Rabbinical Reflection – Page 5

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #99 (4/20/2014): Utz vs. Butler

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #99 (4/20/2014): Utz vs. Butler

aired April 20, 2014 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/S8bUHv8TNa0

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of April 20th, 2014.

Last Monday, Michael Utz, of Culpepper, Virginia, was awarded $5,000 in punitive damages from a former fellow employee. That coworker, James Carroll Butler, also spent a month in prison back in 1999 for a little prank he pulled on Utz at the office.

Butler was mad at Utz – in a way that only people who have to work next to each other 40 hours a week, week after week after week, can get angry at each other – so Mr. Butler grabbed the office coffee pot and took it with him to the toilet. No, don’t get ahead of me; he did not pee in the coffee pot. He peed in the toilet. But then he took the coffee pot and filled it from the toilet. He then waited – tee hee, tee hee – for Michael Utz to use the pot for coffee.

Luckily for Utz, he smelled something unpleasant in the pot before he went to use it. So instead of brewing a pot of Chock Full o’ Nuts – or, more accurately, chock full of pee from his coworker’s nuts, Mr. Utz brought the coffee pot to his superior who sent it to a lab. Tests came back positive for fecal matter, and Butler was arrested, charged with a misdemeanor and given a one-year sentence with 11 months suspended. As far as his job was concerned, he was, of course…relieved. Oh, and just for the sake of irony, did I mention they both worked at a waste-treatment facility?

As anyone who has labored day-in, day-out in a cubicle, offices can be fraught with tension, jealousies, grudges and disappointments. Surrounded by strangers you’d never bother with otherwise, you’re forced to put up with the aggravations of office politics. Either that or you quit, or you get yourself fired if you want unemployment, or you whip out a semi-automatic rifle and shoot anyone who jams up the copy machine. Which is pretty much everyone.

That, of course, is going too far, but let’s face it: revenge is a dish best served piping hot. Or in this case, fresh brewed. We’ve all seen the movie “9-to-5” where they tie up Dabney Coleman and improve the workplace in his absence. And who didn’t enjoy the pranks Jim and Pam played on Dwight in “The Office?” Well, Dwight didn’t, but he deserved them.

So I’m not about to delve into the moral equivalencies of crime versus prank punishment. I’m not here to ask: What would a co-worker have to do that would make you justified for crazy-gluing their telephone receiver to the hook? Or to their ear? What would a boss have to put you through so you’d get to the point of saying, “Yes, I deleted her hard drive and replaced it with a grilled-cheese sandwich, but in fairness, that was a good sandwich”? How badly would a superior have to piss you off before you offer them piss? We all have our breaking points and our tit-for-tat total tallies.

What I do not understand is why it took five years for this incident to be resolved – to the tune of $5,000. How many man hours, how many lawyer hours, how many other cases were pushed aside in order for this to come to trial? Were there clerks of the court sitting in front of their calendars going, “Okay, we have a guy who shot three people in a hold-up, and there’s this other fella accused of planting a terrorist bomb at the graves of Afghan vets at Arlington . . . But wait, no, stop everything! James Carroll Butler took a whiz in his co-worker’s Café Bustelo. Clear the dockets! Clear the schedule! And somebody sniff the coffee maker; I don’t like the looks of that intern.”

Half a decade of legal wrangling to find out that Butler did it. Why the delay? It should have been easy to find a jury of his peers. After all, being a pee-er is what got him in trouble in the first place. Couldn’t this have been settled out of court? Maybe Utz could have crapped in a bucket and made brownies. “You eat mine; I drank yours – we’re even! Let’s shake hands. Or maybe not.”

There should be a way to resolve small disputes – or, in this case, piddling ones – without tying up tax dollars and the justice system. I’m not saying discharging in the Dunkin Donuts is acceptable behavior. It’s just that you don’t need to turn it into the next O.J. trial. Unless someone pees in your o.j..

So I suppose the moral of this story is, well, don’t urinate in the Yuban. But, also, if someone hands you a cup of joe, and you can taste Joe, report it – but also don’t expect to hit the lottery. And if worse comes to worst, and you do take a sip, even then just remember: it will still taste better than Starbucks.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #098 (3/30/2014): Fred Phelps

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #098 (3/30/2014): Fred Phelps

aired March 29, 2014 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUFzUMaDkeI

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of March 30th, 2014.

The most hated man in America – well, besides me – is dead. Fred Phelps, the founding pastor of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, passed away of natural causes on March 19th. Somehow, he made it to 84 years old without enemies taking a bat to his head or sprinkling anthrax in his undershorts.

Now, we can’t expect right-wing Christians to be forward-thinking or even moderate about such issues as abortion, gay rights and Lady Gaga. Bible thumpers aren’t wired like that, and if they wanna tie a straitjacket around the Old Testament and interpret it the way Muslim extremists bungle the Koran, that’s their business. The reason Freddy Phelps was so loathed is that he went out of his way to spread hatred, and he targeted people who were guilty of nothing more than living their lives differently from what he thought the bible recommended. Fred Phelps was not a live-and-let-live kinda guy. He was more a “hurt and disrupt” sort of person.

