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Here is the 661st episode of the long-running radio show/podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired live on Facebook July 28, 2018. More info: davesgoneby.com.
Host: Dave Lefkowitz Guests: actress & director Melanie Mayron, Dave’s wife Joyce
Featuring: Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews director Melanie Mayron, Inside Broadway, Greeley Crimes & Old Times, Saturday Segue (in the news), StoryTime (A Cow for Hansel), Colorado Limerick of the Damned (Berthoud).
00:00:01 DAVE GOES IN w/ Joyce (the potato story, mayonnaise ice cream, The Brighton Project) 00:33:00 Sponsors 00:37:00 GREELEY CRIMES & OLD TIMES 01:13:00 INSIDE BROADWAY 01:41:00 GUEST: Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews Melanie Mayron 02:27:30 COLORADO LIMERICK OF THE DAMNED – Berthoud 02:32:30 STORYTIME – A Cow for Hansel, pt. 19 02:49:00 Friends of the Daverhood 03:09:00 SATURDAY SEGUE – In the News 03:36:30 DAVE GOES OUT
July 28, 2018 Playlist: “Head Over Heels” (01:36:30; The Go-Go’s). “Sober” (03:03:30; Demi Lovato). “Tape” (03:10:00; Dan Bern). “Bad Moon Rising” (03:16:00; Juliana Hatfield). “Northern California Girls” (03:27:00; Camper Van Beethoven). “An American Concerto” – Movement 3 (03:30:00) & “Movement 1” (03:35:00; Patrick Williams). “August Hair” (03:43:00).
(pictured: Melanie Mayron, A Cow for Hansel, Berthoud, CO, The Brighton Project)
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of November 17th, 2013.
I’m not exactly a spa kind of guy. Relaxation frightens me, and if you’re gonna put me on a massage table, you better have huge boobs and a latex glove because I ain’t leaving without my money’s worth. If I were the spa type, however, one place I would hesitate to visit is the Crystal Sauna Wellness Park in Thuringia, Germany. By all accounts, it’s a lovely place: gourmet food, heated pool, sauna, live entertainment, cozy rooms. They really should promote the place more.
Or maybe they shouldn’t. An advertising agency came up with a print ad for Crystal Park that went on the spa’s website. The copywriter wanted to marry the theme of romance and relaxation with the name of the venue. Something that said, “spend a memorable evening here at the Crystal Spa.” However, those were not the words they used. Instead they said – and I’m not making this up – quote, “Enjoy the evening hours in candlelight and relax, in a long, romantic Kristall-Nacht.”
You’d think a German would know that putting the words “Kristall” and “nacht” together is the opposite of romantic. It’s like a cruise ship promoting itself by saying, “Come with us on a journey of titanic proportions!”
An employee of the spa said the advertisement was, quote, “a misunderstanding,” one that stemmed from the park’s name, Crystal. It certainly had nothing to do with the beginnings of the Holocaust. But all we can wonder is how a German ad exec could not know that November 9th, 1938 was the beginning of Hitler’s final solution. That was the night of the broken glass – “crystal night” – when German-Jewish store owners were beaten, their windows smashed, ethnic slurs painted on their bricks – the first wave of the Holocaust. Most importantly, it proved to the Nazi regime that they could get away with state-sanctioned brutality without anyone trying to stop it.
It’s like when the first West Coast rapper said, “Hey, the album is a little short. Maybe I’ll do a duet with someone else on the label. How bad could it be?” He tries it, and two years later, every other song on a rap CD has a guest appearance. Yes, the scale of the tragedy is different, but the principle is the same.
Even as we move into the 21st century, 80 years and three generations since the Nazis took power, Germany remains a prickly pear. Grandchildren carry the moral burden for something completely alien to them, and yet some of those guilty grandparents still walk the earth. It’s illegal to be a white supremacist there, or to own or display Nazi memorabilia or even give the “Heil Hitler” salute. Which is probably as it should be. There are silly aspects to the censorship, but consider this: in 1945, the world would have had every right to set off 25 atom bombs over Germany. So even allowing that country to survive – not to mention letting them reunite – is an act of mercy for which they should be abundantly grateful.
