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Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #31 (12/4/2011): Coca Cola

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #31 (12/4/2011): Coca Cola

Aired Dec. 3, 2011 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: Coca Cola

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of December 4th, 2011.

You know what the easiest job in the world is? No, not ranting on the radio, I don’t get paid for that. The easiest job in the world is selling Coca Cola. It’s been around for a hundred years, everybody drinks it, every grocery stocks it… You go into a shack in Malawi and say, “Barack Obama,” they look at you like you’re from another planet, but you say “Coca Cola” – oh, they start dancing around, they’re laughing, they want you to marry their cousin.

Selling Coca Cola is as easy as saying, “Hi, you wanna buy some Coca Cola?” Yes, you have Pepsi as a competitor, and those 99-cent, two-liter generic brands that SAY they’re cola, but we all know, it’s just Rustoleum with corn syrup. Financially, Coke might have a great year, or it might have an almost-great year, but really, it’s like asking the Sultan of Brunei at his roulette game, “Did you lose $3,000 or $30,000?” Either way, he’s not losing any sleep. Unless he drinks Coca Cola, in which case the caffeine will keep him up if the harem girls won’t.

So okay. Here is how you sell Coca Cola. You concoct it, you mix it, you put it in the bottle, you ship it from the factory, and you cash the checks. The beverage itself may have a secret formula, but everybody knows Coke’s formula for success – Step One: give people what they want and what they have always wanted. Step Two: Repeat step one.

Now, we all remember years ago when the marketing geniuses at Coke felt they had to justify their inflated salaries by doing something new. To be fair, it can’t be much fun promoting an item when you know deep down the marketing strategy you’ve used for the past ten years you could really use for the next fifty. And in the advertising and PR world, nobody gets a bonus for thinking inside the box. Unfortunately, in the real world, you know who thinks outside the box? Homeless people. They sleep in a box, then they go outside it to think. And you know what some of them are thinking? They’re thinking, “Shit, I used to be an executive at Coca Cola, until I invented New Coke.”

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? It’s one of the oldest sayings in the world, and if you think you know better, if you think you’re gonna prove the world wrong, get ready if you fail to fall on your tush into a cardboard box. Twenty-six years ago New Coke hit the market like a bottle of cancer, and it’s been an industry laughing stock – and object lesson – ever since.

So you’d figure the Coke folks would learn from their mistake. Red label, white letters, brown fizz, rule the world. But no, in the news this week was a story about Coca Cola using a special design for the holidays. Instead of a red background, they went with a white background and red letters, plus those cute little polar bears. All well and good, except the public took one look and said, “Wait a minute… is this regular Coke or Diet Coke?” Somehow the scientific gurus in the Coca Cola utility research kitchen missed the fact that white cans equals low-calorie equals tastes like battery acid. So people started bitching and writing to the company and returning the cans demanding the old stuff.

Weirder still – even people who were not confusing the regular with the diet, even when they knew it was the same stuff, some of them complained the cola tastes different in the silver can. Don’t ask me if it’s psychological or maybe the old red cans still have traces of cocaine in them, all I know is that it’s been another PR nightmare for Coke. They’ve had to go back and reinstate the red cans, and somebody in R&D is getting a lump of coal for their Christmas bonus.

Now, I don’t have a problem with innovation, but it seems all the innovations these days are negative ones. Ooh, let’s take a ten-ounce bag of potato chips and put only eight ounces of chips in it while charging the same price. American ingenuity at its finest. Or all these HDTV 3D television sets. You can watch a Pixar movie; it looks like you’ve jumped into their universe. However, almost everything else you watch is in one-D, low definition, so your fifty-inch Samsung has all the visual beauty of a hallway security monitor. And don’t get me started on airplanes charging you extra for a sandwich, more inches of legroom and a place to stow your luggage. America is innovating us out of house and home.

Again, it’s not as if the Coca Cola people started sneaking Ex-Lax into the formula. They wouldn’t have to, but even so. And it’s not as if they did something racist or dangerous or mean-spirited. They just wanted Coke to be part of the seasonal onslaught of merry merchandising. Skeptical people might say they had nothing to lose from the design disaster. If it worked, if it worked. When it didn’t, look at all the free, and not especially damaging, publicity they got. Maybe it was all part of some master plan to keep Coke in the news.