He didn’t start out that way. In 1954, on the day Brown beat the Board of Education, Phelps, who had a law degree, took it upon himself to fight civil-rights cases. I mean, on the black side – really! Really! Of course, a few years later, he was disbarred for corruption, but there was something righteous in the guy before he turned self-righteous. Back in the early `90s, he ran for governor, senator and mayor – on the democratic ticket. He lost and lost and lost, and maybe that’s what set him off on the path of bitterness and bile.

Whatever goodie points Phelps racked up defending schvartzes in Kansas have long been pissed away in his tirades and protests against homosexuals. To preach in a sermon against the sin of being a buttmuncher is one thing. To send your followers out in public on streetcorners with signs that read “God Hates Fags” is another thing. But to bus your parishioners to funerals… that takes balls the size of planets. These Westboro wackos would send – or threaten to send – protesters to everything from the Boston Marathon bombing funerals to school-shooting victim burials, warning everyone that God Hates America, which is why He kills people so randomly.

On the web, these Baptist boneheads post gleeful messages anytime an American soldier gets killed overseas. “You see?” they say. “That’s God showing how much he hates gays and lesbians.” This has about as much logic as a guy tripping over a curb and thinking, “Hmm, I know why this happened. Somewhere in the south of France, a farmer is raising too many geese.”

Here’s the truth, Fred Phelps, wherever you are down there. God does not hate fags. Well, maybe Perez Hilton, but otherwise, no. If he’s mean to them, it’s because he’s mean to everyone because he’s the Old Testament fire-and-brimstone rageaholic we all know and love. And as far as God hating lesbians, well, if man is made God’s image, that means God is a lot like man. And let me tell you: men love lesbians. Case closed.

Do I have a personal vendetta against the WBC? Well, it’s not enough they hate gays; they hate Jews, too, saying we stole Israel and killed their favorite Jew – the one on the cross with the big mouth and the death wish. Westboro put up videos calling us filthy Jews and Christ killers and fag enablers. All the way back in 1996, Phelps led a protest against the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC – possibly the only decent institution in Washington DC – writing, and I quote, “American taxpayers are financing this unholy monument to Jewish mendacity and greed and to filthy fag lust. Jews, thus perverted, out of all proportion to their numbers energize the militant sodomite agenda… Jews are the real Nazis.” And that was just his warm-up joke.

But seriously, now that Fred Phelps is becoming fertilizer instead of spewing it, the question is, how do we react? I ask this because Passover is coming in a couple of weeks, and during the Seder, we spill ten drops of wine when talking about the Egyptians, because we’re not supposed to be a hundred percent happy when our enemy is vanquished. Even though the Egyptians enslaved us, treated us like cattle, turned us into fifth-class citizens in a country where we’d been welcomed just a few Pharaohs earlier. Even though we were overjoyed to escape and watch the slave owners get what was coming to them…still, death of the first born is a heavy price, and they are God’s creatures, too, so…hold off on the noisemakers a bissel. Fireworks and disco dancing – no problem, but in moderation.

That can be a hard principle to accept, however, in modern times. On May 8th, 1945, don’t tell me every surviving Jew in the world didn’t want to drown every last German in the Danube. When bin Laden bought it, I danced a hora in the living room and flushed a Koran down the toilet. I admit it: I was flooded with emotion, and then just flooded – it’s a thick book in a very old toilet. But the point is, I understand the desire to rejoice at the finish of Phelps. He’s not having a funeral, but if he were, what release and elation to show up where they’re shoving him in the ground and jeer at his inbred followers. Curse at them, mock them, drown them out with glam rock, have gays and lesbians kiss and roll around – especially the lesbians…yeah – find the triggers for these ludicrous people and pull those triggers till they go off.

A bigger man than I would say we must take the high road, lead by example, and don’t sink to the Westboro level by stooping to their tactics. But that would be a bigger man than I. I’m a small, angry Jew, and I hate these fucking people. If you find where they’re burying Phelps, or holding one of their protests, go with a rainbow banner in one hand and a spray can of piss in the other. But most of all – and I wish I had written this so I could take credit, but blessed be the man or woman who wrote: “Live your life in such a way that the Wetsboro Baptist Church will want to picket your funeral.” Isn’t that great? And then, during shiva, bend them all over and show them exactly what you can do with a yahrtzeit candle.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27696

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #097 (3/23/2014): Hearing Voices

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #097 (3/23/2014): Hearing Voices

aired March 23, 2014 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/KkjlBJyVOJc

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of March 23rd, 2014.

When it’s raining outside, and I have to go driving somewhere, I hate it. Because the roads are slippery, it’s hard to see, I’m stepping into puddles getting in and out of the car, and, at night, you can hardly see where the yellow lines are on the road, so you’re all over the place. Rain makes everybody drive like people from Massachusetts. Worst of all, when there’s a downpour, you have these great honking rivers in the street, and you try your best to steer clear of them so you don’t flood your brakes.

This is a normal response to automobiles and water. And yet, there are women – crazy women – who feel compelled to drive their vehicles into the ocean, usually with other family members in the car. Where is this coming from? It happened again just two weeks ago. A pregnant mother of three from Florida was having trouble with her husband, so she packs the kids in the minivan, and on the way to her sister’s house, she says, “Oy, I forgot to pack lunch. Let’s go get some fish . . . from the source.”

