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Dave’s Gone By Skit: Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #159 (6/1/2019): 2019 TONYS

Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #159 (6/1/19): 2019 TONYS

Watch & listen on Youtube: https://youtu.be/aHTLs09fLX8

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Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of June 2, 2019.

Well, this American Son and synagogue Choir Boy feels like King Kong when I get to be part of the annual Dave’s Gone By Tony show. And this year, I’m Head Over Heels like I’m going to The Prom; I couldn’t Be More Chill, and I Ain’t Too Proud to talk about the nominees for the Tony Awards. I just wish this show were on a Network, and that the theater had more Straight White Men.

But seriously, I do my annual Rabbinical Reflection about the Broadway season and the Tonys specifically looking for Jewish content and connections—of which the Best Play nominees have . . . bupkis, zero, nada, zilch. Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, is about a bunch of clowns cleaning up after a massacre in ancient Rome. There’s a lot flatulence, which is very Jewish, but otherwise, it’s a tiresome goyfest. Then you got Choir Boy, about a faigele schvartze in a prep school. Again: learning, studying: Jewish. Everything else: not. There’s The Ferryman, a magnificent drama about the Irish, and What the Constitution Means to Me, about a shikseh getting an abortion. That leaves Ink, which studies the newspaper business and how Rupert Murdoch built his empire. That right-wing mogul has always been very pro-Israel, but he ain’t Jewish, and neither is the play. In fact, the only Hebraic character in a play the whole season was Sarah Bernhardt—and she was baptized!

Okay, so maybe we’ll do better in musicals? Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations. Well, no. That’s a little closer to a Million Man March than a minyan. However, The Temptations’ manager, Shelly Berger, is a prominent and sympathetic character. That’s how we know the show wasn’t written by Spike Lee.And speaking of stereotypes, The Prom has a Jewish character, Sheldon Saperstein, who is—guess what?—an agent. The Prom also features a flamboyant, effeminate lead character, Barry Glickman, who turns out to be a mensch, so okay. Two other musicals have jerks in them, from hell, in Beetlejuice and Hadestown—but they’re goyim, so I’m fine with it. Meanwhile, Tootsie, both the movie and the Broadway musical, are swimming in Jewish-style humor—even if the characters are safely non-denominational. The composer is David Yazbek, a Yid, whose Tony-winning show last year, The Band’s Visit, took place IN Israel! So he could win a Tony every year; I’d be fine with that.

But where are the Jews this year? Well, there’s Arthur Miller and Harvey Fierstein, in the play revival category with All My Sons and Torch Song. Richard Rodgers and the semi-Jew, Oscar Hammerstein, creators of Oklahoma!, the musical revival. Not to mention Sam and Bella Spewack, who adapted William Shakespeare into Kiss Me, Kate. But the acting nominees this year? Not so much. Bryan Cranston, the star of Network, has a teeny bit of Jew in him, but that’s it for his category. I mean, he’s up against a black guy named “Pope”! Yikes!

Leading Actress? Annette Bening—Episcopalian. Laura Donnelly—Irish. Janet McTeer—English. Laurie Metcalf—midwestern. Thank God, Elaine May kept her Equity card. In The Waverly Gallery, she played an old crank who can’t remember anything and gets on everybody’s nerves. If that isn’t Jewish, what is?

And most of all, let’s pay tribute to the winner of a special Tony Award this year: Judith Light. She’s getting the Isabelle Stevenson Award for making a special and brave contribution to humankind: putting up with Tony Danza for eight seasons of “Who’s the Boss.” Of course, she’s also a terrific actress and an outspoken advocate for gay rights and the fight against AIDS. But screw all that, the best thing about Judith the Jewess is that in her second Broadway show, she played Julie Herzl—the wife of Theodore Herzl, Zionist visionary and spiritual father of Israel. That’s a light I wanna turn on!

Experts are saying that this particular Broadway season is marked by diversity, a wider acceptance of non-traditional casting like a female Lear and a wheelchair-bound Ado Annie in Oklahoma!. And we get more goofy, risk-taking shows like Gary and Hadestown and What the Constitution Means to Me. Does this ring the death knell for the old-fashioned Jewishy shows that made Broadway the greatest live entertainment since public hangings? Are the Neil Simons and Wendy Wassersteins of tomorrow all going to be gender-shifting provocateurs who think rising action is what you get in a gay porn flick, and a deus ex machina is a cappuccino maker?

