Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews Eliezer Mayer (aka Elli the King of Broadway)
Topics include: cabaret, Judaism, the Holocaust, Orthodox.
Segment aired Dec. 20, 2014 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.
All content (c)2014 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com More information about Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com
Topics include: My Son the Waiter, Judaism, George Carlin, Joan Rivers, acting
Segment scheduled to air Oct. 18, 2014 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.
All content (c)2014 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com More information about Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com
click above to listen to the episode (audio only).
Here is the 481st episode of the long-running radio show/podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired on UNC Radio, Oct. 18, 2014. Info: davesgoneby.com.
Featuring: Part two of Dave’s chat with Dick Cavett. Plus: Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with Brad Zimmerman (My Son, the Waiter: A Jewish Tragedy), Inside Broadway, the Wretched Pun of Destiny (Reese), Dylan – Sooner & Later (lyrics), Saturday Segues (Chuck Berry, Wait Staff)
Guests: comedian Brad Zimmerman, broadcast legend Dick Cavett
00:00:01 DAVE GOES IN (ebola) 00:23:30 SATURDAY SEGUE – Waiter 00:39:30 Sponsors 00:51:30 GUEST: Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews Brad Zimmerman 01:35:00 THE WRETCHED PUN OF DESTINY – Reese 01:37:00 INSIDE BROADWAY 01:55:30 Friends 02:03:30 BOB DYLAN – Sooner & Later (Lyrics) 02:33:00 RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #109 – Ebola 02:38:30 GUEST: Dick Cavett (part two) 02:57:30 Weather 03:00:00 SATURDAY SEGUE – Chuck Berry 03:19:30 DAVE GOES OUT
Oct. 18, 2014 Playlist: “Waiter” (00:24:00; Nellie McKay), “Waitress” (00:28:30; Jane Siberry), “Dear Catastrophe Waitress” (00:31:00), “Tip That Waitress” (00:33:30; Loudon Wainwright III). “I Will Never Leave You” (01:51:30; Side Show 2014 Bway cast w/ Erin Davie & Emily Padgett). “Tombstone Blues” (02:09:00), “Tombstone Blues” ({alternative version}; 02:15:00), “Tangled Up in Blue” (02:18:30) & “Tangled Up in Blue” ({live 1975 version}; 02:24:30; Bob Dylan). “Roll Over Beethoven” (03:03:30), “Havana Moon” (03:06:00) “Oh Baby Doll” (03:09:00), “Almost Gone” (03:11:30) & “Vaya Con Dios” (03:24:00; Chuck Berry).
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of September 21, 2014.
Over this summer, I had my beefs with celebrities – some Jewish, some not – and their bashing of Israel over the Gaza War. Celebrities who are either misinformed or simply too damn dumb to know who their friends are in this world, versus who the enemies are. Who is creating a climate of death and destruction versus who is just trying to live without being hit by rockets every day? So fie on Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem and Rihanna and that putz from Pink Floyd Roger Waters, and Chuck D, who’s been salting his lyrics with anti-Semitic slurs since day one. You wanna know what a Terrordome is, Chuck? Go live in Israel and be forced to live under an iron terrordome so that Hamas rockets don’t fall on your black ass. Why don’t you do that, Chuck D-spicable?
Meanwhile, other famous folk have been fabulous! Howard Stern, Bill Maher, Joan Rivers – she should rest in peace – Woody Allen, who gave a wonderful, insightful interview about the situation. He was the first one to say that if, back in 1948, the Arabs had treated Israel like a friendly neighbor instead of hornets’ nest, everything would be different. Notice: it’s all the funny people, the comedians, who see through the Palestinian PR poppycock. I guess it takes a humorist to shoot the arrows of logic through balloons filled with hot-air. Or, in the Arabs’ case, airplanes filled with terrorists. Thank God the funny people get it, because all these self-inflated “serious” actors and musical artistes – they look in the mirror and see Felix Frankfurter staring back at them – instead of the hot dogs they really are.