She drives to Daytona Beach, and even the kids realize something’s wrong, especially when she stops at a traffic light to put on scuba gear. Her oldest son tries to wrestle the steering wheel from her, but she still manages to dunk the car in the ocean. Lucky for the children, witnesses were there; they swam over and pried the kids out of the back seat. Meanwhile, mama starts walking down the beach in a daze, which is where police pick her up and arrest her for attempted murder, child abuse and blinding a school of trout with her headlights.

Now, this nutjob, Ebony Wilkerson, had already been under psychiatric evaluation. In fact, the cops stopped her just a few minutes earlier when her sister called them and said, “Stop her, lock her up, she’s crazy.” The police realized Ebony was a few tentacles short of an octopus but couldn’t hold her on anything because she was calm and seemingly in control. Which is good because you need to be in control when you’re getting your Dodge Caravan to do the backstroke.

What puzzles me about all of this is that she was hearing voices, and that she talked to both Jesus and demons. What is it about voices in people’s heads? Why do they always tell crazy people to do bad things? How come you never get a psychotic who says, “I was home alone in my bedroom, and my cat told me to donate clothing to UNICEF.” Where are the strange voices that convince a schizophrenic to pay a meal forward at the local TGI Fridays? Why is it always, “Go shoot some woman in a car?” Or “You. Rifle. Rooftop – 20 minutes”? Or “pack your kiddies in the van and visit Seaworld – with permanent free admission.”

We need to round up all these disembodied voices and give them a good talking to. Show them that there’s more to life than causing death. Maybe these voices are frustrated by being invisible, or illogical. I mean, how would you like to be coming out of the mouth of a dog that lives with an owner like Son of Sam? I feel bad for Jodie Foster’s voice. Not only is it raspy and with a speech impediment on those esses, but she loaned it out to some wacko who tried to kill President Reagan.

As of this writing, Ebony Wilkerson is being held on more than a million dollars bail, and already the pundits are discussing whether to deal with her as a criminal or a crazy person. Legally, alas, it’s kind of hard to do both. Of course she wasn’t in her right mind, but you could say that about anybody who tries to take a life. Or listens to smooth jazz. I just hope some scientist somewhere comes up with a pill that a lunatic could take and it scrambles the voice in their head, the way cable TV used to scramble the porn channels. (Not that I would know about such things…) But the pill would function as a prophylactic buffer. A few words and phrases would be allowed – so the lunatic would still have someone to talk to – but they’d be words like rainbow, unicorns, herbal-essence shampoo. However, words like murder, devil, car keys, Second Amendment – these would be so garbled, by comparison they’d make Ozzy Osbourne sound like Charles Osgood.

It is my hope that one day we’ll have a better understanding of the true workings of the human brain – especially how a switch gets flipped, and suddenly, a normal person goes stark-raving Wilkerson. Until then, maybe Pfizer can work on that pill idea, GM can build cars with water wings, and maybe God can make some women a little less meshuggeh. I know, tall order – but He’s God; it’s what He does. Unless there are voices telling him not to… Oy.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27701

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #92 (2/16/2014): Sochi

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #92 (2/16/2014): Sochi

aired Feb. 15, 2014 on Dave’s Gone By. Watch on youtube: http://youtu.be/gkJUPHw8uGY

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of February 16th, 2014.

Is there anything less interesting in the world than the Winter Olympics? I’m sorry, but everyone in this half of the hemisphere is sitting at home, running the oil burner, looking at the grim skies and just waiting for the first signs of spring. The last thing we wanna do is turn on the TV and see more snow. If I’m on the couch in my footy-pjs, sipping a cocoa and skimming the Talmud, and I wanna take a break, I’m gonna put on “Baywatch,” maybe the Golf Channel, the 80th re-run of “Point Break.” What I don’t want to see is athletes bundled up from head to tuchas, zhoozhing down mountains of snow, and then talking to reporters where you can see their breath coming out of their mouths and congealing in the air. If breath could spell, it would spell out, “Help! Hypothermia! Why didn’t I take up parasailing?”

Still, winter or otherwise, the Olympic idea is ideal: have countries from all over the world, even ones with political differences, put their very best amateur athletes on an international stage, and let’s all enjoy playing and watching. How can you beat it? Of course, the distance between the Olympics’ idealization and its ideation is like the distance between Democracy and Congress. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

The Olympics were supposed to be an oasis from the world’s evils. But half the time it’s become a petri dish where the bad guys hog the microscope. In 1936, Hitler hosted the Olympics in Munich as a way of proving the superiority of the master race. Yes, it was wonderful that the American schvartze Jesse Owens ruined his day, but the fact that they held the Olympics at all was a decision so questionable, even the guys who designed the Titanic had to be shaking their heads going, “What the fick were they thinking?”

And then in 1972, it was back to Germany – because what better place to espouse peace and racial equality, right? And what a perfect worldwide stage for Arab terrorists to go kill all the Israeli athletes. Olympic officials were confronted with a decision: stop the games, do a big funereal tribute, and hunt down the animals responsible – or wear black for a day and keep the games going. Guess which one they chose?