That remains to be seen, but if I know Jews—and I do know some Jews—we will always have a place in the theater. Because we have imagination, creativity, ingenuity, and soul. And because all the goyim are busy doing anime.

So a toast once again to all the nominees, producers, directors, actors, designers, production stage managers, ushers, crew, those guys outside the theater who paw through your briefcase looking for firearms—all of them unite to make Broadway the magical place that it is. L’chaim.

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

Dave’s Gone By Interview (6/1/2019): EVA HEINEMANN

Click above to watch the segment.

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On the 15th annual special TotalTheater Tony show, theater critic Eva Heinemann (of Hi! Drama) weighs in on the 2019 Tony Awards. Her topic: Director of a Musical.

Segment aired June 1, 2019 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” podcast 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.

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Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #158 (1/2/2019): Farewell 2018

Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #158 (1/2/19) – Farewell 2018

Aired Dec. 31, 2018 on Dave’s Gone By. Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/8RIIElz0hH8

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Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the New Year: January 1, 2019.

Well, you can’t say it wasn’t interesting. Even though we had no major war, the economy was robust, and Ruth Bader Ginsberg somehow stayed alive, 2018 was still a pretty goofy year.

We had winter Olympics in South Korea, while President Trump flirted with the supreme leader of North Korea. And who knows what the real relationship is between Trump and Vladimir Putin? Robert Muller is trying to figure it out, although his investigation is going on longer than the Torah portion at a stutterer’s bar mitzvah.

Meanwhile the stock market, which has been on an almost uninterrupted winning streak since the final weeks of George W. Tush, finally obeyed the laws of gravity and dropped 4000 points by early winter. That said, the numbers have been so topsy-turvy, by mid-January we might be back at new highs again—and even newer highs now that Jeff Sessions is out as attorney general. So it’s likely just a matter of time before—just as in Canada now—you can get marijuana anywhere you wanna.

Sessions wasn’t the only one through the revolving door of Donald Trump’s cabinet. The EPA-hating head of the EPA, Scott Pruitt, resigned in July. Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson over his support of the Iran deal. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis disembarked after disagreeing with The Donald about having troops in Syria and Afghanistan—because they’re doing so much good there, right? And even UN Ambassador Nikki Haley hailed a cab—but not before she and the administration made good on their promise to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. The new Embassy opened on May 14—the 70th anniversary of the founding of Eretz Yisroel, so whatever else bad I have to say about our President, he gets a big “mezuzahs up—way up!” from me about that.

But not everything was good for the Jews in 2018. In October, a racist lunatic opened fire on Shabbos services, killing eleven at the ironically named “Tree of Life Synagogue” in Pittsburgh. Meanwhile, in Israel, Bibi Netanyahu has a friend in Trump but not many supporters on his home turf. He’s likely to be indicted in two separate fraud investigations. His wife Sara is already indicted on charges that she bilked the government out of $100,000 worth of free meals. I know Kosher food is expensive, but sheesh!

Speaking of folks facing prison time, Bill Cosby is doing 3-to-10 in the pen as punishment for decades of making women stir his pudding. Harvey Weinstein lost his movie company and faces criminal charges over his naughty behavior. And Kevin Spacey struck a blow for equality by proving that gay men can be just as creepy as straight ones.

One creep who got away with it and then some is Brett Kavanaugh, who probably did some bad drunken things to even drunker girls back in the day. But without any real evidence against him, he beat the rap and is now tilting the Supreme Court so far right, it’s a wonder all the benches don’t slide to the window.

And yet, even with so many countries—like Brazil and Hungary—electing hard-line xenophobic nationalists—under the guise of “populism”—good things have also occurred. By a popular vote of two-to-one, Ireland repealed its ban on abortion. India finally decriminalized homosexuality. Iceland made it illegal to pay men more than women for the same job. And after a 35-year ban, Saudi Arabia reopened its movie theaters and gave women the right to drive. They even opened an amusement park with a house of horrors—no, wait, that’s just the Saudi Arabian Embassy.