Even so, I come today not to vilify my enemies but to glorify my brethren and, in this case, sistren. In celebrity news last week, it was revealed that the Jewish people will be gaining a notable. The decades since World War II have seen our numbers chopped by the Holocaust, by assimilation, by intermarriage, by – you should pardon the expression – conversion (ptooey!). Now, the Orthodox are doing their best to reverse the trend. They’re shtupping and shtupping and being fruitful and multiplying, which has been heavenly to the cause, even as it’s been hell on the welfare rolls.
But we cannot rely merely on the horniness of our most devout cohorts to bolster our population. It is a delight, therefore, to report that yes, we’re getting one back. Someone who, if nothing else, raises the overall good-looks quotient of our nation by at least a percent or two.
Gwyneth Paltrow, a shikseh goddess if there ever was one – tall, blonde, willowy, pretty as a picture, and pretty in motion pictures – Gwyneth Paltrow is converting to Judaism. Now, to be clear, she’s already halfway there. Her father was television producer Bruce Paltrow, a proud member of the tribe. Her mother, however, is the lovely non-Jewish actress Blythe Danner. She’s the one on TV commercials hawking Prolia, a pharmaceutical that helps weak bones, which is ironic because you don’t get nicer bones than Blythe Danner or her kid.
Little Gwyneth was raised in a home with both religions, which she found very nice. But in recent years, she’s been studying Kabbalah, which is a weird, mystical occult offshoot of Judaism. Kind of liked dungeons and dragons, only the dungeons are synagogues and the dragons have big noses and law degrees.
But Paltrow is not just being swayed by a cultish micro-sect. She’s done her homework. In 2011, she appeared on that TV show that delves into your genealogical history. She went into the Eldridge Street Synagogue on the Lower East Side and looked at pictures of her father’s father’s father – a great Rabbi. And his father, also a Kabbalistic Rebbe of note. With people like that in your lineage, what are you gonna be, a Presbyterian?
And Ms. Paltrow has said that she wants to bring her children up, quote, “in a Jewish environment.” Well, she’s in Hollywood, so she’s already there. But she’s got one kid named Moses – so come on, she might as well have named him Jewy Jewberg – and the other child she famously named Apple. Well, is there a more Jewish fruit? From Eve in the garden to the treat we dip in honey for a sweet New Year, the apple is a treasured food for our people – and it doesn’t clog up your tuchas like matzoh.
And speaking of eating, Paltrow has said that she loves to cook and feed people, making her a Jewish mother, and she has amazing genes, making her a Jewish princess. And hey, considering all the macrobiotic laboratory crap she eats, she’s a Jewish doctor, too!
Now, all of this could just be a star’s fad, or Paltrow trying to find herself after consciously uncoupling from her shaygitz husband of more than a decade. Whatever the reason, I hope it takes. I hope she finds in Judaism a beautiful way of life – not from all the rules, not from the mystical narishkeit, but from fully joining a people that has survived the worst the universe can throw at them and still turn to each other and say, “Really? Those shoes with that shirt?”
Welcome, Golden Gwyneth, to the fold, and when your kids turn 12, look me up. I can have them chanting the Haftorah like Yossele Rosenblatt in three months flat, or your money back. Well, some of your money back.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.
Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews singer-songwriter Janis Ian
Topics include: At Seventeen, LGBT, Judaism.
Segment aired Sept. 6, 2014 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.
All content (c)2014 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com More information about Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com
Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews playwright Barry Levey
Topics include: Hoaxocaust, Judaism, New York International Fringe Festival, Holocaust.
Segment aired Aug. 9, 2014 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.
All content (c)2014 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com More information about Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com
RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #104 (8/3/2014): Great Guns in Gaza
aired Aug. 2, 2014 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/aNHPRoAQWFc
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of August 3rd, 2014.
If you play with fire, you’re gonna get burned. If you keep throwing gasoline on that fire, you’re gonna get burned blacker than the New York Knicks in a lunar eclipse. Or, put another way, if you beat up your wife ten times, each time she will forgive you, she’ll wear a band-aid and concealer, and she’ll live in fear until the next flare up. But on the eleventh time, if you haven’t killed her yet, she’s gonna call a friend of a friend named Nunzio, and, for a fee, he will relocate you – to the middle of the East River.