I’m not that cynical, I’ll grant them an honest mistake, but either way, if they want to sell their product, save money and have the simplest marketing plan imaginable, all they have to do is hire me. I work cheap and I work smart. I will sit there at my desk and ask the different departments the only questions that matter: “Does Coca Cola still taste disgustingly sweet yet refreshingly corrosive?” “On Thanksgiving, can you fry a turkey or a moose in it?” “Is it still a dentist’s best friend?” “Can it still remove the paint from a 1987 Ford Taurus?” Yes? Great – sign my paycheck, we’re good for a decade. Oh, and pour me another Dr. Brown’s Crème Soda – regular, not diet, extra foam, and don’t be Jewish with the ice cubes.

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

—> https://youtu.be/WCiD285AVRE

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=29469

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #30 (11/27/2011): Questions

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #30 (11/27/2011): Questions

aired Nov. 26, 2011 on Dave’s Gone By. youtube clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODe2DzzTDMI

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of November 27th, 2011.

A week ago, I was able to premiere my one-man, two-person show, Shalom Dammit!, an Evening with Rabbi Sol Solomon, at the Norton Theater of the University of Northern Colorado. It was a magnificent experience with audiences laughing, asking questions and treating me with undisguised bitterness and hostility.

I doff my yarmulke to all the technical and creative people who helped Shalom Dammit! take the biggest leap at the university since that fat Asian kid jumped off a fraternity roof last summer. It was a tremendous amount of work, but I think the results speak not only for themselves, but for people who shouldn’t speak until they’re spoken to. It was that kind of show.

During the process of putting Shalom Dammit! together, I was asked many questions, not all of them anti-Semitic. I thought I would share some of the answers with you so that you might understand what went into this experience, which I hope to bring to New York, Miami, Sheboygan – anywhere with Jews and a sewer system.

I was asked why would I share – or inflict – this show on an audience. First of all, it was cold outside and tickets were free, so who’s complaining? Also, it is confusing being a Jew in modern America. We are tied to our family traditions and ancient values, but we are also tempted by everything from X-Box on Shabbos to the triple-X boobs on Sasha Grey. Every Jew makes his own decision as to how much to follow and how much rings hollow. My show is a glimpse into what goes into making those choices. How are modern Jewish Americans pulled towards crazy rules drawn up 400 years ago, how do we interact with our Christian, Muslim and Republican brothers; how do we get past the Holocaust without getting over the Holocaust; and how do we convince the goyim that Bernie Madoff, David Berkowitz and Paulie Shore are Jehovah’s Witnesses?

I have also been asked whether Shalom Dammit!, which includes a few naughty words and a smattering of adult content, reflects badly on my people and even fosters anti-Semitism. The answer to that charge is: I don’t have to encourage anti-Semitism; there’s enough of it without my help. If Jews feel bad about themselves, well, ambivalence and unease are part of the modern Jewish psyche. We’re never completely comfortable and never 100 percent happy. Because we don’t have the ready means of support that non-Jews can always turn to, like alcoholism and professional hockey. That said, no one watching my show will have any misconceptions about where I stand as a Zionist, a proud Jew, a secular humanist, and a victim of chronic prostate pain.

“Dear Rabbi,” writes another fan, “Do you ever get stage fright?” Absolutely. In fact, when I performed the show last Monday evening, the stage manager was shocked because I peed seven times in a half hour. And I don’t know how many times before I got onstage.

And finally, an audience member asked me whether my frank words about Christianity and Jesus might rub goyim the wrong way. I can only reply that I tell the truth as I see it, and that if Jesus Christ has a problem with it – I’m here, he can hit me with lightning, he can drop a meteor on my head, he can send me into cardiac arrest – come on, I’m waiting. If he’s really the savior, he can make a miracle, show me the error of my – Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!!! I have hangnail on my pinkie; wow, I didn’t see that before. I need to soak that.

