Tu B’Av: Israel’s 'Love Day'

Often considered the Jewish equivalent to Valentine’s Day, Tu B’Av is associated with love and marriage. However, a biblical story linked to its origin is as heartbreaking as the legends connected to St. Valentine. 

The name of the holiday translates to the fifteenth day of Av in the Hebrew calendar, known as Tu B’Av for short. Today is often called “Hag HaAhava,” a holiday of love. The biblical backstory associated with the holiday arose from the need to find wives for the tribe of Benjamin at a time of crisis. 

Though a challenging read, there are important lessons to be learned from that cautionary tale from the book of Judges, which highlight the meaning of true love. 

The first mention of Tu B’Av is found in the Mishnah, from Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, a Jewish Sage from the time of the Second Temple. He wrote about Tu B’Av and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), describing them as the two happiest days in the Jewish calendar, even though there is a solemn element to them both.

In Mishnah Taanit 4:8, Rav Gamliel wrote, “On these days the daughters of Jerusalem would go out in borrowed white garments in order not to shame anyone who had none. All these garments required immersion. The daughters of Jerusalem come out and dance in the vineyards. What would they say? Young man, lift up your eyes and see what you choose for yourself. Do not set your eyes on beauty but set your eyes on the family. “Grace is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman that fears the Lord, she shall be praised” (Proverbs 31:30).

Women were encouraged to wear simple white dresses as an equalizer, so men would not be drawn to wealth or status, just as men were encouraged to remember that the qualities of an excellent wife go beyond superficial beauty, which fades.

As honorable as these sentiments may be, the biblical story said to be behind this vineyard dancing enterprise was devastating, starting with a man stealing from his mother but culminating in the near elimination of an entire tribe of Israel. 

After the man (Micah) stole silver from his mother, instead of correcting him, we read in Judges 17 that she blesses him. She had previously cursed the person who stole it, but then after getting it back, she takes the silver and makes a literal idol out of it.

What happens next is a steady stream of sin, continuing along the trajectory of wrong choices.

Micah takes the idol, hires a Levite who had wandered out of his territory, and sets up a new cult. Then hundreds of men from the tribe of Dan crash the party and snatch the idol along with the priest who would dish out blessings to the highest bidder, before heading up to a plot of land that wasn’t allotted to them in the north of Israel. There they slaughtered the people who were quietly getting on with life, taking it for themselves. 

Continuing the catalog of errors, that Levite had a concubine who left him and went to stay with her father, and it was when he went to try and woo her back that one of the most awful episodes in the whole Bible takes place.

After bringing her out of her father’s house, they stayed in a town in the territory of Benjamin, where the local men gang raped her to death. The Levite called on the other eleven tribes to respond to the atrocity, leading to intertribal warfare for the first time in Israel’s history, almost bringing an end to the entire tribe.

The other tribes were so horrified by the behavior of the Benjamites who had defended the town of rapists rather than handing them over that they vowed never to give their daughters to them in marriage. This left Israel with a dilemma: were they willing to see the end of a tribe? 

And the people of Israel had compassion for Benjamin their brother and said, “One tribe is cut off from Israel this day. What shall we do for wives for those who are left, since we have sworn by the Lord that we will not give them any of our daughters for wives?” (Judges 21:6–7)

Their solution was to arrange a situation in which the Benjamites could take wives without them incurring a curse on themselves for giving their daughters over:

And they commanded the people of Benjamin, saying, “Go and lie in ambush in the vineyards and watch. If the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in the dances, then come out of the vineyards and snatch each man his wife from the daughters of Shiloh, and go to the land of Benjamin" (Judges 21:20–21).

I told you it was grim. 

The horrors of Judges 17–21 snowballed out of many wrong relationships: a son who steals from his mother, a parent who won’t discipline her child, a misuse of money, an abandonment of calling, idolatry, and coercion – way before it escalates to the extreme wickedness of mass rape and murder. 

Getting things back on track also took a huge intertribal effort and it is here in Judges that the Hebrew word for fasting appears for the first time. True love and godly relationships encompass way more than we might think, whether it’s honoring parents or respectful work relationships or communities that care for each other.

Similarly, what may appear to be “loving” may ultimately have undesirable outcomes if it goes against God’s ways. The mother may have seen herself as loving for blessing her son’s misdemeanors back at the beginning, but letting sin slide can have devastating consequences.

Today Tu B’Av is celebrated as a happy occasion, held at the time of the full moon in the middle of the month, and associated with singing, dancing and special dating events. 

The importance of love and marriage as foundational to building a strong society has been highlighted all the more in Israel given the existential threat felt since Oct. 7 2023. While rape was wielded against Israel as a weapon of destruction, impromptu marriages soared since the attack as a way of fighting back.

Professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, a family law expert and the founding director of the Rackman Center for the Advancement of Women's Status at Bar-Ilan University's Faculty of Law, explained how getting married was a way of declaring,

"We are creating continuity here. They have risen up to destroy us, but not only have we survived, we are ensuring our continued existence through the next generation.'" 

Rather than impacting just two people or even the nuclear family unit, true love – or the lack of it – can affect the whole of society.