It’s the law of “enough is enough.” If you are the nation of Israel, and surrounding your borders are a people who have sworn to drive you into the sea . . . These people fire rockets, indiscriminately and daily, into your heimat. If you’re Israel, you tolerate a dozen rockets, a hundred rockets, a thousand fakakteh rockets that usually land in the middle of nowhere, thank God. But rocket number 1,001? It’s time to pull your Incredible Hulk costume out of the closet and kick some ass.
Three weeks ago, as I’m sure you recall, three innocent Jewish teenagers were slaughtered when they hitchhiked a little too far into Gaza. This was not just another act of violence – you know, like Saturday night in Chicago – this was a flashpoint. It was the moment the Israeli government could say, “You know what? We give the Palestinians the Gaza Strip in exchange for peace, and they give us our teenagers back in pieces. Enough with their rockets, enough with the terrorism, enough with the bullshit about Hamas being a legitimate political organization; it’s time to open up a can of whoop-tuchas on this enemy that means us only harm and destruction. Bring it.”
In my previous Rabbinical Reflection, which I’m sure you’ve nearly memorized and put on flash cards for easy reference, I urged the IDF to take action in Gaza. To avenge the death of those boys and give the camel jockeys payback for years of tears, fears and jeering Emirs. I am thrilled, therefore, that Benjamin Netanyahu gathered up his army into a white-and-blue fist, and they’ve been pounding the Gaza goons ever since.
Dead civilians? Unfortunate casualties? For sure, and what a shame. It’s called collateral damage, and every war has `em. And the Arab teenager that Israeli extremists abducted and killed in retaliation? No one’s proud of that. I’ll even go as far as saying that Israel hasn’t gone out of its way every single time to make sure they’re only blowing up militants and not bystanders two feet away from militants. But when did the Arabs ever make a distinction between soldiers and regular folk? Bombs on buses? Shrapnel in cafes? Mass murders of Olympic athletes and commercial airplanes slamming into the tallest buildings in New York? It’s a good thing I’m not an army General, because I’d napalm every speck of Gaza with a tent on it.
And where does American stand in all this? It’s honestly hard to tell. Barack Obama and John Kerry are talking the left-wing, liberal talk of “stop the fighting now, it’s a humanitarian crises, Israel and Hamas need to cease fire immediately and sit down at the table because there’s wrongs on both sides” – all the typical crybaby blah-blah that negates the basic fact that Israel tends to be in the right 90 percent of the time.
However, words and actions are entirely different things, especially in diplomacy. And for all the handwringing blather as a sop to the “Democracy Now” crowd, the Obama administration has, until this point, watched from the sidelines and let Israel do what it has to do. Thank you, Mr. President. If our Secretary of State wants to appease the Muslims by making noises about how Israel is being too harsh and causing too much suffering to the poor, innocent Palestinians, no problem. Just give Yisroel time to collapse the tunnels, kill the killers and drag Hamas, begging and desperate, to the outhouse of surrender. By eliminating terrorists and religious fanatics, Israel is doing America favor after favor, and I honestly believe Obama and company realize that – no matter how many times Republican bloggers call him “Hussein” and make him sound like the love child of Josef Stalin and Ayatollah Khomeini.
It’s the nature of Israel that whenever we do strike back against those who oppress us, we have to apologize for killing more of them than they of us. When our missiles hit their targets, when 100 Palestinians die for every Israeli soldier, that’s unseemly somehow. It should be more balanced. We should die more just to ratchet up the sympathy vote. Sorry, Charlie. The goal is to weaken Hamas and make Israel safe from attack. If that means bombing Gaza back to the stone age, so be it. Besides, Arab children have proven quite skillful at throwing stones, so it’s right up their alley. Just don’t expect to throw stones at Jews anymore, because we will fire them right back at a hundred times the speed.
Go Israel! Go Bibi! And remember what Abba Eban said, “It is better to be disliked than pitied.” I’m both, but I’m beyond giving a crap.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.
click above to listen to the episode (audio only).
Here is the 474th episode of the long-running radio show/podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired on UNC Radio, Aug. 2, 2014. Info: davesgoneby.com.