And so, ever since then, the Olympics have proved a lightning rod for political disputes and threats from groups that put religion before human rights – which is pretty much the entire Muslim world. As of this writing (and speaking), the winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, have been on high-terrorism alert. The Islamists were kind enough to give us an early heads-up on the violence – by bombing a train station and a trolley in Volgograd back in December. So thoughtful of them. They murdered only 34 people – which for them is an appetizer – and a week later, the Russian police killed the guy responsible. But no question, this was a yellow stickie posted on the calendar of the Olympics reading, “Hello. We’re Jihad. We drank your orange juice and broke a lamp. We’ll be back soon with the destruction of the entire Western World. Your pal, Mohammed.”

So we want to commend the Russians and Vladimir Putin for taking a no-tolerance, “we will bury you” approach to security at the Sochi games. Unfortunately, the pat on Putin’s back has to stay above the waist, because he is also responsible for a recent Russian law that bans the promotion of non-traditional lifestyles. In other words, you can’t teach kids under 18 that it’s okay to be gay, or lesbian, or transsexual, or a furry. Russia’s deputy prime minister defended the law saying it’s a way to protect children. But then why not simply make a law that says, “Don’t touch children?” If you have trouble with the wording, ring up Dylan Farrow. But Putin’s law is more insidious, it’s branding the lifestyle of 10-to-15 percent of the population as abnormal, unhealthy and dangerous to you – unlike such healthy activities Russian teens are exposed to at a young age, like vodka shots, smoking and poverty.

After the glory years of Gorbachev, sadly, Russia has moved backwards towards its old police-state days, but so did we under Dubya Bush. The church’s last Pope was in the Hitler youth, but the new guy is preaching love and tolerance. Kind of like the four – er, five Olympic circles, the world turns and turns, so maybe the next dictator after Putin will keep his shirt on and his hands off.

Until that time, it is with mixed feelings that I wish the 2014 Winter Olympics well, with good sportsmanship, fair judging, no terrorism and lots and lots of curling – oh, I love curling. As far as homosexuality, well, the opening ceremonies featured thousands of toned athletes in tight costumes with bright rainbow colors, waving flags and parading around to loud thumpy music and confetti. What could be more gay than that?

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.

—> https://wp.me/pzvIo-289

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #91 (2/9/2014): SodaStream and ScarJo

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #91 (2/9/2014): SodaStream and ScarJo

aired Feb. 8, 2014 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/rxtEvftNrTU

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of February 8th, 2014.

So many times in my Rabbinical Reflections, I am forced to take celebrities over my metaphorical knee and spank them for their misdeeds and maladjustments. Justin Bieber, Charlie Sheen, Ryan Dunn, Lance Armstrong – the list is an embarrassment of Richie Riches. I am delighted, therefore, to offer something different this week: a Hollywood star with a good head on her shoulders. She also has good shoulders and a great rack. But I come to praise Scarlett Johansson – not for the bubbles on her chest, but for the bubbles in her glass. She is the spokesperson for SodaStream, a company that helps you carbonate your own water, so you can make your own soft drinks.

Half-Jewish on her mother’s side – which makes her all-Jewish to me – Scarlett Johannson is one of the most glamorous actresses in Hollywood. She’s so hot, Woody Allen actually looked away from a 10-year-old to make her his muse. And she’s so in-demand, she can pick and choose what she wishes to advertise or promote. Her latest choice? Seltzer. What could be more Jewish than that? Only, it isn’t called “seltzer” anymore. It’s called “sparkling water” or, if you’re a lower tax bracket, “soda.” Back in the day, we used to call it “two cents plain,” but now nothing’s plain when you’re trying to sell it, and the only thing you can buy for two cents these days is one penny.

Anyhoo, in 1991, Peter Wiseburgh, a nice Jewish boy from Israel, bought SodaStream from Cadbury-Schweppes and made it the biggest purveyor of shpritz in the world. You don’t want to pay two dollars for a liter of Coca Cola? You don’t want all the caffeine and sugar of Pepsi? Can’t bring yourself to try that Mexican pineapple soda because, well, it’s Mexican pineapple soda? You buy a machine that looks like a mixer, then you get these canisters of carbon dioxide. In goes the glass of water, in goes the syrup, mix it up and voila – in three minutes you have a glass of soda … that would have taken you ten seconds to pour from a Coke can, but nevertheless. With Sodastream, you can control the level of carbonation and the amount of goo. Plus, you’re not opening a giant cola bottle that in three days goes flatter than Debra Messing in a sports bra.

So there is much to recommend in the home-made soda idea and the Sodastream company, which has factories all over the world, including three in Israel. And ay, there’s the rub. Two of the factories are in parts of Israel that the Arabs don’t think belong to Israel. Granted, the Arabs don’t think any of Israel belongs to Israel, but in this case, they’re specifically talking about the so-called “occupied territories” – land that Israel won, fair and square, in wars fought decades ago. I know I sound like a broken record – and for you kids out there, a record is a round vinyl thing with a hole in it that your grandparents used to play music on. Look it up. Anyhoo, I’ve said time and again that the Palestinians have millions of other miles they can live on, so if they feel oppressed in a Jewish state, they can get themselves a two-hump U-haul and move.