Well, anyhoo, it is on to the next step with my show, Shalom Dammit!. If you think my hilarious evening of comedy would be right for your local theater, community center or mortuary, please get in touch. Or if you are a producer with much more money than taste, this is your chance to bring my thoughts to the thoughtless. Email me: Shalomdammit_at_aol.com, that’s shalomdammit_at_aol.com.

It doesn’t have to be Broadway. It can be like Mickey and Judy in a barn saying, “Hey, let’s put on a show! A really dark and offensive show with a lot of Yiddish in it.” But, come on, what do you expect in a barn, Jersey Boys? Greedy bastards.

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

—> https://wp.me/pzvIo-2mb

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=29828

Dave’s Gone By Interview (11/26/2011): PETER SCHICKELE & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews musician and PDQ Bach archivist Peter Schickele

Topics include: classical music, Schickele Mix, radio, PDQ Bach, comedy.

Segment originally aired Nov. 26, 2011 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)2011 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 Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #29 (11/13/2011): Shalom Dammit! Live

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #29 (11/13/2011): Shalom Dammit! Live

Aired Nov. 12, 2011 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: Shalom Dammit! Live

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of November 13th, 2011.

I would like to invite you all to my show, Shalom Dammit! an Evening with Rabbi Sol Solomon, which is getting a workshop production next week at the University of Northern Colorado. We call it a “workshop” production because then it doesn’t have to be any good. If it IS good, mazel tov, tell your neighbors; if it stinks, hey, it’s a workshop; we’ll fix it when we get to New York.

Shalom Dammit! is a one-man, two-person show with comedy, music and a lot of yelling. It’s my sermon on the joys and tribulations of American-Jewish life in the twenty-first century. I’ll teach the audience some words in Hebrew and Yiddish, I’ll talk about different religions and how each one is more meshuggeh than the next, I will delve into the reasons Israel has endured 60 peaceless years with her Arab neighbors, and I will touch on such touchy topics as the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, assimilation, alienation, and Barbra Streisand.

There’ll be music, courtesy of my keyboardist, David San Miguel, a nice, churchgoing boy – I know, I know, but YOU find a Jewish piano player in Greeley Colorado. And there’ll even be a question-and-answer session with members of the audience who will have a once-in-a-lunchtime opportunity to “Ask the Rabbi.” Of course, this being the great plains, I’m sure the first question will be, “What’s a Rabbi?” But we’ll cross that cross when we come to it.

And speaking of questions, you might be asking why you should bother to come see me in person if you can hear me every week on the radio? The answer is…well, I don’t really have an answer to that, but I will say tickets are free, so there’s incentive right there. Also, there’s a shape to Shalom Dammit!, an arc that takes two-plus hours to mold, contextualize and present as a unified entertainment. In other words, it’s free – so what the hell do you have to lose?

Shalom Dammit! An Evening with Rabbi Sol Solomon plays November 21st and 22nd, the Monday and Tuesday of Thanksgiving week, at the Norton Theater of the University of Northern Colorado. Seating is first-come, first-disturbed. On both nights doors open at 6:30 for the 7 o’clock show.

For more information, visit ShalomDammit.com. Don’t bother calling the University, they’re trying to keep as low a profile on this as they possibly can. Just come to the Norton Theater, Tenth Avenue near 19th Street, and prepare to be challenged, tickled and surprised. And that’s just by the coeds in the sororities across the street, heh heh. But don’t bring the kids! Because of language and content, my show is not suitable for children. Or anyone really, but by God, I’m doing it anyway.

Who knows? In a year or two I could be on Broadway charging $150 for tickets. I won’t get it, but I could charge it. So see my show now, November 21st and 22nd at UNC, and be Solomized.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches. Unwrap your candies now.

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #28 (11/6/2011): Kardashian Divorce

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #28 (11/6/2011): Kardashian Divorce

Aired Nov. 5, 2011 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: Kardashian Divorce

Shalom Dammit, this is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of November 6th, 2011.

