Love Day — Tu B'Av (Fifteenth of Av) (12/08)

Love Day — Tu B'Av (Fifteenth Av) — does not refer to generally accepted Jewish holidays, rather, like Valentine's Day among Christians, — is a pleasant occasion to congratulate a loved one and (or) offer a hand and heart.

Meir Levinov wrote beautifully about the history of the holiday: Fifteenth Ava — day of unification of the people.

1. Celebration of 15 Av in ancient times.

The 15th of the month of Ab is marked in the Jewish calendar as a holiday. Actually, festive events are limited to this note: no special customs, nothing extraordinary, an ordinary working day, except that prayer in synagogues is somewhat shorter —; repentant texts are excluded from it. And that's all.

But once upon a time «... There was no more beautiful holiday in Israel than 15 Av. Jewish girls went out into the gardens in white dresses — borrowed, according to custom, from each other, so that no one would be ashamed of the lack of beautiful clothes. They danced in circles in the gardens, and everyone who was looking for a bride went there».

This holiday has existed since ancient times. Even before the establishment of the kingdom in Israel, even before the conquest of Jerusalem —, even then girls who wanted to get married went out to dance in the vineyards in the vicinity of the Temple in Shilo. This holiday was very important. The fact is that in those days, each of the tribes of Israel lived on its own territory, and the people rather resembled a coalition of twelve «cantons», interconnected only by a common religion and agreements on military assistance in the hour of danger. At the same time, all the tribes watched their allotment of land, trying to prevent representatives of other tribes from settling on their territory.

The law of the time allowed girls who owned real estate to marry only a member of their tribe, so that the land would not pass into the possession of another tribe, and so that there would be no enclaves of one tribe within another. All this helped preserve the ethnic isolation of each tribe, its customs and traditions, but at the same time did not allow the people of Israel to merge into a single whole.

2. Intercommunal marriages — the path to uniting the tribes into a single people.

The meeting place of the tribes at that time was the Temple in Shilo, where all the tribes of Israel gathered for the holidays established by the Torah. There, the elders of the tribes discussed affairs, concluded agreements and made joint decisions. Actually, it was the Temple in Shilo and the meetings there that united the tribes into a single union. However, a union at the leadership level does not yet make the people one. Whatever the leadership thinks, the people unite into a single whole not at all according to decisions from above. And even the common past is not capable of building a single people.

The fifteenth Ava — holiday, not established by the Torah, arose on its own as fun over the harvesting of grapes — it was he who gave the people the opportunity to unite. On this day, boys and girls from different tribes of Israel could meet each other. And it was on this day that the elders of Israel decided to lift all restrictions on inter-knee marriage.

All historical events associated with the day of 15 Av, — are events that unite the people of Israel. The lifting of restrictions on inter-knee marriages began a long process of integration of Jews into a single people. For the most important thing in national unity is intercommunal marriages, the children of which belong not only to one tribe.

One of the desired results of the meeting is a fun wedding and a happy life (Photo: SunKids, licensed from Shutterstock.com)

3. 15 Ava — day for correcting political mistakes.

At one time, thanks to the tradition of 15 Av, it was also possible to cope with the consequences of a difficult civil war, in which all tribes united against the tribe of Benjamin, deciding that for the sins of the Binyamites «, their name should be erased from under the sky». Unfortunately, the knees completed their task almost completely: they destroyed the cities of Benjamin, all his girls were taken prisoner and vowed not to marry their daughters to those who survived. Still, in the end, the tribes changed their minds, but, not wanting to directly break the oath they had given, they remembered the holiday of 15 Av and sent the following message to the remnants of Benjamin: «15 Ava, when the girls go out for festivities in the vineyards of Shilo, come, steal them and get married» (it is clear that in those years only those girls who wanted to be stolen went to the vineyards).

Another historical event associated with 15 Ava, — is the abolition of border guards between two Jewish states of antiquity, the Northern and Southern kingdoms. After the collapse of Solomon's kingdom, the first king of the Northern Kingdom considered it necessary to establish a guard at the border so that Jews from the North would not go on holidays to the South, to the Temple of Jerusalem. The decision, purely political, made out of a desire to prevent the religious influence of the Southern Kingdom on the subjects of the Northern Kingdom, in practice led to the division of the people. But subsequent kings of the Northern Kingdom canceled this decree so that everyone could go to Jerusalem for the holidays, so that the Jews would remain one people.

4. Where danger cannot unite, love can unite.

It is hardly a coincidence that the unifying holiday of 15 Ava is located on the calendar immediately after the day of mourning for the destroyed Temple — of the day from which the exile began and into which the people of Israel were again scattered to different parts of the world, again divided into separate communities. It was the Ninth of Av that led to the current situation in Israel, when to look from the outside the people seem monolithic, but within the country about every Israeli the first thing that turns out is that — is his belonging to this or that community: Moroccans, Russians, Yeks, Kurds and so on. Political camps are added to ethnographic differences, and religious divisions are added to them —.

The events of recent decades have shown that today the people of Israel are not able to unite even external danger. Moreover, it caused one of the most serious splits in Israeli society. But even if danger does not unite, then maybe love can unite? No, not the one that politicians willingly talk about, calling on people and everyone to love, but the most ordinary love, when guys and girls from different communities and different political camps meet, meet, get married and have children. Today this is perhaps the only hope for uniting the divided people of Israel.

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