click above to watch episode #947click above to listen (audio only)
Here is the 947th episode of the long-running radio show/video podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired live on Facebook Saturday morning, June 8, 2024.
Featuring: Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews singer Natalie Douglas, offers his Rabbinical Reflection on Maldives and Mexico, and continues StoryTime (“The P Word, part 3”), Greeley Times; Colorado Limerick of the Damned (Alexander); Dave’s Big Dictionary (incognito).
Guest: singer Natalie Douglas
00:00:01 DAVE GOES IN w/ Joyce: frozen gefilte fish, smoked pastrami 00:42:30 GREELEY TIMES 01:03:00 GUEST: Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews Natalie Douglas 02:08:30 STORYTIME w/ Rabbi Sol Solomon: “The P Word,” part 3 02:31:00 DAVE GOES FURTHER IN: Pat Sajak 02:42:00 DAVE’S BIG DICTIONARY: incognito 02:51:30 RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #186: Maldives n’ Mexico 03:01:30 Friends of the Daverhood 03:10:00 COLORADO LIMERICK OF THE DAMNED 03:12:00 DAVE GOES OUT
Natalie Douglas
Rabbi Sol Solomon
Alexander Mountain in CO (the closest we could get to an Alexander, CO!)
RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #186 (6/8/2024): Maldives n’ Mexico
airs June 8, 2024 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube video:
I am mmmmarveling at the news this week involving two countries with mmmmarkedly different responses to the mmmmadness in the Mmmmiddle East. I am talking about the Maldives and Mexico. One of them is meretricious, the other marvelous.
So as the patient says to the doctor: “Bad news first.” The Maldives. It even has “mal,” a prefix meaning “bad,” in its own name. What are the Maldives? They’re a teeny Republic in South Asia, about 115 square miles of land with the rest in the Indian Ocean. And considering all the things Indians do in the ocean, it’s best not to drink the water. Or visit the Maldives.
Not that you could visit the Maldives right now if you were an Israeli. President Mohamed Muizzu — who belongs in a zoo — has banned anyone with an Israeli passport from entering the country, this in response to the war in Gaza. Why any Jew would visit this place in the first place is a puzzlement. Maldives is a country so Muslim that the practice of any other religion is forbidden by law. This is also a land that not only prohibits homosexuality but reprimands anybody kissing or even holding hands in public. So, basically, if you wonder what the Bahamas or Aruba would be like if they took away the fun and relaxation and replaced it with totalitarian jihad, you’ve got the Maldives.
In 2023 about 5,000 Jews visited the various Maldive islands. Maybe they were Orthodox and appreciated the modest-clothing rules and pork-free eating. Maybe they just wanted to watch other Semites inflict suffering on themselves for once instead of being tormented by others. Even prior to this ban, only 500 Yids Maldived themselves this year, and one hopes that goyim, in solidarity with Israel, will put Maldives on their “fuck-it” list. But hey, there’s sand and palm trees and, thanks to climate change, more and more and more water. It’s an Arcadia—and a perfect spot to relocate a few thousand displaced Palestinians! What? Dr. Muizzu? Not returning their calls? Well, at least you support them in theory.
But what gives me joy in reality is the result of a Presidential election held this week in Mexico. Replacing current honcho Andrés Manuel López Obrador is someone with a shorter name, thank God, but also a highly promising name. Winning a landslide victory is Mexico’s first female leader and first Jewish leader: Claudia Sheinbaum! I’m not kidding — Claudia Sheinbaum! Her heritage is a mix of Ashkenazic Lithuanian and Sephardic Bulgarian, and she’s a scientist with a PhD—a Jewish doctor will be running Mexico!
They should get her to deal with climate change in the Maldives because she’s an expert—she was part of a Nobel Prize-winning UN think tank on the topic—and she’s pro-choice, pro LGBT, big on mass transit and bicycle paths—yeah, she’s kind of a lefty. And a landsman.