It is not just the weather that is turning cold, my friends. News broke this week that celebrity model and spokesperson Kim Kardashian will be divorcing her basketball-player husband, Kris Humphries, after being married exactly 72 days.

Now, I could comment about the evanescent nature of celebrity marriages, or make easy, late-night jokes about the carnage of the Kardashians’ cartoon carnality-turned-carnival, or I could point out the danger of letting surface attractions overwhelm deeper concerns, or I could rue the cluelessness of a society that elevates a woman of no discernible talent or accomplishment to the level of television royalty, or I could chastise the venality of media – which debases a spiritual human event into an orgy of marketing, advertising and self-absorption, or I could simply say, I told you so, because we all could have told her so.

But really, the point I most want to make about the Kim Kardashian divorce is…

Who cares? Who cares? Who cares? Who cares? Who cares? Who cares?

I don’t care…do you care? You shouldn’t care. Who cares?

Who cares? Who cares? Who cares? Who cares? Who cares? Who cares?

(to the tune of Adon Olam) Who cares? Who cares? Who cares? Who cares?

Who cares? Who cares? Who cares? Who cares?

Who cares? Who cares? Who cares? Who cares? Who cares? Who cares?

Everyone, get a life! Who cares? Who cares? Who cares? Who cares? Who cares?

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

Dave’s Gone By Skit: Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #27 (10/30/2011): BLACKOUT

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #27 (10/30/2011): Blackout

Aired Oct. 29, 2011 on Dave’s Gone By. YouTube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91jvDZjIAOc

Shalom Dammit, this is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of October 30th, 2011.

Well, winter has come to Greeley, USA. It’s only the end of October, but this is Colorado, so of course, we get snow before Halloween. Who knows? Maybe by Lincoln’s Birthday we’ll have beach weather.

But this being the first snowstorm of the season, all gehenna breaks loose. You’d think Northern Colorado had never seen snow before. It’s one thing when Florida gets a dusting, and cars go sliding across the road – mostly Jews leaving the dinner buffet to get home before noon.

And in the northeast, the TV weatherpeople go berserk. “First winter blast! Mothers ambushing the supermarket! Buy rocksalt, find your candles, don’t park your car on alternate sides of the street Tuesdays, Thursdays and every fifth Sunday when there’s a full moon and Jupiter is rising in the guest house of Saturn!” Two inches of snow, and you’d think polar bears were threatening to galumph down Fifth Avenue.

But Colorado? Without snow, the only thing Vail would be known for is Walgreens and syphilis. You don’t need Nostradamus to predict that an early season storm will dump white stuff on trees, roads, backyards, powerlines. Snow and Colorado go together like borscht and sour cream. Like David and Bathsheba. Like Pakistan and duplicity.

So why does it take two and a half days for Xcel Energy to get the lights back on? Did they not glance at a weathermap a week before the storm? Monks in Bangladesh knew there would be blizzard in Colorado before the local energy company did. Honest to God, Swami Poopoopadoola in Rangpur was on the Weather Channel a week ago saying, “Ganesh advises you should hire extra tree-removal crews – and I don’t even know what snow is.”

And so, for the past three days of my visit to Greeley, I have lived without light, heat and hot water. Which is why I smell like a giraffe in a sweat lodge. If I want to get warm, I have to crawl into the refrigerator. There’s no television, so I have to engage with these big, unwieldy black-and-white things our ancestors once called “books.” And there is no internet, so I can’t spend my usual afternoons downloading doctored nude photos of Mayim Bialik.

Now the more rugged among us would hail this return to an older way of life. How good it is, they would say, to be disconnected from intolerable inboxes, cacophonous commercials and the twaddle of Twitter tweets. Enjoy the silence, reflect and recharge. Breathe.

I can’t breathe, I’m Jewish! I’m lucky if I can groan and wheeze. I want my MTV! I miss my spam! I can’t build a cozy fire without getting splinters in my groin.

It may be sad, but technology is here to stay, so when it is taken from us, however briefly, the loss feels like a phantom limb. From Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs, we have been blessed by people who have made our lives so convenient, we can no longer endure inconvenience. If that means we’re spoiled, so be it.

