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Here is the 838th episode of the long-running radio show/video podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired live on Facebook, Saturday morning, Feb. 19, 2022. Info: davesgoneby.com
Guests: musician Judy Collins; actress Vicki Quade; theater critics David Sheward and Leslie (Hoban) Blake
Featuring: Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews singer-songwriter Judy Collins; Rabbi Sol’s Rabbinical Reflection on Poems for Valentine’s Day; Today/Yesterday Trivia Quiz (Feb. 19 w/ David Sheward, Leslie (Hoban) Blake, Vicki Quade); Colorado Limerick of the Damned (Model, CO).
00:00:01 DAVE GOES IN w/ Joyce (space heater, Gerri Curls, masking rules) 01:00:00 GUEST: Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews Judy Collins 01:35:30 TODAY/YESTERDAY Trivia Quiz (Feb. 19 w/ Vicki Quade, Leslie (Hoban) Blake, David Sheward) 03:25:00 GREELEY CRIMES & OLD TIMES 03:49:30 RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #174 (Poems for Valentine’s Day) 03:59:00 Friends of the Daverhood 04:13:00 COLORADO LIMERICK OF THE DAMNED (Model, CO) 04:17:00 DAVE GOES OUT
RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #174 – Poems for Valentine’s Day
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a special poetical Rabbinical Reflection for Gingold Theatrical Group’s Virtual Open Mic Night on this Valentine’s Day, 2022.
You know, poetry is central to the Jewish people, from biblical psalms to Leonard Nimoy’s “Warmed by Love.” Since poetry expresses love, I wish to share with you some classic Jewish poems of romance and arousal. For example, Rabbi Tseitlin of Detroit gave us this most appetizing sonnet:
Shall I compare thee to a hot knish?
Thou art more tasty and much cuter
With boobs as plump as gefilte fish
And scrumptious nipples on each hooter.
A knish is square, but thou do curve
With far more spice than hot pastrami
Thy sexiness makes me a perv
When thou dost swallow my salami
Thou art chicken soup for my soul
and matzoh farfel for my heart
Your kugel makes me lose control
In a good way — not like when I shart
So long as Jews can shlep and kvetch and daven
I eat you up and give you all my lovin’.
Is it any wonder Rabbi Tseitlin has restraining orders in twelve different Michigan counties?
Let us consider this poem from the great Rabbi Vogel of Omsk:
Roses are red, violets are thrilling me
I love you so much,
but my prostate is killing me.
Inspired by Rabbi Vogel, I, too, have written short verse, many in the haiku form. For example, this Chanukah-ku:
Dreidels made of clay.
When they’re dry, it’s time to play.
Women? The reverse.
Of course, not all poems about love are so refined. For an earthier exploration of desire, we turn to Rebbetzin Meyrowitz, widow of the great Estonian Rabbi, Leroy. Here’s a gem from her shocking blue period, shocking because it was her first period since her thirties.
There was a young girl from Tiberias
whose horniness made her delirious
They found her in Gaza
Undressed in a plaza
Her pregnancy ain’t that mysterious
In her latter years, Rebbetzin Meyrowitz became more audacious, disgusting even, as when she wrote:
In order to brighten his sukkas
Reb Mendelsson hired three hookas
They pulled on his payess
and sat on his fayess
and jammed an etrog in his tukas.
My friends, somewhere in the Torah — I’m not sure where — it says “Love Thy Neighbor.” — not possible. But we can still aspire to love, if only as a poetic ideal.
My hope for all of you during these times is that you receive love. And when you do, may you have enough money to pay the girl and her pimp.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York. Happy Valentine’s Day.
Here is the 829th episode of the long-running radio show/video podcast Dave’s Gone By, which aired live on Facebook, Saturday morning, Dec. 18, 2021. Info: davesgoneby.com.
Guests: actor Ronald Rand, actress Vicki Quade, theater critics David Sheward, Leslie (Hoban) Blake
Featuring: Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with actor Ronald Rand; Greeley Crimes & Old Times; Colorado Limerick of the Damned (Paonia, CO); Today/Yesterday Trivia Quiz (Dec. 18 w/ Ronald Rand, Leslie (Hoban) Blake, Vicki Quade, David Sheward).