The cheeriest aspect of this political event is that despite Jews being despised seemingly everywhere in the world, Mexicans looked beyond that and picked a Shein-a maidel! She was the outgoing president’s choice, and because the peso has been in decent shape, and because the drug cartels have been killing only every third tourist, voters are giving Sheiny the sheeny a shot.
Please let us support her by purchasing all things Mexican: jumping beans, refried beans, bootleg t-shirts of Mr. Bean. Also, spend your vacation dollars South of the Border. And I don’t mean getting a pubic wax, I mean Guadalajara, Cancun, Oaxaca, Acapulco, and lest we forget, charming Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl.
Oh, my friends, we are forever asking: Is it good for the Jews? If Judaism has taught us anything, it’s that things can change in a blink. But right now: viva México! And Maldives? ¡Vete a la mierda!
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York. ¡Arriba!
click above to watch the episodeclick above to listen to the episode (audio only)
Here is the 808th episode of the long-running radio show/podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired live on Facebook, Saturday morning, July 24, 2021. Info: Davesgoneby.com.
Guests: actresses Lillias White and Vicki Quade; theater critics Leslie (Hoban) Blake & David Sheward.
Featuring: Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews actress Lillias White; Rabbi Sol’s Rabbinical Reflection (Ben & Jerry’s); Colorado Limerick of the Damned (Hoehne); Greeley Crimes & Old Times
00:00:01 DAVE GOES IN w/ Joyce (hotspot) 00:30:30 TODAY/YESTERDAY Trivia Quiz (July 24 w/ David Sheward, Leslie (Hoban) Blake, Vicki Quade) 01:50:00 GREELEY CRIMES & OLD TIMES 02:17:00 GUEST: Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews Lillias White 02:51:30 Friends of the Daverhood 03:00:00 RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #170 (Ben & Jerry’s) 03:08:30 COLORADO LIMERICK OF THE DAMNED (Hoehne) 03:11:00 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?
RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #167 (2/26/21): Purim Jokes 2021
click above to watch.
(Rabbi Sol’s Rabbinical Reflections appear on the long-running radio show/podcast, Dave’s Gone By. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAnTjN0qWOE&t=3s)
Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for February 26th — Purim 2021!
As I often do on Purim, one of the rare jolly holidays on the Jewish calendar, I’m going to forego my usual bitching and kvetching and, instead, tell a couple of hilarious jokes that you damn well better laugh at.
We begin on Delancey Street, where a guy walks into a deli and asks the old man at the counter, “Do you sell pickles?”
“Funny you should ask,” says the counterman. “I have sour pickles, half-sour, butter pickles, thin slice, jagged slice, pickles in brine, extra large, extra small, extra dill. And these are just the domestic.”
“Wow,” says the customer. “You must sell a lot of pickles.”
“Not really,” sighs the counterman. “But the guy I buy from? Boy can he sell pickles!”
What can we learn from this joke? We learn that sometimes it’s not what you’re selling but how you’re selling it. Nancy Reagan could tell teenagers, “don’t do drugs”; she might as well have told them “do drugs!” for all the good it did. But if Beyonce or Lady Gaga say it their way, the message might stick. Or if you’re trying to teach Talmud, or derech eretz to your children, and it’s not getting through, don’t give up; adjust. I suggest smacking them around and making them recite the sh’ma standing barefoot on ice cubes, but that’s just me.
On to the next joke. Many years ago, a great Rabbi and his favorite student were traveling together through Poland to get to Warsaw. One evening, after a long trek, they decide to stop and pitch their tent in an open field. After prayers and some talmudic discourse, they both retire for the night.
A couple of hours later, the Rabbi wakes up, nudges the student, and says, “Chaim. Chaim. Look up at the sky and tell me what you see.”
Chaim yawns and says, “I see a black sky with many millions of stars.”
“Yes, and what may we deduce from this?”
“Well, Rabbi, astronomically, the view conveys the vastness of the universe. Scientifically, we can tell from the sky’s color that it’s three o’clock in the morning. And theologically, we see the power and majesty of God and our own insignificance by comparison. What does it tell you, Rabbi?”