And now, speaking of spoiled, there’s a kosher flank steak in my freezer that needs to be handled with rubber gloves and a gas mask.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches. (sings) “Walking in a winter wonderland…dammit.”

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #26 (10/22/2011): Occupied

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #28 (10/22/2011): Occupied

Aired Oct. 22, 2011 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: Occupied

Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of October 23rd, 2011.

So all these people without an occupation are busy occupying. They’re occupying Wall Street, they’re inhabiting Zuccotti Park, they’re occupying cities and colleges across America because the have-nots are getting a bissel sick and tired of the haves.

It was ever thus, people. Before we all were born, a handful of upper-class hoity-toities looked down on the rest of us. If they were in a generous and tax-deductible mood, they donated a library or slipped a few bucks to charity.

Everyone hates the rich because…they’re rich. And we’re not. Life sucks, then you die.

But now we have a growing segment of the population who are fed up with the status quo and think they can change it by…showing up somewhere and not leaving. Hey, it beats violence, and protests certainly did have an impact on the Vietnam War, racial segregation and the roll-out of New Coke.

Still, I am bothered by two aspects of this “Occupy Somewhere” movement. The first is the “and then what?” factor. Okay, so you shout at the rich, you rail at the corporations, you run the CEOs out of town on a rail – well, more likely a Lear Jet. And then what? What do you replace them with?

If the protesters are saying, “make college affordable, or at least make it so I’m not paying off my student loan with my Medicare and reverse mortgage.” Okay.

If the protesters are saying, “change the tax code,” fine, I’m all for it. Tax the rich until they’re poor, tax the poor until they’re dead, and give the middle class a break for once.

If the protesters are saying, “don’t let stockbrokers, bankers and corporate bigwigs get away with rampant fraud,” I’m for that, too. Let them get away with just enough fraud so that they keep jobs in America instead of farming them out to Uttar Pradesh.

The problem is we don’t know WHAT the protesters are saying except, “we can’t get jobs, the jobs we get don’t pay anything, and the pay we get goes to buy imported crap because we don’t make anything.” Republicans and social conservatives keep wanting to liken the occupiers to Soviet Communists. Well, guess what? Those old Russians were rebelling against the gentry and landowners who controlled everything and gave nothing back. Sound familiar? Communism didn’t happen because the poor wanted to give Fox News talking points, it happened because the peasants found it unpleasant watching the czars eat pheasant.

These hippies and democrats and college kids and ukelele players, they don’t care about words like Marxism or capitalism. They just want their piece of the pie, and they’re not blind; they know that out of ten slices, nine have been gobbled up before the pizza even gets delivered.

So if you ask where my sympathy lies, it is with these demonstrators, even if the only thing they’re demonstrating is how easy it is to get really grimy after three days sleeping in a park.

What I do take issue with is the whole theme of the protest – “occupying.” The organizers took their motif from the so-called Arab spring. You know, where young Arabs got tired of their corrupt, totalitarian leaders so they staged relatively peaceful rebellions that will ultimately bring in corrupt, fundamentalist Muslim leaders? Anytime you look to the Arabs for a moral compass, you’re pretty much gonna float into an iceberg.

The anti-Semitic undertones of this movement are very minor, but they’re there. From the usual grievance that Jews comprise the evil one percent oppressing the other 99 to the idea of that loaded word: “occupation.” Even though the protesters are, themselves, the occupiers, you can bet many of them are weeping for the Palestinians supposedly displaced from the sliver of Israeli land they absolutely have to live on.

And yet, and yet. There is a positive impulse here, and I hope President Obama – and whatever clown the Republicans pull out of their sidecar – I hope they listen to these rebels and take to heart the idea that American wealth, enterprise and future security have been stolen by a handful of families and corporations.

When everybody gets to eat, but some people eat a lot better – so it goes, that’s the world. When people are starving and Marie Antoinette is still eating cake, that’s when the knives come out. Or worse, in this case – the bongs and bongos.