In the 2016 US midterm elections, a record number of women were voted into Congress—most of them Democrats, so the GOP now faces a government more split than Chris Christie’s pants. Even before the House pivots left next week, the White House faces gridlock. As we speak—well, I’m speaking—we’re in a partial government shutdown because the President wants a wall, and the Democrats prefer a bridge. At stake are a few measly billion dollars, which, considering we’re facing a trillion-dollar deficit next year, is really chump change. And hopefully we’ll change the chump in 2020.

Some not-so-nice changes happened to the internet this year. Facebook knows your voting habits, food preferences, and underwear color—and they’ve been selling that information to data-mining firms for years. And the FCC torpedoed “net neutrality,” so now big media companies can charge more for faster internet—or slow down or block sites that aren’t theirs. You think it’s no big deal, but just wait till it takes eight hours to watch a threesome on Redtube.

And speaking of hot, California nearly burned to the ground with wildfires. Too bad Indonesia didn’t loan them their tsunami water. And summertime saw heated protests over gun control after yet another school shooting—this one at a high school in Parkland, Florida. Seventeen people were killed, though many who survived created the gun-control activist group, Never Again. I kind of wish they’d pick another phrase, since that one is reserved for a previous horror, but be that as it may, one kid who survived became a real spokesman for the movement and has just been accepted into Harvard. Boy, the requirements to get into the Ivy League just get tougher and tougher, don’t they?

We had some tough losses in 2018: Penny Marshall, who was in a league of her own. Stan Lee, who was Marvelous. John McCain, a war hero who voted his conscience. (He didn’t always have the brightest conscience, but who does?) We lost both Barbara Bush and George Herbert Walker Bush, who had a mediocre Presidency but absolutely horrible sperm. He also had a funeral that lasted longer than a stutterer’s Bar M—oops, I used that one already. Farewell to film directors Milos Forman and Bernardo Bertolucci, who made people say, “I can’t believe that is butter.” Goodbye to Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade, who were luckier than 99 percent of the world population but still chose the next life over this one. Aloha to Stephen Hillenburg, who had this crazy idea that a sponge and a starfish would make a fun cartoon, and Stephen Bochco, who actually believed TV viewers would want to spend an hour every week with lawyers. Go figure. Farewell to Burt Reynolds, who posed in Playgirl magazine to show his longest yard. We lost Bill Daily of I Dream of Jeannie, David Ogden Stiers of M*A*S*H, Harry Anderson of Night Court, and Hugh Wilson who created WKRP in Cincinnati. Novelist Tom Wolfe, who had the right stuff. Country musician Roy Clark—Salute! Aretha Franklin—Respect! Dolores O’Riordan, who should have lingered a little longer. Neil Simon, who, lucky for us, was always Broadway bound. Stephen Hawking, who popularized physics but bashed and boycotted Israel, so wherever he is, I hope he’s still in a wheelchair.

Returning to happier news this year, Ethiopia and Eritrea declared a truce after 20 years of war. Who knew? And a whole soccer team and their coach were rescued after three weeks trapped in a cave in Thailand. And water was discovered on Mars. Meh. If they discover seltzer there, then they’d have something. But everyone was looking up at the sky on August 11th, when a partial solar eclipse made us put aside the violence, the politics, the dysfunction, and just take in the wonder of nature. It was the moment we all realized that no matter how crazy things are every day, at any minute the earth could spin off its axis, and we could all be obliterated, so why worry?

My hope for 2019 is that we all work together, we all help each other, and that we actually do discover seltzer on Mars. Hey, it’s better than getting chocolate milk from Uranus.

I wish you all a most happy and healthy Shanah Tova Americana. This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.

Dave’s Gone By Interview (12/31/2018): MARY SHEN BARNIDGE

Click above to watch in-studio footage of Dave Lefkowitz’s New Year’s Eve phone interview with Mary Shen Barnidge.

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Dave Lefkowitz interviews Chicago theater critic Mary Shen Barnidge

Topics include: theater, Southern Gothic.