00:00:01 DAVE GOES IN w/ Joyce (understudies, Omicron)
00:42:00 GUEST: Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews Ronald Rand
01:23:00 TODAY/YESTERDAY Trivia Quiz (Dec. 18 w/ Vicki Quade, Ronald Rand, Leslie (Hoban) Blake, David Sheward)
03:05:00 GREELEY CRIMES & OLD TIMES
03:20:00 Friends of the Daverhood
03:29:00 COLORADO LIMERICK OF THE DAMNED (Paonia)
03:34:00 DAVE GOES FURTHER IN (the saturated iPad)
03:44:30 DAVE GOES OUT
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Here is the 824th episode of the long-running radio show/video podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired live on Facebook, Saturday morning, Nov. 13, 2021. Info: davesgoneby.com.
Guests: author Alexis Greene; Rabbi Sol Solomon.
Featuring: Dave chats with theater critic Alexis Greene; Rabbi Sol Solomon attends a Bat Mitzvah; Greeley Crimes & Old Times; My Sick Mind (Travis Scott); Colorado Limerick of the Damned (Sterling).
00:00:01 DAVE GOES IN w/ Joyce (Bat Mitzvah) 00:15:30 GUEST: Alexis Greene 00:53:00 Friends of the Daverhood 01:07:00 MY SICK MIND (Travis Scott) 01:20:00 GREELEY CRIMES & OLD TIMES 01:32:30 COLORADO LIMERICK OF THE DAMNED (Sterling) 01:39:30 RABBI SOL SOLOMON ATTENDS A BAT MITZVAH (Adam & Stefanie Sheflin) 02:02:00 DAVE GOES OUT
Click above to watch Rabbi Sol Solomon’s interview with Ken Ludwigclick above to listen (audio only)
Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with playwright KEN LUDWIG
Topics include: Lend Me a Tenor; Dear Jack, Dear Louise; Harvard; Leonard Bernstein, Judaism.
Segment aired Oct. 30, 2021 as part of the 822nd episode of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio/video 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.
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for mid-October 2021.
It has been a sad and surreal year for fans of a little music group called The Rolling Stones. You may have heard of them. They began as a blues-rock band in the mid-60s and then, for several years, made the most compelling rock and roll in the history of ever. Then Mick Taylor quit and they vacillated between still kinda-great and name one decent album in the last 40 years.
But through it all, they were the Stones — the swagger, the sound, the mix of energy and grit — and not the kind you get from a Larabar. When Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, and — oh, okay, we’ll include Ronnie Wood — when they locked in together, you knew they were still the greatest band in the world who weren’t the Beatles.
And then this August, cancer took Charlie. We all felt like we’d been kick-drummed in the stomach. But Ronnie, Mick, and Keef had already decided the show must go on. They survived Brian Jones doing the backstroke, they endured when Bill Wyman quit to concentrate on divorcing his 10-year-old wife. Jagger’s open-heart surgery? Richards’ urban-legend bloodstream? Bumps in the road; the Stones roll on, touring as we speak.
So why am I complaining? Well, because I’m Jewish. But also because Mick and Keith recently made a decision about one of their classic songs: “Brown Sugar.” What is “Brown Sugar” about? Nobody knows. Mick Jagger doesn’t know, and he wrote it. He just threw some ideas on paper about white men shtupping the hell out of black women — not an uncommon theme for the guy who wrote “Sweet Black Angel” and “Some Girls.” But because of these woke times, and because the lyrics reference slavery in a jaw-droppingly tasteless way, “Brown Sugar” is now officially retired from the Stones catalogue.
Since its 1971 debut on Sticky Fingers, “Brown Sugar” has been a radio staple and concert favorite. Fans, black and white, boogied to it, and, guess what? They did not spontaneously combust or weep indignantly at the lyrics. Granted, it’s impossible to understand the lyrics burbling out of Mick Jagger: “Old boy stagecoach hypocotyl beans” – what? But even if you have the lyric sheet, you don’t hear the song and think, “Ooh, this makes me want to take a riding crop to Harriet Tubman.” Not to mention, the narrator of “Brown Sugar” is complimenting black women on their pleasant vaginal flavor. Hey, I’ve eaten some Jewish women, and it’s like having an anchovy throw up on your teeth.