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

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=29993

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #25 (10/2/2011): Days of Awe

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #25 (10/2/2011): Days of Awe

Aired Oct. 1, 2011 on Dave’s Gone By. YouTube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkNjq0IwyUU

Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of October 2nd, 2011.

He’s making a list and checking it twice, gonna find out who’s naughty and nice – not Santa Claus; I’m talkin’ about God. This is the time of year when HaShem opens his great big book. And I don’t mean “Harry Potter and the Cauldron of Borscht.” I mean the book of life and death, the book where God inscribes your name for the year. If he writes your name in bold calligraphy, you’re gonna have a fabulous year ahead. If he scribbles your name in pencil and deliberately spells it wrong, you better get health insurance. And if he erases it or just puts your initials in the margin, you might want to go shopping for a good mausoleum.

These are the Days of Awe, between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. We call them the Days of Awe because we look at all the crappy things we’ve done and go, “awwwww.” This is a time of reflection, expiation and making amends. If you’ve cheated somebody, or told a hurtful falsehood, or threatened to kick somebody’s tuchas because they won’t let your nine year old be in the school play (even though she’s perfect for it, and she can act rings around that little blonde whore they got for the part because her parents donate ten thousand dollars a year to the school’s PTA fund… bastards!), you need to take a breath, acknowledge that you may have overreacted (even if you haven’t) and apologize to those you have disparaged, and to HaShem for your prideful behavior.

Unlike the Catholics, who do so much sinning they have to confess every week, Jews save up all their misdeeds to talk about them one day a year: Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. On this day, we say, “I’m sorry” to God and to everyone we have offended. Granted, there’s some absurdity there, because you’re not allowed to bathe, put on deodorant or use mouthwash, which means if you go to synagogue on Yom Kippur, you’re offending everybody.

In the shul, the cantor sings “Kol Nidre,” a prayer in which we ask God not to take us seriously. Seriously! We tell HaShem, “Look, over the course of the year, we’re gonna make some pretty stupid promises. At a traffic stop, we’ll say, `God, if this patrolman lets me off with a warning, I’ll donate what the ticket would have cost to charity.’ Or we’ll think, `If this dentist would just stop giving me pain, I’ll stop wishing to see him thrown from a tall building onto a steal spike.’ Or we’ll say, `If I could only get this raise, I’ll stop stealing office supplies.’” We won’t. And God knows we won’t. And we know God knows we won’t. So we sing “Kol Nidre” to him to let ourselves off the hook: “God, anything we vow to do over the next 12 months, ehhhh..not gonna happen. So please don’t listen. Put on your iPod. Just nod and wink and realize we’re gonna be back here in a year apologizing for shit we did that we said we wouldn’t, and stuff we didn’t do that we promised we would. And when you write my name in big block letters, remember it’s Solomon with one `L’ and three `O’s.’”

I hope, dear listeners, that we are all inscribed in the book of life and that we don’t do anything to jeopardize that status. After all, these days I’m sure God is using an e-book, so if we’re bad, all he has to do is backspace. At least the Days of Awe allow us to…re-Kindle.

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

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=30001

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #24 (9/24/2011): Statehood?

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #24 (9/24/2011): Statehood?

aired Sept. 24, 2011 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube Clip: https://youtu.be/TLOkZL4hvOY

Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon, with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of September 25th, 2011.

So the Palestinians want a state. Whoopdeefreakin’-doo. All these years of fighting Israel, blowing up restaurants in Israel, sabotaging peace talks with Israel – and all they wanted all along was to BE Israel. Of course, they have to have THEIR Israel inside the current Israel, which is why Obama and Bibi Netanyahu are telling them where they can stick their kebabs.

I have nothing against the Palestinians having a state of their own. Besides their usual state of confusion. They can have a homeland in Jordan, they can have one in Saudi Arabia. Even Turkey can throw `em a few kilometers. Why does it have to be in Israel? Israel is 10,000 square miles; the rest of the middle east is 8.6 million square miles. It’s like Walmart coming to town and saying, “We could build our superstore in that huge abandoned parking lot, but we’d rather squeeze it into your kitchen.”