Still, they bitch and moan about Israel occupying land – it’s not “occupied,” shitheads, it’s annexed. And if you want Israel to bulldoze homes and let go of it, you damn well better give us peace in return. And maybe a few of those 70 virgins you’re always talking about, just to sweeten the deal.

One organization taking up the misguided cause against Israel is something called Oxfam. No, that’s not Gabourey Sidibe’s parents, it’s a non-profit initially formed to fight the war against poverty all over the world. Somehow, alas, the honorable mandate to feed the hungry morphed into a more vague “human-rightsy” sort of a thing, which slid into a political agenda and has now warped into anti-Israel propaganda. Oxfam wants people to boycott Sodastream because the factories are making beverages on land where the Palestinians should rightfully be making bombs. Defenders of Sodastream say the hundreds of Arabs who work at the company are well-treated, make a decent wage and have a life they could never aspire to beforehand.

So where does Scarlet Johansson belong in all this? Well, in my bedroom, if life were fair – but no, the actress was caught up in the controversy because she was an ambassador for Oxfam. I say “was” because last week she handed in her resignation. Why? Because ScarJo is also the spokeswoman for Sodastream. She even did a sexy commercial for them that debuted during the Super Bowl! She’s wearing a bathrobe and sucking on a straw. You don’t have to be Freud to know what’s really going on…she’s thirsty! For soda!

When the Oxfammished begged her to drop the company, Scarlet Johansson dropped them, citing, quote, “a fundamental difference of opinion,” unquote. That’s legalspeak for: “I’m Jewish, you’re idiots, the West Bank is part of Israel, Israel is a Jewish homeland, Sodastream are the good guys, and in the interest of international peace, I really should tweet more homemade nude photos on the internet.” Okay, I added that last part, but you know what I’m saying.

Ironically, the Scarlett Johansson Sodastream ad was nearly censored from the Super Bowl. Not by Oxfam or for any political reason, but because she mentioned Coke and Pepsi, and CBS crapped itself worrying that those monster advertisers would pull out if they heard their product being disparaged by the actress who played Natasha in “The Avengers.” The ad stayed, but the line was cut. I guess we know who has the real political power in this country…

But Scarlett Johansson, for being a mensch and standing your ground – that ground being the holy sand of Eretz Yisroel — I toast you holding a glass brimming with Sodastream. Mmmmmm good. Actually, it’s Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray, don’t tell anybody.

Thank you ScarJo. This has been RebSolSol coming to you from TempSoBi, Great Neck, NeeYo.

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27843

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #82 (11/19/2013): Crystal Spa

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #82 (11/19/2013): Crystal Spa

Aired Nov. 16, 2013 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/uoM7W0ecZKg. https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27958

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.

(c) 2013 TotalTheater. All rights reserved.
–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27958

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #78 (10/6/2013): Shutdown

click above to listen (audio file)

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #78 (10/6/2013): Shutdown

aired Oct. 6, 2013 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/XV1nvYhfSLw

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of October 6th, 2013.

Idiocy and nonsense! Selfishness and stupidity! Pride and prejudice! Welcome to the United States Federal government, Fall 2013. As I write this, the Fed is in its fourth day of shutdown. Why? Because Republicans won’t approve a budget unless the President kills his healthcare plan. And Obama won’t even talk to the G.O.P. unless they kiss his boots and keep his baby. It’s an impasse created by two sides of impass-holes.

Now, I’m not saying both sides are equally at fault. That’s an easy trap and one that the media loves to fall into – especially when they’re discussing, say, the Palestinians. Arabs bomb and kill and bargain in bad faith; Israel protects land she rightfully won in the war. And yet, because the strife is ongoing and expensive, the world says, “ehhh, a plague on both their houses” and “Oh, the Jews are the oppressors.” That is reductive and retarded. And while there’s reason to blame everybody for our current federal fakaktehness, the Republicans and their tea-party poopers are absolutely the instigators of this fiasco.

I don’t care what you think of Obamacare. I mean, me? I’m running to the doctor every two weeks for a high colonic, so I need affordable health coverage or else my prostate is gonna start looking like one of those frosting bags on “Cake Boss.” But even if I wasn’t crazy about the Affordable Care Act, it’s the law, it passed, Obama beat Romney with the plan already on his platform – deal with it. If it’s not going perfectly, make small adjustments while it’s already in progress, as we do with voting, or cunnilingus.

I have never seen such sore losers as Republicans. They lose the election in 2008; they all vow to spend the next four years making sure nothing the Democrats put forward gets passed. And if something should somehow, by accident, get through, they’ll just repeal it when their guy wins in 2012. Except he didn’t. America looked at Mitt Romney like a used-Rolls Royce salesman – and said, “No thank you. We’ll stick with the guy who’s done next to nothing, but the country’s turning around anyway. We’ll stay the course.”

