Steve Solomon keeps it kosher

Comedians are either funny or rude. Based on the audience’s laughter, Steve Solomon was funny.

Solomon joked eloquently Saturday night to a packed audience of more than 200 at Collegiate School about the trials and tribulations of growing up as a Jewish Italian in New York City.

He recounted a conversation his Italian and Jewish grandmothers had about Jewish dietary laws:

“Meat and dairy are bad together?”

“Yes, but dairy with dairy is OK.”

“When dairy hatches and is meat, dairy and meat are not OK.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s the law.”

Solomon used different voices, props, irony and human folly to effect laughs. His jokes talked about the human condition, his family and their foibles. He talked of love and the lack of love in marriage between his parents and himself.

He poked fun at himself and talked about how he met his wife at Woodstock. Upon learning her surname, he realized she might have been Jewish and thought, “Dad will be proud.” She was covered in mud and very attracted to him. Initially, he was repulsed by her advances. Two years later, they were married.

He detailed how his family could be both maddening and heartbreaking. He recalled a conversation with his sister, a smoker.

“Why do you smoke?” Solomon asked her. When she told him it felt good, he rebutted with a question about how she coughed so much.

“Is it really worth it?” he asked.

She coughed and said yes.

When his wife told him his son was homosexual, Solomon wondered, “Did I need to wrestle in the mud with my son? Did I need to do other activities like subscribe to Playboy? As a boy, I didn’t do those activities. Why am I heterosexual?”

His son, however, did play with GI Joe. Solomon decided his son needed therapy, while his wife opted for religion.

His wife also decided to live by kosher rules, which created strife in the family. When a utensil used for dairy touched a utensil used for meat, the dish has to be buried.

When Solomon and his wife threw a dinner party, the dairy utensils were washed in the meat sink. Thus, all the silver had to be buried at 2 a.m., much to the confusion of the neighbors.

Some time later, his wife threw a party for his family. When Solomon went to set the table, he had service for one person. His wife gave him permission to unearth the silverware. Unfortunately, Solomon had forgotten where he buried it.

Relations between his wife strained, and she left him. For six long months, his snoopy neighbors worried that he killed her. Eventually, Solomon used a metal detector to locate the sealed bags. As he pulled out a bag, the cops arrested him.

He felt horrible having only Jewish dietary laws as his alibi.