“Well, first of all, Chaim, it tells me someone has stolen our tent.”
What a delightful joke! Not least because, admit it, you were expecting something disgusting between the Rabbi and the kid sharing a tent. Shame on you! If it was a priest, okay, but not a Rabbi! Still, this is a gentle joke that balances mankind’s longing for the sacred and splendiferous with his earthbound ties to the earth and its more mundane attributes. It also makes fun of Polacks.
And it reminds us not to miss the forest for the trees—or the tent for the stars. We get bogged down in the mechanics of life and get ground up in the gears of detail. Sometimes it behooves us to stop, take stock of our surroundings, and maybe put an alarm system around our tents.
Our final bit of humorosity, also goes back in time—this one to Soviet Russia in the 1970s. A Red Army officer is visiting a school and questioning all the students in the classroom. He goes to a Russian girl and says, “Who is your father?”
“The Soviet Union,” she replies.
“And who is your mother?”
“The Communist party,” she says.
“And what do you want to be when you grow up?”
“I want to work with my comrades for the state.”
The officer goes to a little Russian boy sitting behind her.
“Who is your father?”
“The Soviet Union,” says the boy.
“Who is your mother?”
“The Communist party.”
“And when you grow up, you want to be . . . ?”
“A worker for the glorious party.”
The officer smiles and moves on to a scrawny child in the back of the room.
“What’s your name?”
“Mordecai Groizman.”
“Ah,” sneers the Officer. “Who is your father?”
“The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”
“Mm hmm. And who is your mother?”
“The Communist Party of the Russian Federation.”
“Very nice. And do you know what you want to be when you grow up?”
“Oh yes,” says the boy. “An orphan.”
Ah, the beauty of mordant Jewish wit. Even at the expense of angering an enemy who could send his parents to Siberia, the child tells the truth and embeds a curse inside it. You can always hope your adversary is too stupid to get that the jokes on him. But, let’s face it, it’s a little stupid of you to take that chance. At a time when we scrutinize—and sometimes over-scrutinize—things goyim say about the Jews, it’s nice to have a joke where the Yidl lobs a grenade the other way.
And isn’t that what happened on Purim? Haman planned to kill all the Jews, but Queen Esther convinced the Persian king that was a bad idea. Not only was Haman hung from the noose he’d built to murder Esther’s cousin, but Haman’s ten sons were killed in battle by Jewish commandos. The only thing left of Haman was his three-cornered hat and his name, which we drown out with noise in the synagogue. Very often Jews taste the first misery but get the last laugh.
Happy Purim! This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.
click above to watch episode #783click above to listen to the episode (audio only)
Here is the 783rd episode of the long-running radio show/podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired live on Facebook Saturday morning, Jan. 30, 2021. Info: davesgoneby.com.
Guest: actress Jessica Sherr, actor Doug Schneider, theater critics Leslie (Hoban) Blake and David Sheward.
Featuring: Rabbi Sol Solomon interview actress Jessica Sherr and offers his Rabbinical Reflection on hope; Today/Yesterday trivia quiz (Jan. 30 w/ Jessica Sherr, her husband Doug Schneider, Leslie (Hoban) Blake and David Sheward; Greeley Crimes & Old Times; Colorado Limerick of the Damned (Branson).
00:00:01 DAVE GOES IN (virtual open mic; mainstream radio, GameStop, Carvel) 00:51:00 INSIDE BROADWAY 01:04:00 GUEST: Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews Jessica Sherr (w/ Doug Schneider) 01:51:00 TODAY/YESTERDAY Trivia Quiz (Jan. 30 w/ Leslie (Hoban) Blake, Doug Schneider, Jessica Sherr, David Sheward) 02:42:00 RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #166 (Make Them Hear You) 02:53:00 GREELEY CRIMES & OLD TIMES 03:17:00 Friends of the Daverhood 03:24:30 COLORADO LIMERICK OF THE DAMNED (Branson) 03:26:00 DAVE GOES OUT
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.
