel morally into something so ugly, Carrot Top will look normal by comparison.
Quoted in the Times article is Rabbi Tzvi Gluck, one of the good guys, who urges teenagers to report their abuse to the police. Says Rabbi Gluck, quote, “If a guy in our community gets diagnosed with cancer, the whole community will come running to help him. But if someone says they were a victim of abuse, the community looks at them and says, `Go jump in the lake.’” And swimming in that lake would be a naked rabbi.
Okay, I added that last part, but this is disgusting and disgraceful behavior on the part of my Jewish brethren. Sexual molestation of children is not just a crime, it is an act of evil. And if the tribe is too uptight about sex and the human body to punish the offenders, you put down the Torah and you pick up the goddamn phone. Because the little girl who comes home with blood in her Underoos, or the little boy who starts pissing himself in synagogue because he was fingered in the Mikvah – they are not to blame. Middle-aged men with shmeckels are to blame. And if they happen to be deeply religious, respected members of a religious Orthodox enclave – shame on them double-double. All the more reason to investigate, substantiate and incarcerate so he won’t make a child of eight masturbate on a seder plate.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.
Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews actor and humorist Jake Ehrenreich.
Topics include: A Jew Grows in Brooklyn, theater, comedy.
Segment originally aired May 5, 2012 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.
All content (c)2012 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 interviews writer-actress Gretchen Cryer and actress Miriam Kulick.
Topics include: Open Hearts, I’m Getting My Act Together and Taking it on the Road, Jon Cryer, theater, musicals.
Segment originally aired April 14, 2012 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.
All content (c)2012 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 interviews actor and monologist Andrew Goffman.
Topics include: The Accidental Pervert, porn, off-Broadway.
Segment originally aired April 14, 2012 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.
All content (c)2012 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 #40 (4/8/2012): Mezuzah Meshuggah
Aired April 7, 2012 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mov2WBjah6k&feature=youtu.be
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of April 8th, 2012.
“The mezuzah stays up!”
No, that’s not what my wife says when I take Viagra. It’s what a lawyer told the public after both sides settled a brouhaha over a Jewhaha.
A week ago, a woman living in a ritzy-titzy condominium in Stratford, Connecticut, was ordered – ordered! – by her co-op board to take down her mezuzah. A mezuzah, of course, is the tiny scroll of parchment that Jewish people put on their houses to ward off Jehovah’s Witnesses. We place a mezuzah on the frame of every doorway, so whenever we walk into a room, we know there’s a shriveled little piece of paper watching over us. Well, it beats a rabbit’s foot.
Jews have been doing this for thousands of years based on a mandate in the Torah that we should affix certain phrases to our doors. And not just phrases like, “please, no more menus.”
So out in Connecticut, Barbara Cadrenel, a plucky middle-aged Jewess, did what the Torah asked her to do: she put a mezuzah on her door frame. “No!” said the co-op board. “You are structurally changing the design of your home, which goes against our bylaws.”
How did the co-op board explain the presence of crosses on many other doors in the complex? Simple. The crosses were nailed to the doors – not the door frames. Ohhh. Must be nice to have a lawyer in the Klan.
But seriously, to me, the most infuriating part of this double standard was that the lady didn’t even nail her mezuzah to the frame. She velcroed it. Velcro! The best thing to happen to a pair of shoes since taking them off.
And still, the co-op board threatened to fine Cadrenel fifty dollars a day if she didn’t take the scroll down. One week, one lawsuit and a media firestorm later – I am happy to say, everything has worked out for the best. The co-op board apologized to the woman and said, in no uncertain terms, “we were stupid, we were ignorant, the only Jews we’ve ever seen are on `Seinfeld,’ please put your mezuzah wherever you want, so long as it doesn’t put some voodoo hex on our crèche.”
By the way, if you think I’m exaggerating the board’s dumbness, this is what their attorney said in settling the case. Quote: “I didn’t realize, and the board members didn’t realize what a mezuzah was. I didn’t realize the significance.” Unquote. The board members didn’t know what a mezuzah was? Is this a co-op or a yurt? And while I appreciate their apology, don’t tell me the second they started threatening this woman with fines and legal fees, and she came back to them saying, “this is a religious symbol. My people have been doing this for thousands of years. Walk through a Jewish neighborhood – okay, maybe not in Connecticut but in New Jersey. Open a goddamn Wiki page!” Why does it take a week of closing in and lawyering up to come out and say what you must have been told the first hour this mishegoss went down?
