RABBI SOL SOLOMON'S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #211 (6/27/2026): Bad Coffee

Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #211 (6/27/2026): BAD COFFEE Subject: Rabbi Sol reflects on a Brooklyn coffee shop’s anti-Semitism. This Rabbinical Reflection first aired June 27, 2026 on the “Dave’s Gone By” video podcast program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz. Rabbi Sol’s Rabbinical Reflections air on the long-running Dave’s Gone By program (davesgoneby.com) and are also archived on the Rebbe’s blog, Shalomdammit.com. Rabbi Sol is also the creator of the stage shows, “Shalom Dammit! An Evening with Rabbi Sol Solomon” and “Hate Speech…With Love: Another Evening with Rabbi Sol Solomon.” © 2026 TotalTheater Productions. All Rights Reserved. PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #211 (6/27/2026): Bad Coffee (c)2026 David Lefkowitz. airs June 27, 2026 on Dave’s Gone By. Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon, with a Rabbinical Reflection for the end of June 2026. What the hell has happened to coffee? It wasn’t so long ago that if you wanted a morning brew in New York, there’d be a guy in a cart, and for a buck he’d hand you a fresh Folger’s, with cream and two sugars, napkins, a donut, and a tip on the third race at Belmont. Okay, maybe that was so long ago. For decades we’ve grown inured to the Starbucking of America. Jackie Mason said it best when he warned us, “Coffee in a coffee shop? Sixty cents, with cream. At Starbucks, it’s Cafe Latte: 3.50. Each French word costs another four dollars. No tables, no chairs, no busboy, you have to clean up — and it’s burnt coffee. If you get burnt coffee at a coffee shop, you call a cop. But when it’s burnt at Starbucks, it’s a blend.” But at least Starbucks, which became a global powerhouse when led by a proudly Jewish CEO, stays mostly out of politics. Three years ago some of the unionized workers got mouthy about Gaza, but that simply triggered the most Jewish result of all: competing lawsuits. Since then, Starbucks has been extremely careful to say, “We don’t support Israel; we don’t not support Israel. We have stores all over Arabia, but the terrorists don’t get gift cards.” Like Switzerland in World War II, Starbucks’s neutrality is disingenuous and cowardly, but at least they didn’t join the other side like the French and Italians. Nowadays, however, self-righteous identity politics is everything. It’s not enough to sell an eight-dollar mochaccino to some Gen Z schmuck; you also have to treat them to your Instagram-based musings on social justice. It shouldn’t surprise us that coffee pourers think they’re experts on decolonization. The whole point of coffee is de-colonizing – getting the crap out of our colons. But a different kind of crap is being served up at one java shop in Brooklyn: Poetica Coffee, which is run by a jerk named Parviz Mukhamadkulov – and I wish this Mohammedan would cool off. Poetica refused to serve a pro-Israel Jewish politician. The store wrote on its official Facebook page, “Hey Congressman Dan Goldman. Do you see how our coffee doesn’t taste like genocide juice? Here at Poetica we don’t serve genocide enablers. We issued you a refund – your money’s probably coming from AIPAC anyway. Don’t ever come to Poetica.” Unquote. Obviously, this Parviz guy is chock full of nuts. But he’s getting away with this garbage! Hordes of Brooklyn millennials who fancy themselves baby Nelson Mandelas are cheering this douche-nozzle as he sells his rancid Robustas and gives only the Arabs Arabica. You gotta love a coffee shop that creams itself over equal rights while denying a customer . . . equal rights! Tuesday’s primaries showed the New York Democratic party moving even further towards radical anti-Semitism, so Poetica’s perversion should not shock us. Still, the gall of this guy’s blatant Israel-bashing, that crosses way past altruism into straight-up Jew hate, can be met only with incredulity and rage. I am heartened by the counterprotestors who staged a pro-Israel, anti-Mamdani rally outside Poetica, telling those progressos to drown in their espressos. I am disheartened by Congressman Goldman losing in the primary to Jewish kapo Brad Lander, a bleeding-heart socialist who parrots all Hamas’s talking points about the “horrors” of Zionism. You know he’ll be getting free refills from the eyebrow-piercing crowd. (full transcript at shalomdammit.com)