Featuring: Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with actor-singer George Ball. Plus: Inside Broadway, Saturday Segues (Joseph Spence, Tony Bennett), Rabbi Sol’s Rabbinical Reflection (Going Great Guns in Gaza) and the Wretched Pun of Destiny (Football).
Guests: songwriter George Ball, Dave’s wife Joyce
00:00:01 DAVE GOES IN w/ Joyce 00:30:00 SATURDAY SEGUE – Joseph Spence 00:44:00 INSIDE BROADWAY 00:53:00 WRETCHED PUN OF DESTINY – Football 00:55:00 GUEST: Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews George Ball 02:03:00 RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #104 (Going Great Guns in Gaza) 02:10:30 BOB DYLAN – Sooner & Later: Another Side Knocked Out Again 02:34:00 Friends 02:41:00 SATURDAY SEGUE – Tony Bennett 03:01:00 DAVE GOES OUT
Aug. 2, 2014 Playlist: “Good Morning Mr. Walker” (00:30:30), “Yellow Bird” (00:33:00), “Rock Daniel” (00:35:30), “Goodnight Irene” (00:37:30; Joseph Spence). “A New Sun in the Sky” (“The Band Wagon” 1959 film soundtrack; 00:51:30). “Some Enchanted Evening” (00:55:00), “If I Were You” (01:05:00), “The Moon is Still Over her Shoulder” (01:14:00), “Fanette” (01:27:30), “Highway Patrolman” (01:44:30) & “Save the Last Dance for Me” (01:58:00; George Ball). “Ballad in Plain D” (02:40:30) & “Brownsville Girl” (02:23:00; Bob Dylan). “Until I Met You” (02:44:30) “Shakin’ the Blues Away” (02:47:30), “Lost in the Stars” (02:49:00), “For Once in My Life” (02:53:30) & “The Best is Yet to Come” (02:57:00; Tony Bennett). “August Winds” (03:03:00; Sting).
RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #105 (8/31/14): Eventful August
aired Aug. 30, 2014 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJUCZgwGJnI
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of August 31st, 2014.
Well, it’s been an eventful month in World Woebegone. What should have been a nice, relaxing laze through the end of summertime – or for those of you in New Zealand, your last good shot at a snowball fight – instead has been an August fraught with war, tumult and misfortune.
Closest to my own heart, of course, is the battle raging between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza. When last we checked in together, Israel was mourning the loss of three innocent hitchhikers who took a wrong turn at Albuquerque. That was followed by Palestinians firing rockets at Israel – actually it was preceded by and followed by Palestinians firing rockets at Israel. Which led to Israel saying “enough’s enough.”
Which led to massive bombings, more rockets, a couple of psychotic Israelis killing Arab children, a few cease fires that lasted long enough for the Arabs to import more rockets, lots of dead Arab terrorists, Hamas militants and semi-innocent-semi-civilians, too many dead IDF soldiers, and a battle that President Obama has been kind enough to let Israel wage without much interference beyond the occasional “naughty-naughty.”
My feelings about the Gaza situation have been spoken so many times, I feel like a “Murder She Wrote” rerun on the Hallmark Channel. Still, I’ll say it again: tiny little Israel shaved off a sliver of itself to give the Arabs in exchange for peace. What do the Palestinians give us in return? Thousands of attempted murders by rocket attacks, punctuated by the occasional real murder, just to break the monotony. How does Hamas expect to give the Palestinians a permanent home if they’re such horrible tenants when they rent?
And to all the left-wing ignoramuses – ignorami? Ignoramians? – okay, morons, who march in Times Square and the garment district with their Arab flags and their Zionism-is-Nazism banners and their screaming about Israeli war crimes, I will say once again: when the Arabs stop terrorizing Jews – and every other culture in the Western World, we’ll stop killing Arabs back. And if they don’t like living in or near Israel, there’s plenty of Arab land in the Middle East where they can worship Islam, stone their women and cut off each other’s hands for picking their noses.