Segment aired Dec. 31, 2018 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” New Year’s special radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

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

Dave’s Gone By Interview (12/31/2018): BRIAN GARI

Click above to watch in-studio footage of Dave Lefkowitz’s phone interview with Brian Gari.

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Dave Lefkowitz interviews musician Brian Gari

Topics include: George Carlin, music.

Segment aired Dec. 31, 2018 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” New Year’s Eve special hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

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

Dave’s Gone By Interview (12/31/2018): ESTHER BROWER

Click above to watch in-studio footage of Dave Lefkowitz’s phone interview with Esther Brower.

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Dave Lefkowitz interviews his aunt, Esther Brower

Topics include: New Year’s Eve, 80^th birthday.

Segment aired Dec. 31, 2018 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” New Year’s special radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

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Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #157 (12/15/2018): Cold Outside

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #157 (12/15/18): COLD OUTSIDE

(aired Dec. 15, 2018 on Dave’s Gone By. Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY54SIUvu0M&feature=youtu.be)

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Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of December 15, 2018.

(sings) “I really can’t stay (Bubbie, it’s cold outside). I gotta go away (Bubbie, it’s cold outside).”

What a catchy holiday-season tune that is—and what a surprise entry in the hashtag-Me-Too era of political correctness. In case you haven’t heard, two weeks ago, a radio station in California banned the song, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” on the grounds that it has sexist overtones that could encourage rape.

Written more than 70 years ago by a nice Jewish boy named Frank Loesser, who also gave us the forgotten sexist musicals, Guys and Dolls and How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” does have an uncomfortable undertow. After all, it’s all about a man imploring his date to stay the evening and cuddle instead of braving the icy winter weather. Just because the air is frigid doesn’t mean she has to be. However, one line in the song has the lady questioning what’s in her drink—which is what every woman who ever dated Bill Cosby would like to know.

So the champions of other people’s feelings decided that this song—which has been performed by such chauvinist pigs as Eydie Gorme, Bette Midler, Anne Murray, Lady Gaga, and Idina Menzel—this song was suddenly inappropriate for radio airplay. God forbid a woman who was coerced into an uncompromising position—or several uncompromising positions—should be sitting in an Uber and hear this come on the speakers. Oh trauma! Oh PTSD! Oh, come on now.

I’m not saying there isn’t something a little ooky about Leon Redbone begging Zooey Deschanel to stay for another round of spiked eggnog, but this is sensitivity gone berserk. If you start taking songs written a zillion years ago, with PG-rated intentions, and see them with modern, X-rated glasses, you’ll never put on Spotify again.

Remember when “Louie Louie” was banned because radio programmers couldn’t figure out what the lyrics meant? Remember when the BBC banned The Who’s “My Generation”—I kid you not—because they thought Roger Daltrey was making fun of stutterers? And, yes, The Bangles’s “Walk Like an Egyptian” was banned by Clear Channel so as not to offend people of Middle-Eastern descent. Perhaps they should have changed the song to “Walk like a Saudi Arabian?” (sings) “Go in the embassy don’t come out. Get yourself hacked into bits…”.

As someone who appreciates art, and comedy and free speech and pornography—and not necessarily in that order—I am sick to death of the political correctness blanketing and suffocating the writers and performers of today. Look at Kevin Hart. He does a stand-up routine eight years ago poking fun at black people by poking fun at gay people—and suddenly he can’t host the Oscars anymore. And I thought gay people liked being poked.

And what about Michael Richards, from Seinfeld? He tries improv-ing a riff on race at a comedy club, fails miserably—and for a decade, his career was laid flatter than Rachel Corrie.

Now, if Rachel Corrie’s family is listening, I apologize for that joke. I’m not sorry for making it, but if I personally hurt your feelings, my apologies. And, of course, that’s never enough. Nowadays, if you apologize for offending someone—that’s getting you off too easy. You have to make believe you personally are filled with remorse and disgust for even thinking of the terrible thing you blurted out. Well, I’m sorry, but I’m not that sorry. If you can’t listen to a joke without getting heart palpitations, your cardiologist owes you an apology, not me.