(Rabbi Sol Solomon’s 165th Rabbinical Reflection aired Jan. 16, 2021 as part of the Dave’s Gone By show. watch video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Y0DFpad8eto).
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of January 17th, 2021.
Can we speak freely? No, I mean, can we speak, freely? I don’t like the “Stop the Steal” mishegoss any more than you do, and I think the nudniks who stormed the Capitol building deserve the strongest punishment. Like fines, imprisonment, or being trapped in an elevator with Jeanine Pirro in your left ear and Nancy Grace in your right. And they’re both using megaphones. And guess what? They’re angry.
But back to the point: we’ve got a paranoid President who is circling the drain because he’s terrified of being called the one thing he is–at least in terms of the 2020 election–a Loser. Not with Israel and the Middle East; he’s a winner there. Not with Wall Street and big business; he’s a Superman there. And, up till March of last year, not with the economy, which had low unemployment, tons of job growth, and a gung-ho attitude.
But COVID knocked him down, as it did 350,000 of his countrymen. Trump’s rash pronouncements and veiled racial signaling appealed to America’s baser instincts, so although 75 million people voted for him, 80 million didn’t. He lost. Deal with it. I wish he would. I wish his Confederate flag-waving acolytes would. I wish the folks on QAnon would get a Clue-Anon.
However, just before the riots, the President gave a speech where he dubbed the elections fraudulent, the news fake, and the elections rigged by Big Tech. He called on Congress to recount everything, and he said, and I quote, “I know that everyone will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard,” unquote. He also praised the size of the crowd–he does love a big crowd–and urged them to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. As a protest. As a way for those who legitimately felt the election was stolen to make their voices heard.
For this, Donald Trump was again impeached. For spinning a false narrative, yes, about the election, but moreover for inciting the crowd to riot. “Something is wrong here, really wrong,” he said, “and we fight. We fight like hell, because if you don’t, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” You know what that’s called? Rhetoric. Not insurrection, not incitement to anarchy. It’s a politician telling his believers not to give up hope and to channel their rage into action. If some followers in buffalo skins and football-fan camouflage took that to mean storm the government, break stuff and take stuff, that’s on them. At the very least it’s trespassing; at most it’s sedition.
The Democrats are accusing the President of having a signed First Sedition. True, he wound the bozos up, but he didn’t set them loose, any more than the makers of Cabbage Patch dolls doing TV commercials telling parents “buy these horrible things for your even-more-horrible children,” caused riots in Kmart.
But pushing past impeachment and trying to remove Donald Trump from office–which will happen two weeks after he’s already been removed from office–my problem is with the censoring of free speech. President Trump has been banned, permanently, from Twitter. Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram have deleted him for however long they choose, and YouTube has pulled his channel down. Far more worrisome, they’re doing the same for all his nutty followers who now have no place to share their cries of “fraud!” and “conspiracy!” Google, Apple, and Amazon have all removed the social-media site Parler, because too many kooks were spoiling the broth.
Now, these are private companies–sort of–so their CEOs have the right to monitor everything that goes on them. If you own a restaurant, you can’t discriminate against your customers based on race or gender, but you can still demand, “No shirt, no shoes, no service.” I’ve thrown people out of my synagogue for wearing dirty tallises. Well, they weren’t wearing anything underneath them, but that’s neither here nor there.
The point is we are on a very slippery slope when our biggest purveyors of public palaver start telling us, “Well, you’re allowed to post hopeful things about Joe Biden’s inauguration, but you can’t write anything questioning the legitimacy of his victory.” “You’re allowed to condemn the violent idiots rioting in Nancy Pelosi’s office, but don’t you dare encourage the peaceful idiots to keep marching two blocks away.”