Oh, and for all those “Democracy Now” types bashing Israel for killing Arabs, guess how many Arabs were killed by Arabs in Syria? 191,000, give or take. Meanwhile, Iraq is falling apart, so we have to go back there because of militant Mohammedans, and in response, a Syrian terrorist cut off the head of an American journalist and put it on youtube to see how many likes he could get. Some say the video is a fake, but even if it is, somebody got his head handed to him.
And speaking of violence: it just wouldn’t be a summer in the American south without racial tension, would it? So a black guy shoplifts from a convenience store, roughs up the owner a little bit when he tries to resist, gets stopped by a cop for reasons that have nothing to do with the crime, starts charging at the officer – or surrendering – depending on whose story you believe, and gets a half a dozen bullets in his head for his troubles.
Are the blacks upset? You bet. The guy had no knife, no gun, no nothing. Instead of his deadliest weapon, the cop coulda reached for a taser, or his nightstick. Then again, Michael Brown coulda reached for his wallet instead of stealing those cigars. He’s lucky the store owner didn’t blow his head off before the po-po did.
Obviously, police have a trigger-finger problem, especially when it comes to foreigners or people whose skin is darker than your average manila file folder. So if this whole Ferguson, Missouri calamity leads to better policing, I’m all for it. But when I see protestors willing to believe everything bad about American cops and everything angelic and wonderful about Michael Brown, my eyebrow rises. And when I see other protestors somehow equating Israel’s retaliation against Hamas with the death of this teenager, my gorge rises. And when I see actress Penelope Cruz denouncing Israel for committing genocide, my dick rises. I can’t help it, it’s Penelope Cruz. But the bitch really needs to show more tits and less mouth. I hope she chokes on her Nescafe.
Speaking of choking, a fond farewell to Robin Williams, actor, comedian and apparently all-around good guy. He really wasn’t that funny, but he made such a constant effort to be funny that you had to give him props and marvel at his gusto. I liked him in “Mork and Mindy,” I loved him in “Awakenings,” and I’ll miss his risk-taking performances as much as his more patented standup. Yes, he suffered from depression, but if you made “Patch Adams,” you’d be depressed, too.
We also had a suicide by Nascar, with Kevin Ward, Jr., stepping out of his vehicle to confront driver Tony Stewart for sending him into a spin. Okay, here’s a math problem everyone: If you stand in front of a car going 250 miles an hour, what are the odds of getting hit by a car going 250 miles an hour? I’d say 100 percent, Alex. Maybe Kevin Ward was too angry to think straight, but he was certainly too dumb to live.
Then again, the state of our government could make anyone suicidal. The Republicans keep vowing to impeach the president for being Karl Marx, while 2016 GOP front runner Rick Perry gets indicted for being Machiavelli.
We lost a nice Jewish girl named Betty Jane Persky who grew up to be Lauren Bacall, and the month of August also gave us a 6.0 earthquake in Northern California, causing millions of dollars of damage to vineyards in Sonoma and Napa Valley. Great, just when we need to get rip-roaring drunk to forget all the crap that’s happening, God smashes the bottles.
So where will we be a month from now? Will Russia invade the Ukraine? Will September 11th come and go without ISIS offering us an anniversary gift? Will Malaysia start making airplanes out of rubber, just in case they have to bounce? Hang on, my friends, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of November 10th, 2013.
As if Americans weren’t fat enough already, the fine people at Frito Lay have come up with a new snack item that began its rollout last week: chocolate-covered potato chips. That’s right, they’re dipping Lay’s potato chips, the wavy kind, and covering them with milk chocolate. The idea is to create a salty-sweet taste sensation – one that people will remember fondly ten years from now when they’re in the emergency room having their arteries unblocked.
Now, I am a big fan of Lay’s; that includes the Hawaii kind, the sex kind AND the snack-food kind. And of all the big-batch commercial brands, Lay’s, in my humble opinion, does the best potato chips. My dear wife, Miriam Libby, says they make her think of the ideal man: golden, big, and just the right thickness.