This left the G.O.P. in shellshock. After four years of mocking and blocking, retching and kvetching, moaning the blues all night on Fox News – where did they wind up? Hemorrhaging on election night. But, of course, there’s nothing more dangerous than a wounded animal. Well, apart from George Zimmerman with a gun permit. The Republicans are lashing back, hurting the Democrats any way they can, even if it means bringing the government to a virtual halt and jeopardizing the recovery that their last president made necessary in the first place.

The G.O.P.’s idea of a compromise is saying, “Look, we’ll pass your budget; just delay Obamacare for a year.” Sounds reasonable – even though we know that would be a year of legal wrangling, political blackmail and further ways to dismantle the program. What we must not forget is that a “one year” delay is a smokescreen. Republicans have been delaying healthcare reform for two goddamn decades. Back when Bill Clinton was in the White House, his darling and incredibly tolerant wife, Hilary, made it her number-one priority to reform the out-of-control insurance business. She could’ve done it, too, had the Republicans not despised her and Bill so much, they brought his presidency to a standstill. Then George W. Bush was in the White House for eight years. Eight long, long, long, long years. In that time, Republicans had every opportunity to make their own health plan, to devise their own strategy to help a system in crisis. What did they do? If I had a sound effect of crickets chirping, you’d be hearing it right now.

Since then, Barack Obama has been in office for five years, which is more than a thousand days for Republicans and Democrats to have worked in tandem to create, maybe not Obamacare, but OBoehner-Care, or Clintingrich-Care. But no, all the G.O.P. did was plot and scheme. And now, when they don’t get their way, they sit in a corner, they pout, and they hide daddy’s wallet in revenge.

It’s happening elsewhere, too. In beautiful Colorado, where the G.O.P. hates gun laws, legalized pot and renewable energy, right-wingers want to secede and make their own state. I think they’re gonna call it “Spoiled Bratville,” or something. Funny, I didn’t hear them squeal about socialism when the rains came, and they had to go hat-in-hand to Joe Biden for flood relief.

Republicans whine that Obamacare means lack of choice; a curtailment of freedom by making everyone get insurance whether they want it or not. But folks, if you have a car, you gotta get car insurance and wear a seatbelt. If you have a baby, you gotta give her shots. If you kiss Miley Cyrus, you gotta buy Abreva. Obligating people to do something does not automatically cause the collapse of capitalism. I mean, we’ve all gotta eat, unless you wanna starve to death. Eating is not a choice, it’s a mandate, but there’s still room for choice. I might have roast chicken, you could have salmon, or pay extra for prime rib. Okay, now I’m hungry. But still angry.

Republicans say that most people hate Obamacare and don’t want it to go forward. That is not true. Most people are scared of Obamacare and don’t know what the hell to expect. But we also know that insurance is insanely expensive, and that millions of people without it are playing Russian roulette by not going to the doctor, or draining our taxes if they’re at a free clinic with the sniffles every week. Or, if they’re Republicans, with accidental bullet wounds.

But enough elephant bashing. After all, they embarrass themselves more than I ever could. Let us also not ignore the arrogance of Barack Obama and the donkeys. For weeks, the sequester is building to chaos, yet he can’t pick up a phone? He can’t get in a room with Boehner, et. al., and say, “okay, we’ll take out the medical-device thing, but you’ve gotta leave in abortions.” He can’t even say, “You know what? We will not delay Obamacare for a year, but three months? To work the kinks out? Sure, It’s not gonna kill anyone. Well, maybe some fourth-stage cancer patients, but other than that…” For a community organizer, Obama couldn’t organize paint cans in a Home Depot. And the Democrats are so cocky about winning the last election and so sure they have the Republicans cornered, they’re not even faking being interested in compromise.

These aren’t difficult times for America; these are ridiculous times for America. Maybe we need a third party again, only this time without Ralph Nader, or Ross Perot, or Roseanne Arnold, or Lyndon Larouche, or – you know what? Two’s more than enough.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=28910

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #76 (9/8/2013): Fast Food on Strike

click above to listen (audio file)

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #76 (9/8/2013): Fast Food on Strike

Aired Sept. 7, 2013 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/kI3UH0aafJI

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of September 8th, 2013.

“Do you want fries with that? No problem, give me 15 dollars.”

That is the call of the disenfranchised franchise worker. The people employed at Burger King, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Arby’s, Shloimy’s, Moishy’s – all the fast-food restaurants. They are weary of working for $7.40 per hour, which, if you can believe it, is 15 cents above the Federal minimum wage. In other words, someone laboring at a fast-food joint, full time, all week long, makes $15,000 a year, before taxes, no benefits, no 401K, but presumably all the unserved McNuggets they can eat. And so, around the country, the flippers and the grillers and the moppers and the servers are now strikers.

Who works harder than chain-food employees? They sweep the floors, clean the fryers, shpritz the special sauce, and deal with irate customers who throw tantrums when you forget the pickles. Room for advancement, to move up the grease-mottled ladder of success? Sure, for an extra dollar an hour, you get to manage all the other hostile, hopeless kids stuck in the same nowhere job. Not only do you have the honor of hearing customers bitch about everything, your fellow employees hate you for being management. All this for a salary that buys you two caramel macchiatos at Starbucks, where at least they give their workers health benefits.

