Due to the timing of the newsletter, I'm a day late and a shekel short with today's commentary. That's because the Jewish holiday I'm writing about—a holiday I can almost guarantee you've never heard of before (without putting any actual money on it)—fell just yesterday.
And what was that holiday? It's called Tu B'Av, and it's just the Jewish Valentine's Day, that's all!
The origins of this somewhat uncreatively named holiday—it simply means the Fifteenth Day of the Month of Av—date back to the time of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, around the first century B.C.E. It began as a day of matchmaking (think turn-of-the-millennium Yenta) where unmarried women would dress in white and dance in the vineyards while the young men of Israel would come to choose their brides. It was a joyful occasion, apparently marking the end of the grape harvest. More significantly, it offered a break from the sadness of the preceding weeks, which included the sorrowful holiday of Tisha B'Av, the Ninth of Av, a day already set aside for mourning the First Temple. (And would soon be expanded to include the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. To learn more about that, please join us at our Shabbat service this Friday.)
Over time, the significance of Tu B'Av waned, but the day never fully disappeared from Jewish consciousness. It fell down the pecking order to the category of "Most Minor Holiday," where it remained until recent times when it gained popularity in Israel as a kind of Jewish-style Valentine's Day. I first encountered it in its living form back in the 1990s while walking through Jerusalem's Machaneh Yehudah marketplace. At that time, it wasn't unusual to find Valentine's Day cards and flowers on sale in February. But over the years, those began to disappear in favor of Tu B'Av equivalents, now ubiquitous in Israel.
I don't envision a time when Tu B'Av will replace Valentine's Day for American Jews. But its rebirth in Israel is a great reminder that Judaism is much more than a religion; it is a living, thriving culture, demonstrating that Jewish traditions can be adapted to fit modern values and lifestyles.