I grew up on Wise potato chips, which are tasty but greasy and small. And half of them are partially burned. Eating a bag of Wise chips is like going to a garage sale after a fire; there’s good stuff, but you have to check every item for smoke damage. I like Utz chips because of the name; it sounds Jewish. Utz! Utz! It’s the noise a guy in assisted living makes when he gets off the couch. Uuuutz! Uuuutz! Ut a zoy!
And then you’ve got your boutique chips. These small-batch micro-fryers with their organic chips and their veggie chips and the kettle chips. I don’t get the kettle thing; it’s like they throw in a whole potato with the skin on, and it comes out so crunchy it makes your head hurt. You’ve got your no-salt potato chips…why bother? At their core, potato chips are a salt-conveyance apparatus, just like celery is merely a less-guilty way of getting to the onion dip.
You’ve got ketchup-flavored potato chips, which I think is just trying too hard. You’ve got Pringles – which the company says aren’t potato chips at all, they’re potato “crisps.” Who are they trying to fool? Chips, crisps – “ooh, I don’t have a beard, I have facial hair.” Get over it Pringles, you pretentious assholes.
And speaking of assholes, remember potato chips with Olestra? It was an idea by snack-food makers to add this fat substitute to the food, so you could eat without getting all the cholesterol. You also wouldn’t gain much weight, because the Olestra gave you rampant diarrhea. What a brilliant strategy for dieting! You eat five-dozen potato chips, but you stay slim because a half hour later, out they go. And Proctor & Gamble wins, because as soon as you empty your guts, you’re hungry again. So you can have more potato chips. And then you shit, and then you eat more chips. And then you shit, and you eat more chips. You don’t even have to leave the bathroom. Why risk a horrible accident? Sit on the crapper, put a Ruffles back on the sink, grab a case of Charmin, and you’re in business. Lean back, eat a chip; lean forward, take a dump. Eat a chip, take a dump, eat a chip, take a dump. Repeat until dehydration. You could just sit all day on the toilet eating potato chips. Which is, I believe, how we got Wendy Williams.
I’m pretty sure that Lay’s’ new chips are made with chocolate and not ExLax. And I’m sure they’re delicious. After all, the salty-sweetness combo is not new.
Chocolate-covered pretzels have been popular for decades, and Trader Joe’s was dipping potato chips in chocolate when I was still in Rabbinical school . . . for a few weeks.
Is it gilding the lily, though? Separately, both snack items are close to perfect. The first thing the archangel Gabriel hands you when you get up to heaven is a Cadbury bar. Or, if you’re Mother Teresa, a Godiva assortment. And if there were one snack food most people would take to a desert island, it would be potato chips. Which is stupid, because you’re surrounded by non-potable water, but I’m assuming if you’re on an island that somehow has unlimited supplies of potato chips, on the other side of the island there’s probably a storeroom Diet Pepsi.
But if you put these two ideal items together – potato chips and chocolates, are you overwhelming your tastebuds? I mean, I like Picasso and I like Grant Wood, but you put `em together, and you’ve got the pitchfork sticking through the old woman’s eye. And that’s because her eye is where her elbow should be.
Yes, chocolate and peanut butter go together. And you can even put chocolate – unsweetened – on chicken to make a mole sauce. Or you can put it on moles to make a chicken sauce. Your call.
I suppose the main issue is health-related, especially for weight watchers. At least with regular potato chips – of course, you can’t eat just one, but if you eat ten or so, you have your little indulgence, you count the calories, and then you watch your snacking for the rest of the day. With these chocolate things, one chip and you have to subsist on water and two grapes for the rest of the month. Two ounces have so many calories, they have to write out the number with commas.
Look, I am all for new products, more variety, novel taste sensations. I’m only saying it would be nice if Proctor & Gamble and Nabisco and Nestle would take a little of their R&D money and figure out how to make okra taste as good as an M&M. Maybe there’s a way to combine cauliflower with fish-oil, so that every child in America would be in the supermarket going, “Mommy, mommy! I want caulifish! Oreos are too sweet, nachos are boring – where’s the aisle with the candy bars made of onions and goat milk?”
Anyway, all this talk of snack food is making me hungry. I got my potato chips. (crinkling) Let’s see… I want something sweet… what can I dip it in? mmm…borscht!
(eating) This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.