What people forget is that in the 1920s, when England was controlling Palestine, the Arabs were offered half of it. They turned it down because they didn’t want to share it with Jews. In 1947, they turned down a two-state solution for the same reason. A year later, Israel became a nation, the Arabs attacked, and their turbans have been soaked in blood ever since.

So suddenly, they turn to the United Nations – which has been sucking the shmeckel of the Arabs for six decades – and the Palestinians say, “Declare us a state.” They don’t say where, they don’t say how. If there’s Jews on it, that’s where they want to be.

In the 63 years since Israel came to be, what have the Arabs done to prove that they can co-exist side by side with Jews? Or any living thing, for that matter? 9/11, Lockerbie, bombings in Gaza, the Yom Kippur War, the Munich Olympics, the London subways. What a record of accomplishment!

So here’s my idea for the Palestinians – they should all go to the zoo. No, really. Bring them to the biggest zoo in Lebanon with lots of land and food and vegetation. Then partition the zoo so that the Arabs have half of it and the lions and tigers and bears have the other half. Just make sure to put up signs around the zoo that say: “Caution! Wild and Vicious Animals.” It’s only fair to warn the lions, tigers and bears.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches. Shana Tovah!

—> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=30007

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #23 (9/17/2011): Ten Years

click above to listen (audio file)

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #23 (9/17/2011): Ten Years

aired Sept. 17, 2011 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koxCrkPZuM8

Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon, with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of September 11th, 2011.

Boy, just hearing that date gets you in the kishkes, doesn’t it? September 11th 2011. Somehow that just sounds more meaningful than September 11th 2009 or September 11th 2003 – even though more time has passed. I suppose a ten-year anniversary makes you realize that, no matter what, life goes on, years pass; while at the same time, you recall how much younger you were a decade ago, and what an impact the event had on your life.

Ten years ago, Wall Street was destroyed, not by corruption from within – that came later – but by evil from without. Arabs, in airplanes, with box-cutters. How these scumpuppets were able to circumvent the FAA, the Air Force, the civil defense and any air-traffic controller with eyes remains a mystery greater than how Drakes gets that crème filling into Yodels. I mean, it’s all rolled up; how the hell do they do that?

Anyway, this week we’re hearing a lot of talk about closure. Ten years – it’s almost another generation. The world moves forward, the dead are not coming back, and, of course, we got Bin Laden. When the bullet sailed through his forehead, it made a satisfying parallel to those planes pushing through the buildings. As I mentioned in a previous Reflection, Osama’s death was a wonderful thing, but killing him kills him, not Jihad, not terrorism, not the memories.

As we all know, grief does not follow a time-table. Time heals wounds, but you never know when a scab will come off and start bleeding again. Looking at downtown Manhattan, remembering the 3000 victims, watching any movie that opens with a shot of that old New York City skyline – it all kicks up a sandstorm of memories.

And much as we all want mental therapy and ways to feel better about 9/11, let’s not go overboard making believe something good came out of the attacks. Nothing good came out of that. It was a nightmare; we suffered emotionally, financially, physically. Don’t be looking for feel-good post-mortems because how could there be a silver lining from such a thing? Well, maybe if one of those airplanes had the Kardashian family on it, but it would have to be the whole family, including Bruce Jenner, you know what I’m saying?

Seriously, though, at least there has finally been some progress rebuilding Ground Zero, and it is already possible to foresee a time when our children will think of 9/11 as “mom and dad’s Pearl Harbor Day,” rather than that day. Whether or not we fudged the endgame in Afghanistan, I’m glad we killed a lot of people there. Iraq may have been a blunder, but I’m glad we killed a lot of people there, too. God, I sound like a homicidal Andy Rooney.

On the other hand, they’re saying pretty soon we can once again go through airports keeping the shoes on our feet. Why? Because those feet kicked some ass.

Somewhere, in hell, there’s a dozen Arabs being mocked and brutalized by 72 appallingly ugly virgins, all of them holding box cutters in one hand and Moslem shmeckels in the other. Happy goddamn anniversary.

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

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=30015