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Shalom Dammit!
'Shalom Dammit! An Evening with Rabbi Sol Solomon' is a 2011 play by David Lefkowitz that is "co-created" with his comic character, Rabbi Sol Solomon.

Rabbi Sol Solomon stars in the show and is backed by a keyboardist for several musical numbers. The comedy was workshopped in November 2011 at the University of Northern Colorado and received two developmental performances at UNC's Norton Theater featuring David San Miguel as the musical accompanist. The show received five further developmental performances at off-off-Broadway's Richmond Shepard Theater in March 2012, followed by a two-week run at midtown Manhattan's Roy Arias Theater Center, July 31-August 12, 2012. In both of those productions, Richard Shore served as musical director.

Plot

Rabbi Sol Solomon is the spiritual leader of Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York. In Shalom Dammit!, he mixes lecture, sermon, stand-up comedy and musical revue "to share a modicum of [his] culture and to make a little sense of Jewish life in the 21st Century."

In the first part of the show, Rabbi Sol defines Jewish and Yiddish words, playfully jokes about Jewish rules and customs and outlines both the beauties and absurdities of being a semi-secular Jew. He sings "Old Time Yeshiva Boy" and another tune about the differences between Jews and Gentiles. He then goes on to point out the absurdity in all world religions ("Judaism is only slightly less insane than all the others, and that's just because we were there first. Well, after the sun god and the moon goddess..."). Act one concludes with the Rabbi more darkly mocking the major world religions and promising "it gets worse in act two!"

The second act begins with a singalong and then a look at "the lives and learnings" of various (mostly fictional) Rabbis, including the Great Rebbe of Lithuania, as well as "the Not-So-Great Rebbe of Lithuania." After this comes a somewhat more serious discussion of the inevitability of violence in the world: "as soon as one part of the world cools down, another boils over." This leads to a look at the Arab/Israeli conflict, with the Zionistic Rabbi stating his case for Israel being a specifically Jewish homeland ("If you deduct the land of the Land of Israel from the rest of the Middle East, your remainder is 14 Alaskas' worth of non-Jewish Arab land. And the Palestinians don't have a home?  Boo hoo!").

After taking spontaneous questions from the audience, Rabbi Sol closes his sermon with some final thoughts and a final song ("When Jewish is What You Are"), followed by a more silly encore duet with the musical director.

Characters

Rabbi Sol Solomon is a middle-aged Jewish man who is the founder and spiritual leader of Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York. Prone to both silliness and anger, Rabbi Sol generally wears a yarmulke and prayer shawl but does not identify as Orthodox or with any particular sect. He is married to his "dear wife" Miriam Libby, with whom he has "21 and a half beautiful children": Nechemiah, Josiah, Shloimy, Chanah, Rivki, Yehuda, Moish, Yechezkiel, Boruch, Avigdor, Yisroel, Hepzebah, Shaul, Aliza, Shimon, Gedaliah, Naftuli, Velvel, Shmuley, Fred (by his first marriage) and the baby Beryl, "whose head, God willing, will soon take its proper shape."

Though Rabbi Sol sees the absurdity in all forms of religious ritual, he is a staunch defender of both Judaism and Zionism. He's more a pragmatist than a pessimist but is unafraid to use shock humor or even profanity to get his points across.

Style

Shalom Dammit! is mostly stand-up comedy with elements of lecture and spoofy sermonizing. The show also has elements of a musical revue with both original comic numbers and song parodies.

Productions

Shalom Dammit! was first conceived when David Lefkowitz received an arts journalism fellowship co-sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the University of Southern California. After writing the first scene and song, the author put the project aside until he was able to further develop the piece while getting a Master of Arts degree in Theater Education at the University of Northern Colorado. As part of his thesis project, Lefkowitz was allowed to complete the show and then direct it (under the directorial guidance of UNC teacher J. David Blatt) in a workshop at UNC's 99-seat Norton Theater. Two performances were given, Nov. 21-22, 2011 at the Norton Theater featuring UNC student David San Miguel on keyboards.

Receiving further directorial guidance from UNC Associate Professor Ken Womble, the show was developed further, with musical director Richard Shore officially on board as arranger and pianist.

In March 2012, Shalom Dammit! received a workshop staging of five performances at off-off-Broadway's Richmond Shepard Theater. During that run, the show was cut from 2 hrs, 15 min to 2 hours (including an intermission), with other changes made, including the dropping of a second-act scene featuring a hand puppet of the Rabbi's Uncle Max, a Holocaust survivor with surprising memories of Anne Frank.

Good reviews and audience interest led to further work on the show and a two-week run of 18 performances at midtown Manhattan's Roy Arias Theater Center, July 31-August 12, 2012. By then, the show was running under two hours, still including a ten-minute intermission. Reviews for this engagement were mostly raves, with BistroAwards.com's Roy Sander calling the show "a stimulating and exhilarating experience" and veteran critic Irene Backalenick likening the "biting" humor to that of Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce, thanks to the Rabbi's "salient, at times hilarious, comments . . . brilliantly carving up and dissecting each religion.”

External Links

Rabbi Sol Solomon's blog page