No question, “Brown Sugar” is all kinds of politically incorrect, but so are a million rap numbers that do a lot worse things to black women than tasting them. Still, what scares me about the decision by Jagger and Richards — who, as authors and performers, have every right to do as they please with their work — what scares me is precedent. If you self-censor one particularly egregious tune, how long before other Stones masterpieces fall under the same scrutiny and become cancel-culture casualties?
Feminists give “Under My Thumb” the middle finger, your local PTA is sure to ban “Little T&A,” and born-again Christians raise hell against “Sympathy for the Devil.” But sometimes the offense is more subtle. What if Al Sharpton comes out against “Paint it Black” for its negativity about that color? What if “19th Nervous Breakdown” starts giving mentally ill people their 20th? What if third-grade English teachers — already despairing over teaching this generation anything that isn’t a digital game — what if they hear “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and get pushed over the edge by the double negative? (So he can get satisfaction?) What if animal-rights activists protest “Beast of Burden” and transgender woman feel bad about “Rocks Off”? What if the makers of tampons and maxipads lobby to ban “Let it Bleed?” What if the makers of Imodium want to censor “Let it Loose?” What if deaf people say “no” to “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking,” blind people have a problem with “Far Away Eyes,” and hemophiliacs cringe at “Too Much Blood”? What if Catholics try to block “No Expectations” because that conflicts with their idea of the afterlife, or if Rabbis urge congregants to delete the song “Happy” because they know it’s something Jews will never be?
Instead of cancel, cancel, cancel, we need context, context, context. Whether it’s Birth of a Nation, a Statue of Thomas Jefferson, Mickey Rooney in yellowface, or Wagner at the Israel Philharmonic — explain it, debate it, keep it. At some point, we have to tell all the woke whiners, “You can’t always get what you want. Go ahead and vent at what vexes you. Give a speech before the movie, put a sign near the statue, have the deejay say, `This next song is `Brown Sugar.’ It might be about slavery, or drugs, or dessert. Either way, don’t try this at home.”
Asked about “Brown Sugar,” Jagger once said, “I would never write that now; I’d probably censor myself. I can’t just write raw like that.” That was in 1995. And Jagger had long stopped writing raw like that. You tell me if that’s a good thing.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York. Gimme Seltzer!
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Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with playwright and actor ROBERT DUBAC, who stays on and plays the Today/Yesterday trivia game with David Sheward and Leslie (Hoban) Blake
Topics include: theater, The Book of Moron, The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron, stand-up comedy.
Segment aired Aug. 7, 2021 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio/podcast program #810 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.
click above to watch the episodeclick above to listen (audio only)
Here is the 810th episode of the long-running radio show/podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired live on Facebook, Saturday morning, Aug. 7, 2021. Info: davesgoneby.com.
Guests: actor & playwright Robert Dubac, director Leslie (Hoban) Blake; theater critic David Sheward
Featuring: Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews actor Robert Dubac; Today/Yesterday trivia quiz (Aug. 7 w/ Robert Dubac, Leslie (Hoban) Blake, David Sheward); Greeley Crimes & Old Times; Dave Goes Away (New Jersey); Colorado Limerick of the Damned (Pritchett).
00:00:01 DAVE GOES IN w/ Joyce (NJ vacation)
00:28:30 GUEST: Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews Robert Dubac
01:16:00 TODAY/YESTERDAY Trivia Quiz (Aug. 7 w/ Robert Dubac, Leslie (Hoban) Blake, David Sheward)
02:56:00 Friends of the Daverhood
03:01:30 GREELEY CRIMES & OLD TIMES
03:24:00 DAVE GOES AWAY (New Jersey)
03:55:00 COLORADO LIMERICK OF THE DAMNED (Pritchett, CO)
03:57:00 DAVE GOES OUT
(This Rabbinical Reflection first aired July 24, 2021 on the Dave’s Gone By video podcast. youtube link: https://youtu.be/2l4v4oXw2Xc)
Rabbi Sol Solomon offers his Rabbinical Reflection on a cream-curdling decision by Ben & Jerry’s.
Rabbi Sol’s Rabbinical Reflections are heard on the long-running Dave’s Gone By radio/podcast program (davesgoneby.com) and then archived as text and audio on the Rebbe’s blog, Shalomdammit.com, where a transcript of this Reflection may be read.