Sure, the Holocaust is taught over there, relentlessly, I hear. So there are people who say, “it’s enough. The country can’t move forward if you grind everyone’s soul into the past.” But the reply to that is, well, this Park-Spa ad. Some product of the German school system, who went into advertising, didn’t hear the alarm bell go off in his head. He saw “Kristall,” he thought of “nacht,” and he had no compunction about slamming them together. This is why there can never be too much Holocaust education – especially over there. And the same goes for any act of savagery that we never want to see again.
I would hate to think that 60 years from now, in Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan, or Syria, there’d be a commercial on TV going, “Come to Achlabad for your bedding needs. On-sale now, our heavenly mattress and box spring – twin towers of comfort.” Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to a blooper reel.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.
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Here is the 445th episode of the long-running radio show/podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired on UNC Radio, Nov. 16, 2013. Info: davesgoneby.com.
Featuring: Dave chats with actress-singer Andrea Marcovicci;Rabbi Sol Solomon offers his Rabbinical Reflection on Germany’s Crystal Spa; Inside Broadway; Saturday Segue (Bjork); Dylan – Sooner & Later (“Dylan” at 40).
Host: Dave Lefkowitz
Guest: singer-actress Andrea Marcovicci
00:00:01 DAVE GOES IN (ornaments) 00:34:00 SATURDAY SEGUE (Bjork) 01:07:00 INSIDE BROADWAY 01:39:00 GUEST: Andrea Marcovicci 02:37:00 Friends 02:46:00 BOB DYLAN – Sooner & Later (“Dylan” at 40) 03:01:30 Weather 03:03:30 Sponsors 03:11:00 RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #82 – Germany’s Crystal Spa 03:19:00 Joyce on Tape 03:21:00 DAVE GOES OUT
Nov. 16, 2013 Playlist: “Tidal Wave” (00:37:30), “Hit” (00:47:30) & “Birthday” (00:57:30; The Sugarcubes). “Cover Me” (00:40:30), “The Boho Dance” (00:43:00) & “Bachelorette” (00:51:30; Bjork). “Discussing Big Fish” (01:34:00; Andrew Lippa & John August). “All in Fun” (01:37:00), “Life, Love and Laughter” (02:02:00), “Sing Me Not a Ballad” (02:19:30) & “Shakespeare Lied” (02:30:00; Andrea Marcovicci). “Lily of the West” (02:49:00), “Mary Ann” (02:52:30), “Big Yellow Taxi” (02:55:00), “Sarah Jane” (02:57:30). “Get Me Out of Here” (03:25:30; Paul McCartney).
RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #71 (6/23/2013): Michael Karkoc
Aired June 22, 2013 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vY5RnQxvRcc
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of June 23rd, 2013.
The Holocaust. We couldn’t live with it, and 70 years later, we can’t live without it. When it comes to Germany, I believe we can do business with them, we can visit, we can share their arts and culture, and we can even appreciate that the grandchildren of Nazis and the third Reich are blameless for the events of World War II. Nevertheless, it is premature to forgive and forget and make like the Holocaust was ancient history.
We don’t have to wallow, but we also don’t just shake hands and say, “ehhh, the gas chambers were before color TV, so no hard feelings. Your grampa’s a good egg, no matter what paraphernalia he keeps in a trunk in the attic.” We are still reminded of the legacy of that era, most recently by the former Pope, who was a Hitler youth. Yes, every kid was forced to be Hitler youth back then, so it didn’t make the Pope evil, but it sure didn’t make the sonofabitch holy.
And now, in Minnesota, we learn that a Nazi has been living in plain sight for nearly 60 years. Michael Karkoc, 94 years old, lied to American authorities in 1949 when he told them he never did military service for the krauts. Turns out, he was commander of a legion that massacred civilians in the Ukraine and helped stamp out the revolt in the Warsaw Ghetto. Proving that he, directly, killed or tortured anybody will be virtually impossible, but they’ve got strong evidence that Michael Karkoc was yet another pimple on the ass of inhumanity.
What was the smoking gun? His own memoir! This moron published his autobiography, in the Ukrainian language, back in 1995. It’s in the Library of Congress for chrissakes. Shelved right between the book of Job and Milan Kundera. Of course, in his American years, Michael Karkoc has been a model citizen, active in his church, a member of the carpenters’ union and cute like a teddy bear. If he was my next-door neighbor, I probably wouldn’t have suspected a thing – well, unless the lampshade in his window looked suspiciously like my father’s cousin.
