RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #166: Make Them Hear Me
(airs as part of the New York Theater Workshop/Poetic Theater Productions “Let Them Hear You” virtual open mic night, Jan. 28, 2021. watch on youtube: https://youtu.be/u6laq_dzYA8)
Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon, founder and spiritual leader of Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York. And this is a Rabbinical Reflection, a mini-sermon, as part of the virtual open-mic night, “Make Them Hear You.” CAN YOU HEAR ME? Good.
This sermon, this event, is all about joy and the future. No matter what side of the political fence you are impaled on, we are coming out of a dark period. And as the father of six teenage daughters, I have seen some dark periods. It’s like I live in a Kotex factory.
But here, we are talking about a nation riddled with division, disease, and dismay. And last May wasn’t great, either.
How do we get through this? How do the newly unemployed keep emailing resumes that never get read? How do playwrights get up and scribble their hearts when they couldn’t get produced when theaters were open? How do I keep writing these Reflections even as my prostate fills my shoes with urine?
The answer lies in the great Samuel Beckett paradox, “I can’t go on. Meh, I’ll go on.” We go on because the alternative is jumping out a window. Or going to a New York nursing home, kissing an old person, and waiting.
But death is not the answer. Well, it is, if the crossword clue is “Blank of a Salesman.” But otherwise, death deprives us of the three Ps that make life worth living: pastrami, porn, and pharmaceuticals. So to stop spiraling downward, we aspire upward. Old hippies and politicians call this “hope.”
And once you’ve drunk that Kool-Aid–or, in my case, Dr. Brown’s CelRay—
you ascend to the next level of hoping that ha-olam coolo (the whole world) will unify to build a better tomorrow. Kumba-yada-yada-yada: the great pipe dream of promise.
We are like the barflies in The Iceman Cometh, all of us, from Bernie Sanders looking so jolly at the inauguration to the dingdongs who stormed the Capitol thinking a home invasion would save America, to the BLM window smashers who thought looting would change America, to the putzes who think wearing a mask during a pandemic is fascism, to the yutzes who stand outside and risk pneumonia to get a shot for COVID. We are all idiots programmed to be hopeful. It is our human DNA.
Emily Dickinson once wrote, “Hope is the thing with feathers.” I don’t know what the fuck that means, so I wrote my own poem and here it is:
“Let’s take a moment while the year is still newish
To hope for the best, be you black, white, or Jewish
May landlords and tenants avoid going broke
May Covid-19 go the way of New Coke
May Israel make peace with more Arab nations
May God put less blood in my girls’ menstruations
Health and good fortune from this little Hebe
To all–except Mitch McConnell and Rashida Tlaib
We’ve come through this crisis much older and wiser
May 2021 be our mood stabilizer
We have to be hopeful. What else can we do?
If not, we’ll be shtupped in 2022.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon. Shalom, and shana tovah.
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