But back to “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”—which, by the way, was reinstated by that California radio station after an overwhelming number of listeners objected to the ban and said the tune was part of their harmless holiday hoopla. I’m gonna add one more h: hypocrisy. How easy for a self-righteous, snowflake radio programmer to say, “ooh, lemme score brownie points with women listeners by pulling this questionable song off the playlist.” Sure, but aren’tcha being a bit selective? The history of popular music is replete with tunes that are sexist, racist, and tasteless. Heck, the Rolling Stones wouldn’t have a career if they treated women as equals. “Under My Thumb”? “Look at that “Stupid Girl”? “Let’s spend the night together, now I need you more than ever?”—that sounds like coercion to me. “Midnight Rambler”—“I’ll stick my knife right down your throat?” And don’t get me started on “Stray Cat Blues”—“I can see that you’re 15 years old. And bring your friend who’s even wilder than you are.,,`cause baby, it’s cold outside.”

And the Stones aren’t the only ones. How about the Beatles? “Catch you with another man, that’s the end little girl” —that sounds like a direct threat and grounds for a restraining order. The Beach Boys: “I wish they all could be California girls.” Why, Brian Wilson? Because they’re blonde and white? Whatsamatter with girls from Boro Park or Harlem? Led Zeppelin—forget Jimmy Page shtupping an underage groupie in real life—even their songs. “Gonna give you every inch of my love?” What if she only wants half your inches? Or a third. Who are you to force her to take the whole megillah? I mean, in my case, it’s two-and-a-half inches, so no harm done, but be that as it may…

So many songs push the envelope of discomfort. If we censor one, must we not censor all? Even the less overt ones? Take “Blowing in the Wind.” Oh, sure, most see it a protest song, but I’ll betcha it triggers a girl or two who was blowing in the back seat. And what about “America, the Beautiful?” Alternate national anthem, you say? Homophobic, I say! “Above the fruited plain”? Fruits belong above with everyone else—just like in the West Village.

Goyim, are you dreaming of a White Christmas? Maybe it’s because you’ve zoned the blacks out of your neighborhood. Simon and Garfunkel—“The Sound of Silence.” Silence has no sound; you’re just fooling deaf people. How cruel! And speaking of sadism, let’s not forget that bastion of insensitivity towards the differently abled: “Amazing Grace.” “Was blind, but now I see.” So you’re saying you’re better than people who are still sightless? “Oh, I was blind, but then I cleaned up my act and now, “Pfffth on you, Ray Charles! Go read a waffle iron, Helen Keller! I’m in the seeing crowd now!”

I’m not saying every song is kind and correct. Some tunes could use a parental sticker: “Warning: Written in 1947 when women were still considered property.” But it’s time for the arts to kick out bleeding hearts. Too many careers are being stunted, too many writers are self-censoring, too many knee-jerk decisions are being made on the basis of, “Gee, there’s a manic depressive somewhere who might hear this and kick over the stool.” Let’s all calm the hell down. If we’ve gotten used to the President’s tweets, we can sing along to a tune with a wince-worthy lyric.

After all, on Passover we end the Seder with “Chad Gadya,” a children’s ditty about animals being beaten and butchered, eating each other, the angel of death kills a guy—if there’s a song that’s gonna send some nine-year-old into math class with his dad’s AR-15, “Chad Gadya” is it.

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

Dave’s Gone By: Dave’s Big Dictionary #029 (12/8/2018): Fudge

Dave’s word of the day is FUDGE, which leads to thoughts both sweet and weird.

Segment aired Dec. 8, 2018 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.

Download Video file of audio content: DICTIONARY-029-12-08-18-Fudge Download

Dave’s Gone By: Dave’s Big Dictionary #028 (11/10/2018): Worrisome

Dave’s word of the day is WORRISOME, which leads to thoughts of not-unhappy fatalism

Segment aired Nov. 3, 2018 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

All content (c)2018 TotalTheater Productions.
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Dave’s Gone By: Dave’s Big Dictionary #027 (11/3/2018): Translation

Dave’s word of the day is TRANSLATION, which leads to thoughts of elementary-school Hebrew and college Spanish

Segment aired Nov. 3, 2018 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

All content (c)2018 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
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