Top 10 Rolling Stones Shavuot songs

By Ben Sales

The good news? The Rolling Stones will play Tel Aviv in June. The bad news? A large portion of Israelis won’t be able to go.

The concert, scheduled for June 4, falls at the end of Shavuot — making it near impossible for holiday-observant Israelis to go see Mick, Keith and Co. prove they’ve still got the magic at age 70. Jewish Home MK Nissan Slomiansky petitioned the Stones to move the concert, but in case they don’t acquiesce, we’ve got the next best thing: The top 10 Rolling Stones Shavuot songs.

(Props to the Jerusalem Post’s Lahav Harkov for this idea.)

  1. Sympathy for the Devil’s Food Cake — We can’t have meat, but at least we can have great dessert.
  2. (Don’t) Gimme Shellfish — The laws of kashrut, put to hard rock.
  3. Wild Moses — Check out Charlton Heston’s beard in “The Ten Commandments.” Now tell me Moses wasn’t wild.
  4. Dairy Tuesday — This one really only works this year.
  5. 19th Nervous Breakdown — The song title is the same, but this time it’s about a Jewish mother.
  6. Let’s Spend the Night Together… Learning Torah — Probably not what you expected from a Stones song.
  7. Holy Talk Woman — Shavuot night at Yeshivat Maharat.
  8. It’s Only Lox and Rolls But I Like It — Nothing like a good bagel.
  9. Write with Fire – According to legend, God wrote the Ten Commandments with black fire on white fire. Don’t try this at home. 
  10. Hey, Jew, Get Off of My Cow – Moses gets angry about the Golden Calf
Ben Sales is JTA’s Israel correspondent. He reports on Israeli politics, culture, society and economics, in addition to covering Palestinian and regional affairs. A graduate of Washington University in St. Louis and the Columbia University Journalism School, he is the former editor-in-chief of New Voices, the national Jewish student magazine.