When I was a little Rabbi, a Rabbette, I was taught three things you couldn’t do: yell fire in a crowded shul, slander someone, or be so obscene that a reasonable person would go, “dude, I’m as kinky as the next fetishist, that’s messed up.” But no law says you can’t lie. That’s not even one of the Ten Commandments. Wait, let me make sure (thinks and counts), nope. False witness is different. And there’s certainly nothing in there about not sharing things that you actually believe are true–even if there’s overwhelming evidence they’re false.
So what happens when you censor folks on the fringe? You make them angrier, you drive them deeper underground, and now it gets harder to track them to make sure they don’t escalate from angry TikTok videos to kidnapping Ilhan Omar. You also cause everyone else to self-censor. “Hmm, maybe I better not post this because they’ll just take it down anyway. Maybe I better not think this, because then I’ll waste time posting it, because they’re just gonna take it down anyway.”
I am of the mind that you say what you have to say, and if I hate it, I get to say what I have to say back at you, louder. The problem in 1925 was not that Hitler published Mein Kampf; it’s that not enough people read it and went, “ooh, this guy’s bonkers and maybe dangerous.” The problem is not that right-wing Republicans are posting that the elections were a fraud; it’s that they believe it and won’t be de-convinced no matter the proof. Still, prohibiting them from non-violent, non-slanderous, non-obscene communication is non-okay.
Big Brother is already watching us from every stop light, website, Smart TV, closed-circuit camera, and GPS system. You can’t sneeze without someone in the CIA muttering gezundheit. Must we have social-media platforms that restrict content based on alternative narratives? Do we really want to side with Cardinal Maculani over Galileo? With Anthony Comstock over James Joyce? With Ayatollah Khomeini over Salman Rushdie?
In my version of reality, Donald Trump was an okay president who made just enough poor decisions to lose the election. In your version of reality (points), Donald Trump was a terrible president who should have been impeached before he was elected. Or in your version of reality (points elsewhere), Donald Trump was a great president who got cheated out of a second term. Can’t we all just not get along? Tolerating stupidity is one of the great virtues of our nation. That and cream soda. What, you disagree? That’s your right.
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 #164 (12/31/20): 2020 FAREWELL
(Rabbi Sol Solomon’s 164th Rabbinical Reflection airs Thursday, Dec. 31, 2020 as part of the Dave’s Gone By annual New Year’s Eve special). youtube link: https://youtu.be/1J8f9dTce1o.
Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for New Year’s Eve, December 31, 2020.
Well, it’s been a year, hasn’t it? I mean, we’ve had some doozies: 1929, 1941, late 2001, a very bad dental appointment I had in 2017. It’s the nature of living that we have to enjoy the good times, because the shitty, rotten, what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-God? times come up right behind them.
The year started well. The stock market was booming, so a couple-hundred really rich people got really richer. And that trickled down to the rest of us because unemployment sank to three percent. Which made it a terrible year for lazy people because now there was no excuse for not getting a job. Everyone was hiring! They weren’t paying a living wage or decent health benefits or treating you like a human being, but you could get a job if you wanted one.
Also, we felt kinda safe. Kim Jong-Un seemed to like Donald Trump and the feeling was mutual. We killed an Iranian General by drone, and Iran went, “eh, we’ve got others.” Meanwhile, American diplomacy was creating peace in the Middle East! Well, not the whole Middle East—never the whole Middle East—but Israel is now doing trade and tourism with Sudan, Bahrain, and United Arab Emirates. It’s an Abu Dhabi honeymoon!
Granted, at home it was politics as usual. 117 BIPOC Democrats were running for President, which got whittled down to . . . an old white guy. Maybe a too-old white guy, but Joe Biden picked a black woman running mate. And thank God for that because anyone whiter than him and Mike Pence would hurt people’s retinas. And through it all, the left continued to despise Donald Trump, the right despised Bill—uh, Hillary—uh, Obama—uh, anyone who doesn’t like country music. President Trump was impeached—remember that? Remember why? Because he allegedly solicited foreign help in the 2020 elections. The Republicans called that crazy and blocked an indictment. Months later, it’s Trump who’s bitching the elections are rigged, and it’s the Democrats calling him crazy. If you ever thought the world was nothing more than a snowglobe that HaShem shakes up and down to amuse Himself, 2020 was your year.