But seriously, people are questioning how this demon was allowed into the United States. How did he avoid Nuremberg and get to Minnesota? Granted, living in Minneapolis is its own torture, but still. It is common knowledge that dozens of semi-innocent Germans were given a free pass by the American government for their scientific knowledge and skilled labor. Other war criminals forged documents, paid bribes or lied their way into the good old USA. Ancestry.com and Google did not exist in 1946. Back then, if you didn’t find the birth certificate or the Hollerith card that said, “This guy experimented on gypsies” or “that guy built a scaffold for carrot stealers,” how would you know? In Michael Karkoc’s case, they blew it.
And now you’ll have ignoramuses compounding the travesty by saying, “He’s 94 years old, he’s been a good American, he didn’t pull the trigger – why waste time and money prosecuting a harmless old fart? How many villages is he gonna burn down when he can’t even stir his own Metamucil?” By that logic, every senior citizen behind bars should get a free pass. Charles Manson, Son of Sam – hey, Mark David Chapman isn’t going to kill John Lennon again. Let’s give him fifty bucks, a shoeshine and a rent-controlled apartment in the Dakota.”
Insanity. Some crimes against the world mandate that whoever committed them be removed from society and punished. There is no statute of limitations on the Holocaust. When the last German, or Austrian, or complicit Frenchman or Italian collaborator – when the last person who was alive in 1945 drops dead, then we can truly talk about the Holocaust being history. Until then, I don’t care if you’re 94 or 114, you should be shot like a wild dog and your body dumped in a compost pile for pigs to feast on. Of course, I also feel that way about Kenny G, but this is different. Living a long time does not make you innocent. It makes you lucky to escape the retribution you should have endured way back when. And if Michael Karkoc was just following orders, well, so are the Polish prison doctors who’ll strap him to a table and jam that last needle in his arm. Cruel? It’s an easier way to go than his victims.
So congratulations to the justice department for finding this insect, better late than never. And even if Michael Karkoc joins the choir of eternal hell before standing trial, may he never sleep another peaceful night, may he watch his wife – yes, he has a wife – may he watch her die of heartbreak and shame. And cancer. And may Karkoc’s son – who, of course, denies that his father was a Nazi – like he would know – may his son become like a beacon unto the world. By pouring gasoline on himself and lighting a match.
In this case, the sins of the fathers do get visited onto the children because the father was allowed to live and procreate – a blessing denied the dozens of Jews shot to death or burned alive by his military unit. Yes, I may sound extraordinarily punitive, but nothing about the Holocaust was, or should ever be, ordinary. For the past seven decades, Michael Karkoc passed himself off as an ordinary man. And soon, he will be an ordinary corpse in an ordinary grave. In fact, the only thing out of the ordinary will be the stench of my urine on his weeds.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.
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.
Dave Lefkowitz interviews Viacom television mogul Ralph Baruch
Topics: television, Viacom, CBS
Segment originally aired Dec. 9, 2007 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.
Sad Note: Our Friend of the Daverhood, Ralph Baruch, passed March 3, 2016 at age 92.
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: Full Episode
All content (c)2007 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
Click above to listen to the episode (audio only).
Here is the 250th episode of the long-running radio show/podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired on NY’s WGBB-AM radio, Dec. 9, 2007. Info: davesgoneby.com.
Host: Dave Lefkowitz
Guest: Viacom founder Ralph Baruch Call-in Guests: Dave’s dad, Philip Lefkowitz: and Dave’s wife, Joyce
Featuring: Dave interviews Viacom founder Ralph Baruch; call-ins, Inside Broadway.
00:00:01 Pre-show excerpt w/ Philip Lefkowitz 00:11:00 DAVE GOES IN 00:22:00 CALL-IN GUEST: Dave’s wife Joyce 00:30:00 INSIDE BROADWAY – News, Grinch, & Farnsworth 00:41:00 GUEST: Ralph Baruch 01:08:00 DAVE GOES OUT
Dec. 9, 2007 Playlist: “Sleeping with the Television On” (Billy Joel).
Ralph BaruchHow the Grinch Stole ChristmasDave `n Dad