I don’t care if the boss flumps a girl in a chair, hands her a magazine and says, “Just take a message if the phone rings.” Even that is taking an hour of time out of her life and deserves more than seven measly bucks an hour. Or eight. Or – oh my goodness – New York State voted to bring it up to nine – by the end of 2015! Thank you politicians! Should we bend over and bite the pillow or just sink to our knees in supplication?

As someone who lives and works on Long Island, where property taxes on a small house are 10 grand a year, the very idea that humans are still paid less than $10 an hour to do ANYTHING absolutely staggers me. That some politicians and businessmen fight against increases in the basic minimum wage staggers me double! “Oh,” they say, “if I raise the minimum wage, I won’t be able to hire as many people.” You know who faced that same problem? Pharoah! And his solution worked for a few decades until his employees rose up and marched out. And they knew about fast food, too. They hadda leave so quick, they ditched the sesame-seed buns and made matzoh instead. If you can’t afford to pay people something that keeps them in shoes, you should probably give them the shop and go work in Burger King, cause at least it’s steady.

Some folks defend low wages because these are quote-unquote “entry-level” jobs. It’s just high school students earning mall money or old people who are bored sitting at home, so they go to KFC where the action is. Leaving aside the fact that since the recession, thousands of workers have swallowed their pride to take any job, including stuffing a substance that looks vaguely like meat into Taco Bell tortillas. Leaving aside that some people take a minimum-wage second job only because they can’t pay their bills from their insufficient first job. Let’s even say for argument’s sake that your typical fast-food drudge is 15 years old, living rent-free with his parents, and not financially responsible for anything but his deodorant and iTunes downloads. Suppose this fine young man wants to take his girlfriend to the movies on a Saturday night. That’s gas in the car, parking, two movie tickets, two giant sodas, one big popcorn (and a penknife to make a schmeckel-sized hole in the bottom of it), a condom and/or a packet of handiwipes. He is looking at sixty bucks just to feel a girl’s boobs, and she may not even have boobs yet.

It is my considered opinion that any business owner netting upwards of, say, $60,000 a year who doesn’t believe that his workers are worth more than minimum wage should be shot in the face. Just as a wakeup call.

Most fast-food restaurants are publicly traded companies, so we know how much the CEO takes home, the VPs, the Vice-VPs, the shareholders, and the fry cooks and janitors. In 2010, out of $24 billion in revenue, McDonald’s netted $4.9 billion in profit. Because of this, the CEO took home almost $9 million in salary. Sorry for throwing all these numbers at you, but catch this one: that salary is almost 600 times more than that of a full-time slave at minimum wage.

Now that the economy has improved from quicksand to mud, the rank-and-file worker wakes up to remember he has needs, he has dignity, he has rights. He knows he has to work for a living, but that’s the key word: a living. Living means paying the rent, feeding the kids, getting your teeth cleaned and your blood pressure checked, going to sleep without worrying how you’ll pay for school supplies, or heat, and maybe even taking a week and staying at a Howard Johnson’s in Pensacola, Florida. If that means Horace Vanderbastard the III can’t customize his mistress’ yacht, so be it.

Good luck, fast food fighters. March on Mickey D’s. Boycott Burger King. Choke the Kentucky Fried Chicken. No, wait, that came out wrong, but you know what I mean. This isn’t about socialism. It’s not about destroying the free-market economy; that’s what cable companies are for. No, this is about fairness, about reasonable compromise, about people feeling pride in what they do and value in what they get. Yes, I’ll certainly take fries with that.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from the woefully underpaid Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #73 (7/28/2013): Abortion in Texas

click above to listen (audio file)

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #73 (7/28/2013): Abortion in Texas

Aired July 27, 2013 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/ZxR-DF7zXb0

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of July 28th, 2013.

Remember the Alamo? It was the last time someone put Texas in its place, and perhaps another whuppin’ is long overdue. Texas wants to be in the forefront of stopping legal abortions in this country. This is ironic because Texas is the state of the union with the most people in it who should have been aborted.

Last week, governor Rick Perry signed a bill that would prohibit abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy. That’s four fewer week than Roe v. Wade, which is federally protected by Supreme Court. So basically, Texas is saying: you gotta squash the little blob before it sprouts fingers.

On the surface, rolling back abortion’s legality to five months rather than six isn’t that horrible. Premature babies have been born at 22 weeks and lived. They went on to work at the DMV, but still . . . If a fetus can be extracted, incubated, and turned into a viable human being, pro-life activists have a point in saying that abortion at that stage is murdering a person. Granted, these same conservatives have no problem putting grown-ups in the electric chair and letting the poor starve to death, but teeny-weeny babies, ooh, gotta save every last one.

That’s what gets me about so-called pro-life activists. They’re all for rescuing little souls, but once they’re born, it’s everybody fend for themselves. If the mother goes on welfare, she’s a lazy leech. If the child grows up abused and unloved, there’s no money for free counseling and social services. If the kid turns criminal because that’s the only decent employment option available to him, lock him in prison for thirty years and let him get beaten, raped and demolished.

Hey, but at least he didn’t die in the womb, `cause Jesus would have a problem with that.

