Tu B'Av: The Jewish Day of Love You've Never Heard Of

From Ashes to Dancing

Six days. That is all that separates the saddest day on the Jewish calendar from one of the happiest. Tisha B’Av — fasting, darkness, Lamentations — falls on the 9th of Av. And then, on the 15th of Av, the tradition does something astonishing: it throws a party.

Tu B’Av (the 15th of Av, using the Hebrew letter tet-vav = 15) is the Jewish day of love. The Mishnah (Taanit 4:8) makes a claim so extravagant it stops you in your tracks: “There were no greater festivals in Israel than the 15th of Av and Yom Kippur.” Greater festivals than Passover? Than Sukkot? The rabbis placed Tu B’Av alongside Yom Kippur itself — the holiest day of the year — as one of the two greatest celebrations.

And yet most Jews today have barely heard of it. Tu B’Av is the hidden holiday, the forgotten festival, the Jewish Valentine’s Day that predates Valentine by centuries.

Dancing in the Vineyards

The Mishnah paints a vivid picture. On Tu B’Av, the young women of Jerusalem would go out to the vineyards wearing borrowed white dresses. The borrowing was deliberate — so that no one would be embarrassed for not having fine clothing of her own. Rich and poor looked the same. And they would dance.

The young men would come to the vineyards to watch and to choose. And the women would call out: “Young man, lift up your eyes and see whom you choose. Do not set your eyes on beauty; set your eyes on family.” (Though another version records them saying: “Look at beauty, for that is what matters in a wife.” The Talmud, characteristically, preserves both opinions.)

The image is striking — and strikingly egalitarian for the ancient world. The women are active, vocal, choosing to be seen. The white dresses level the playing field. The vineyard setting is earthy and sensual. This is not arranged marriage in a rabbi’s study; this is young people meeting under the open sky, and the tradition sanctioned it with joy.

Why Was This Day So Special?

The Talmud (Taanit 30b-31a) offers several historical reasons for the celebration:

1. The inter-tribal marriage ban was lifted — In the time of the Judges, the tribes of Israel had been forbidden from intermarrying (to preserve tribal land inheritance). On Tu B’Av, this restriction was removed, allowing love to cross tribal lines.

2. The tribe of Benjamin was restored — After the devastating civil war described in Judges 19-21, the other tribes had sworn not to give their daughters to Benjamin. On Tu B’Av, a way was found to reconcile, and Benjamin was welcomed back.

3. The wilderness generation’s decree ended — After the sin of the spies, God decreed that the generation of the Exodus would die in the wilderness over 40 years. On the 15th of Av in the final year, the dying stopped. The survivors realized they would live to enter the Promised Land.

4. The roadblocks were removed — King Jeroboam had placed guards on the roads to prevent the northern Israelites from making pilgrimage to Jerusalem. When these barriers were lifted, the 15th of Av became a day of reunion.

5. The dead of Betar were buried — After the catastrophic fall of Betar in 135 CE, the Romans refused to allow burial of the dead. When permission was finally granted (on Tu B’Av, tradition says), a new blessing was added to the Grace After Meals thanking God for the kindness of burial.

Each of these events shares a common theme: reconciliation, reunion, and the renewal of life after catastrophe. Tu B’Av is not happy in a frivolous sense. It is happy the way survival is happy — fierce, grateful, and aware of what almost was lost.

The Full Moon After the Darkest Day

The placement of Tu B’Av is no accident. The 15th of any Hebrew month is the full moon. The 9th of Av, Tisha B’Av, falls in the dark of the moon. So the emotional arc of the month of Av follows the lunar cycle itself: from darkness to light, from mourning to joy, from the blackest night to the fullest moon.

The rabbis understood that grief cannot be sustained indefinitely. The Three Weeks of mourning, culminating in the total despair of Tisha B’Av, must give way to something — and what it gives way to is love. Not despite the mourning but because of it. The tradition seems to say: you have sat in the ashes, you have wept for what was destroyed, and now — precisely now — life reasserts itself. The deepest joy comes not from ignorance of pain but from having passed through it.

Tu B’Av and Yom Kippur

The Mishnah’s pairing of Tu B’Av with Yom Kippur is initially puzzling. What does a day of love have in common with the most solemn day of the year?

The Talmud explains that on Yom Kippur, too, young women would go out to dance in the vineyards. This makes more sense when you remember that Yom Kippur, despite its gravity, is ultimately a day of forgiveness — a day when the relationship between God and Israel is renewed. Both days are about reconciliation: Tu B’Av between people, Yom Kippur between humanity and the divine.

Both days also involve a kind of leveling. On Yom Kippur, everyone wears white, everyone fasts, everyone stands equally before God. On Tu B’Av, the borrowed white dresses accomplished something similar. Love and forgiveness both require humility — the willingness to meet the other without pretense.

Tu B’Av in Modern Israel

For most of Jewish history, Tu B’Av was a minor footnote — acknowledged in the liturgy (Tachanun, the daily penitential prayer, is omitted), but not widely celebrated. That changed in the 20th century, when the early Zionist settlers in Palestine, looking for a Jewish equivalent to secular romantic holidays, rediscovered Tu B’Av and gave it new life.

Today in Israel, Tu B’Av is the Jewish calendar’s answer to Valentine’s Day. Flower sales spike. Restaurants offer special menus. Couples exchange gifts. Marriage proposals are timed for the occasion. Outdoor concerts and festivals are held. The holiday has become thoroughly commercialized — but beneath the flowers and chocolate, the ancient pulse of the day still beats.

The Astronomy of Love

The Talmud notes that from Tu B’Av onward, the nights begin to grow longer. The days of midsummer are shortening. There is a bittersweet quality to this — the fullest moon arrives just as the light begins to wane. Some commentators saw in this a metaphor for love itself: it is most powerful at precisely the moment when you become aware of its fragility.

Others took a practical lesson: the longer nights meant more time for Torah study, and the Talmud says that from Tu B’Av on, “whoever adds [study at night] adds life.” Love and learning — the two great passions of Jewish tradition — meet on this single day.

A Day That Deserves to Be Known

Tu B’Av is one of those gifts from the tradition that hides in plain sight. A day that says: after the mourning, there is love. After the destruction, there is dancing. After the ashes of Tisha B’Av, the full moon rises over the vineyards, and the daughters of Jerusalem go out in white.

It is not naive happiness. It is the happiness of people who know what suffering looks like and choose life anyway. The Mishnah was right to rank it among the greatest days. It may be the most human holiday on the Jewish calendar — a celebration of the stubborn, beautiful, irrational insistence that love is stronger than loss.