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Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #160 (4/10/20): SHAKING HANDS

(Rabbi Sol Solomon’s 160th Rabbinical Reflection aired Saturday, April 10, 2020 as part of Dave’s Gone By. Watch & Listen on Youtube: https://youtu.be/FBe-_trL2vI) / https://davesgoneby.net/?p=25519

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Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon, with a special Rabbinical Reflection for the Rave Social Distancing Festival of 2020.

Now let’s be honest. If you personally have not gotten sick with the COVID-19. And nobody close to you has died. And your job, God willing, is safe. It really hasn’t been a bad disease.

I know: the store doesn’t have your favorite toilet paper, so you’re using the scratchy kind that hurts your tuchas. You have to wear a mask when you go outside. Lemme tell you something: the vast majority of us are so homely, in public we should wear masks. You can’t see a show on Broadway. Big deal. Netflix has tons of homosexuals. And one of them raises tigers. You don’t see that in Hamilton. The lions inThe Lion King? Not real! What a gyp!

So in terms of social distancing . . . Nisht gefelech. No big deal. So you can’t go to work and see your colleagues five days a week. Ask yourself: the day you retire, will you miss any of those assholes one bit? Even the nice assholes? Of course not! So why miss them now?

But people are all upset about these minor alterations in behavior. Like when Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the coronavirus task force, told a reporter that if we’re really serious about stopping the spread of infectious disease, we would never shake hands again. Never shake hands? How do you end a job interview? (mimes OK signs) “Thank you!” (and double handjobs) “When will you be deciding?”

Americans have this attachment to the hearty handshake. Extend your forearm, look your adversary in the eye, shake vigorously without bruising any cartilage, smile and start your business. This is the universal language of macho respect. It’s also a fantastic way to transfer the germs and the yuch and the hangnail and the paper cuts on your fingers to a perfect stranger.

You ever meet someone who wears too much fragrance, you shake their hand, and the whole rest of the day, your hand stinks like them, no matter how many times you wash it? And you can’t help yourself. The rest of the day, you’re smelling your own hand. You’re working on something, you’re eating dinner; you tell yourself not to… and yet you bring your hand to your nose and goddammit, it’s still there. Well, if that eau de Toilet stays on your fingers 10 hours, imagine how long their phlegm SARS will stick around.

Dr. Fauci has a good point. We don’t need to press the flesh to impress the fresh. Why can’t we bow like the Japanese? A deferential tilt of the head, a bend at the hips like you’re davening. Then you stay on your side of the tatami mat, and I’ll stay on mine. And you know what with the Japanese? No sushi. I love my wife, but it tastes like her vagina. And not, like, 30 years ago when it was tolerable. Now it smells like someone farted into rubber cement. It’s horrible.

But I digress. We need to find ways to greet each other that don’t involve hand-to-hand microbial combat. We could adopt the royal wave. Queen Elizabeth is 187 years old; you think she wants people getting close to her? She gives a little wave, her subjects bow, no one gets chlamydia.

Maybe we can do the namaste thing. “The Divine in me honors the Divine in John Waters movies.” I show my respect to you by shaking my own hand and leaving yours alone. Because I can tell, that’s your Pornhub hand.

And then there’s the Israeli way: say “shalom,” back off six feet, and be ready to shoot.

Either way, we can keep in touch without keeping touching. If the new normal means shifting a few cultural practices that threaten the greater good, we should make the effort. Personally, I think we could eradicate 99 percent of all diseases if we got rid of doorknobs. And the underside of toilet seats. And Dennis Rodman.

But until then, let’s all do our part to keep each other safe and healthy so that after this strange and difficult Passover, we can finally have a true exodus.

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

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NOTES & BACKSTORY:

[April 2020] This Rabbinical Reflection, written during the COVID-19 crisis, was specially created to be part of the Rave Social Distancing Theater Festival, an online-only fest to which playwrights and theater artists submitted pieces of five minutes or less that dealt with social isolation and other aspects of life during a pandemic.