The new Texas law also says abortions can no longer be performed in clinics but have to be done in centers equipped for surgery. That sounds reasonable – mothers should have safe and sterile hospitals to go to in case the kid is born with two heads. But remember, if you take away the clinics, and the doctors who’ll do the procedure for $300 and some homemade pastries, you’re sending poor people without health insurance to places they can’t afford. Which really means you’re sending them to a cousin in a basement with a coat hanger and pillow.

The middle-aged white men of the great state of Texas even want to control birth control. Thanks to their new law, Texas women can no longer take RU-486 at home but have to be under doctors’ supervision. Which means, again, that if you have the money for continuous doctor visits, you’re granted more rights under the law than the underclass who don’t.

And I love how the pro-lifers always say that every soul is precious, and that the fetus you abort could be the next president. That embryo you just sucked out was the girl who’d grow up to cure cancer. You never hear the right-to-lifers say, “That unborn soul could’ve been the next Hitler.” They never think, “That future human floating around in your belly? Next marathon bomber. Next Osama bin Laden. Next Donald Trump.”

I, Rabbi Sol Solomon, go on record as saying that I am pro-choice. Not only that, I am pro-abortion. Early term, late term, rape, incest, frat-party mistake. If the child isn’t wanted and cannot be properly raised, don’t bring it into this overpopulated planet. I’m so pro-abortion, I think it should be retroactive. If I’m on an airplane and there’s a two-year-old screaming in the seat behind me, get the knife and pop the head. At that age, you can still de-vein them like a shrimp.

And, of course, the abortion battle still comes down to that age-old problem of religious zealots, mostly male, who want to control women. Not that I blame them; when was the last time a Jewish man controlled the women in his life? But seriously, if I get a tumor in my abdomen, God forbid, I go to the doctor, and he says, “It’s not cancer, but it’s like cancer. I recommend taking it out, but it’s up to you.” Nobody tells me what I have to do with my body. If I wanna leave the tumor in and watch it grow like those bulges on Dr. Phil’s head, that’s my business. If I wanna remove it and keep it in a jar near the gefilte fish – my choice. Don’t you dare tell me that something growing inside my own body is regulated by the church or punishable by law. And don’t tell a woman that the growth inside her is your business.

If abortion laws in this country become more restrictive for women, I say we should make dentistry illegal for men. If a guy has a rotten tooth, he has to keep it in his mouth for nine months – or, until it falls out of its own accord. If he doesn’t like it, he can go in a back room with a string and a doorknob. Come to think of it, that’s the way I used to do circumcisions.

Anyhoo, let’s keep a very sharp eye on Texas because the state that gave us George W. Bush, the assassination of Kennedy, and Astroturf has no business regulating morality or maternity.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=28938

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #66 (5/12/2013): Jodi on HLN

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #66 (5/12/2013): Jodi on HLN

Aired May 11, 2013 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/igCxYCb4zLo

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of May 11th, 2013.

After four months of testimony and two days of deliberation, an Arizona jury found Jodi Arias guilty of first-degree murder. The next step is deciding whether she’ll get the death penalty for whacking her boyfriend, Travis Alexander.

Demure, bespectacled, cute and goofy, Arias tried to prove she killed in self-defense. But considering that her significant other was stabbed multiple times, shot, and then almost decapitated, the defense of “he hit me one time too often” seems just a little suspect.

My heart goes out – no, not to the victim, but to the HLN cable network. What will they do now that their only form of programming for the past half a year has been snatched from them? If it wasn’t for Jodi Arias, HLN would be showing disputes in traffic court. I can just hear Nancy Grace now, “Twelve minutes past the meter! Why didn’t they boot his car? Someone in law enforcement dropped the ball; where’s the justice?”

HLN was so addicted to Jodi Arias that when those Russian kids bombed the Boston Marathon, and then a giant fertilizer factory exploded in Texas, and every other channel in America was, like, “We should cover this,” HLN said, “Ooh…Jodi is dabbing her eyes and showing emotion – we can’t cut away now!”

And what the hell does HLN stand for, anyway? It used to be CNN Headline News; CNN – Cable News Network. There was a logic to the acronym. Just like an IUD is an intra-uterine device, and my BVD’s were first produced by Bradley, Voorhees and Day, and IBM stands for when I go to the bathroom and make number two, HLN should signify something intelligent. HN would stand for Headline News. So what the hell is up with the “L”? I think HLN stands for, “Hey, Listen, we have Nothing to offer except five months of Jodi Goddamn Arias.”

Now, there probably will not be a trial of that Tsarnaev animal, or of that Aurora shooting lunatic. If they take a plea, HLN ratings take a dive. But somebody’s bound to kill somebody soon. And maybe they’ll look like a hot librarian. And maybe they’ll hire enough lawyers to push the trial into sweeps week. And maybe there’ll be a confession video and experts in forensics, and lawyers who rhyme. So that when we start bombing North Korea, and Syria sends chemical-tipped missiles over Tel Aviv, while a 9.3 earthquake caused by global warming pushes Los Angeles into the Pacific Ocean, by God we’ll have something interesting to watch on television. HLN – Here Lies News or How Low? Neverending.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, NY.

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=28977