Now, I’m not pointing fingers or shouting “anti-Semitism” or calling for a Million-Jew March down Milford. I’m just saying that even in this day and age, when we know something about everyone, and we’re a mouse click away from knowing too much about everybody, it’s amazing how people can have no clue. Next time I see someone sitting on a subway holding a rosary, I think I’ll say, “Hey! Nice beads. Do they all go in your vagina or do – what? You mean that t-shaped thing in the middle isn’t a battery-operated control stick?” Well, whaddya know.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.
Topics include: theater, Corn Bread and Feta Cheese, off-off-Broadway.
Segment originally aired March 31, 2012 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.
All content (c)2012 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 #39 (3/25/2012): Rave Review!
Aired March 24, on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AONO3DfOp1k&t=141s
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of March 25th, 2012.
Well, I am back in Colorado after doing my big, whopping, $1.98 off-off-off-off-off-off-Broadway show: Shalom Dammit! An Evening with Me, Rabbi Sol Solomon. We did five performances at the Richmond Shepard Theater, a playhouse so off the beaten path, the Bermuda Triangle goes there to vacation.
But somehow, people made it to the theater on East 26th Street. They came to see me talk about Jewish life, religion, the middle east, assimilation, the Holocaust and other hilarious topics for a night at the theater. My musical director, Richard Shore, and I, had a marvelous time rehearsing, playing, cutting, trimming, making the best show we possibly could for the least amount of money we could possibly get away with.
Well, my friends, there is no accounting for taste, which is why I am shocked but delighted to say that Shalom Dammit! the stage show received its first review – and it’s a rave! And not like one of those raves where teenagers lick yellow decals and then start shtupping the walls – no! Our show in New York got a review so good, I’d like to cover it with sour cream and eat it with a soup spoon.
It’s by Elizabeth Ahlfors, of CityCabaret.com, and it’s published on TotalTheater.com. Now: full disclosure – Dave Lefkowitz, the host of this show, also works for TotalTheater.com and he edits the writing of Elizabeth Ahlfors for publication. Their dealings are purely professional, so apart from some bribery money changing hands, her review is absolutely heartfelt and legitimate. Which is more than I can say for my show.
If you don’t believe me, read the full review of Shalom Dammit! at TotalTheater. In it she says things like – and I quote – “A comedy, a passionate sermon, a witty diatribe, a musical. It’s all of the above – in full-volume yelling.” Me? Yelling? She must have me confused with . . . every other middle-class Jewish man in the world.
Ms. Ahlfors also says about me that I’m “ebullient, angry (because why shouldn’t I be?), opinionated, outspoken, supremely self-confident and hilarious!” No one’s called me hilarious since that time I farted on the bimah during Yom Kippur. And let’s face it, that’s an easy gag for a captive audience.
She closes her big review with the best line of all: “Shalom Dammit!, with all its fervor and fury, is a good time.” That’s a money review, ladies and gentleman. And I paid good money for it.
So now we shall see the next step in the commercial path of Shalom Dammit!. We may come back in April and do a couple more shows. We may hit a fringe festival or two . . . because my tallis has award-winning fringes. Or who knows? We may play the occasional Jewish center, nursing home or women’s prison.
If you saw Shalom Dammit! in New York and you agree with this review, do your part! Tell family and friends and people you no longer want to be your friends that you can’t wait to see Shalom Dammit! in your bedraggled town or village. You must know people with money – you’re Jewish! Tell them a couple of hundred dollars they can be investors and gain the satisfaction of knowing they’ll never see that money again, but they’ll have helped spread yiddishkeit, love and possibly herpes to theatergoers all over America.
My thanks go out to Elizabeth Ahlfors, the brilliant, insightful critic; to Richard Shore, to Richmond Shepard, to Bill the stage manager and Jeff the box-office boychick, and to everyone who visited the Richmond Shepard Theater to partake in Shalom Dammit! the show.
Not to paraphrase Hitler but: today East 26th Street, tomorrow West 26th Street!
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches and off-off-Broadway hit!
Note: here is the review: http://www.totaltheater.com/?q=node/4470
Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews comedian Steve Solomon
Topics include: My Mother’s Italian, My Father’s Jewish and I’m in Therapy.
Segment originally aired March 24, 2012 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/4472
All content (c)2012 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com More information on Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com
Dave Lefkowitz is joined in-studio by University of Northern Colorado theater school music director Richard Shore to chat about the Rabbi’s show, Shalom Dammit! and productions at UNC and Little Theater of the Rockies.
Topics include: Shalom Dammit: An Evening with Rabbi Sol Solomon, University of Northern Colorado, Little Theater of the Rockies.
Segment originally aired March 3, 2012 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.
All content (c)2012 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
