More Than the Jewish Valentine’s Day

Tomorrow is the minor Jewish holiday of Tu b’Av, the fifteenth day of the Hebrew month of Av. In its origins, it marks a turning point in the annual calendar. Preceded by a three-week period of national mourning that has culminated in the grim fast of Tisha b’Av (the ninth of Av), it is a day of comfort before the annual cycle moves into the long period of repentance that will climax on Yom Kippur, the day of forgiveness.

In the Talmud, Tu b’Av does not demand any particular ritual observances—which means that even those Jews aware of its existence have tended to regard it as a pleasant afterthought to Tisha b’Av. But in contemporary Jewish circles, especially among the Modern Orthodox, it has become a kind of Jewish Valentine’s Day, celebrated with singles’ mega-events like sunset cruises on boats swathed in pink and red heart-shaped balloons.

There is basis in the Talmud for this practice. Moreover, as a careful reading reveals, the significance the rabbis attributed to the day is relevant in other ways to our own moment in Jewish history.