Harry and Meghan exited Buckingham Palace, England brexited from the European Union, and Yuri Tolochko sexited from his blow-up doll. Look it up.
And, of course, the world blew up in the middle of March. One day, a few passengers got sick on a cruise; a month later, the globe is closing restaurants, theaters, nightclubs, massage parlors—or so I’ve been told—and ordering everyone stay home, wear a mask, and don’t get within six feet of another human being. Go figure, the Unabomber becomes a role model. And worse, thousands of people die. New York’s Governor Cuomo herds all the old geezers into nursing homes, where they do not get herd immunity. And Central Park turns into a M*A*S*H unit because the hospitals are full of victims on ventilators suffering from a malady the President once called a hoax.
Where did Coronavirus come from? You tell me. Did Wuhan mishandle it? Did someone undercook the bat they were making for dinner? Did swine flu go through conversion therapy? The only good news is that a disease no one heard of in March already has two vaccines to prevent it in December. Now if if you can just keep from coming down with corona when you’re on the long lines to receive the shot, we’d be getting somewhere.
So we’re nearing 350,000 dead, 19 million diagnosed, and everyone avoiding each other like the plague—because of a plague. Everyone, that is, except, I’m ashamed to say, Orthodox Jews, who think goyishe rules don’t apply to them. Ten thousand of them show up at a wedding in Williamsburg where they sing, dance, eat, drool, and pull the garter off the Rabbi’s leg. Maybe my Jewish brethren think if they stay among their own kind, they don’t affect anyone else. Except the mailman, the doctor, the grocer, the funeral director. They say they’re being unfairly targeted for just trying to keep their businesses open—especially since the media simultaneously glorified Black Lives Matters protests—which weren’t exactly masked, socially distanced, or peaceful.
To be fair, schvartzes had a lot to feel violent about. They didn’t come through 400 years of slavery and oppression to ignore a policemen crushing a suspect’s neck. Or a bunch of other hinkie deaths of unarmed perps who just happened to be the wrong color. And even more deadly than rogue policemen? Murder hornets! Have you heard about these things? Along with Covid, the Asians have given us flying, stinging insects that are killing off the flying, stinging honeybees that keep our ecosystem going.
And since we’re talking biblical catastrophes: Locusts devoured all the food in East Africa, wildfires burned up half of California, and Cats became a major motion picture. This was the year Hamilton came to Disney, Tiger King came to Netflix, and Harvey Weinstein came just enough times to put him in prison. Aunt Becky from Full House also went to prison, although for some reason, the writers of that show didn’t.
2020 was the year we lost Sean Connery, Kirk Douglas, Diana Rigg, Olivia de Havilland, Eddie Van Halen, John Prine, Tom Seaver, Whitey Ford, Terrence McNally, Toots Hibbert, Terry Jones, Buck Henry, Carl Reiner, RBG, Squiggy, Regis Philbin, and “Jeopardy’s” Alex Trebek. No question: they will be missed.
To paraphrase Charles Dickens: It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times. But hey, we still got through a presidential election and the less-awful candidate won. SpaceX put humans into orbit—not the humans we’d want to send into orbit, but it’s the science that counts. And speaking of science, because we’ve all been staying indoors, animal species that were becoming extinct are coming out to play again, and best of all: researchers in Australia discovered that giving doxycycline to koala bears cures their chlamydia! Who knows? Maybe by this time next year, they’ll zap the gonorrhea out of those poor giraffes.
I hope we’re here next year. Well, I hope I’m here next year. But if we can get through the pandemic, and the global warming, and the political divide, and the racial unrest, and the coming apocalypse, we just might have a passable 2021. Hey, I’m Jewish. That’s as optimistic as I get. But even if it’s an even worse year, you can still try to be the best you. In times like these, even HaShem couldn’t ask for more.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches. Shana Tovah, ovah and ovah.
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!