Rabbi Sol is also the creator of the stage show, “Shalom Dammit! An Evening with Rabbi Sol Solomon,” which played in NYC in Nov. 2011 and Aug. 2012.
Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for July 24, 2021.
I scream, you scream, we all scream — at Ben and Jerry’s!
Back in the late 1970s, a couple of underachieving Jewish slobs, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, raised $12,000 to open an ice-cream store. Combining their very different skills and sensibilities — did you know Ben Cohen has no sense of smell? Finally, someone who can sit next to old men at the synagogue on Yom Kippur. But in a couple of years, Ben & Jerry’s became a serious brand and, eventually, a world-famous hoo-ha.
To their credit, these nice boychiks always tried to be socially conscious. They donated to oodles of charities and non-profits. They made their packaging more eco-friendly and objected to using growth hormones in their cows. For a while they had a policy that nobody at their company could make more than five times what the lowest-paid worker made. That didn’t last. But Ben & Jerry’s stood as a model for visionary capitalists who could create something people want, be funny and hip about it, improve the world, and still make a bundle. The most conservative, right-wing neo-fascist could sneer at Cherry Garcia and Chunky Monkey — but they still ate it and had to marvel at the company’s success.
Messrs. Cohen and Greenfield sold Ben & Jerry’s to Unilever two decades ago. it is said that they have no connection to the company beyond their first names still being on the buckets. So the horrible things I’m about to say are, I assume, not directed at them. But they certainly are to current CEO, Matthew McCarthy. Well, he can kiss the blarney stone’s tuchas for his leftist, radical, stupid decision-making. He wants gender equity in the workplace? Fantastic. He wants to give black people reparations for slavery? He’s welcome to write a check. But his decision to stop selling ice cream in East Jerusalem and the settlements in the West Bank is more “half-baked” than their most popular flavor.
In a statement last week, Ben & Jerry’s said that selling their product in the “occupied” West Bank was, quote, “inconsistent with our values.” So boycotting a country that annexed land it won in a war against perpetual enemies and then building citizens’ houses on that land, is inconsistent with the values of making people obese and giving them heart disease?
In response to Ben & Jerry’s BDS bullshit, the Israeli government is very likely to do what all Jewish people do when threatened — call their lawyers. They did it three years ago when airbnb, the company for people who don’t think they’re good enough to stay in hotels, airbnb banned listing properties in the territories. Benjy Netanyahu got on the phone to Moskowitz, Moskowitz, Moskowitz, and Flywheel. They put up a flurry of lawsuits, and airbnb reversed its policy. To save face — well, one of their faces — airbnb promised to take any money coming in from those properties and funnel it to humanitarian aid. I just hope the CEO of airbnb gets AIDS.
But I digress. In current times, when even ice cream is politicized, Ben & Jerry’s is facing a backlash over its anti-Zionist actions. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett called them “the anti-Israel ice cream.” South Florida politician Lavern Spicer tweeted, “I will never buy Ben & Jerry’s again. They might as well change their name to Hamas and Adolf’s.” A little hyperbolic Lavern, but appreciated nonetheless.
The BabylonBee satire magazine created a new Ben & Jerry’s flavor: Push the Jewish into the Sea Salt and Caramel. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has as much reason to eat his feelings as anyone, says he’s reluctantly giving up Cherry Garcia. And right here on Long Island, Town of Hempstead Supervisor Don Clavin bashed Unilever in a speech. He vowed to remove every Lipton teabag and Hellman’s mayonnaise jar from government offices. And let’s not forget Breyer’s ice cream, which is for people who don’t think they’re good enough to eat Super Fudge Chunk.
Uniloser has opened up a pint of worms with its decision to punish Israel simply for treating land in Israel like Israeli land. It’s time for Unilever, airbnb, and all these suddenly “woke” enterprises, that have no trouble doing business in China, Russia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia; it’s time for them to think real hard about who the good guys and the bad guys really are in this world. Until then, it’s up to us reasonable people to boycott them. Ben & Jerry’s go peddle your lumpy shit-cream elsewhere. We won’t buy it, we won’t eat it, and we’ll make sure your economic future hits a very rocky road.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York. Whatever happened to Sealtest?
