Trutharchivist

All right, hi! Supplemental no. 5 for my Jewish holidays series, upcoming. Hope you enjoy.

Tomorrow is one of the somewhat less prominent holidays - Tu B'Av, the 15th of Av. It's a day that sometimes get commercialised as something of a Jewish Valentine's Day. This is something I have somewhat negative feelings about - I might elaborate later in the post.

Anyway, what obscure historical event is tied to this day? Well... Buckle up, folks, because there are at least five. You see, the Mishnah in the Tractate of Ta'anit (the last one in this tractate, as a matter of fact) says: "Raban Shim'on Ben Gamli'el says: the Israelite has no days as happy as the 15th of Av and Yom Kippur." The Talmud, naturally, questions this statement. We are familiar with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and we can get why it's such a happy day, but what happened in the 15th of Av? The following answers are suggested, brought here in chronological order:

A. This is the day that the Deaths at the Desert stopped. What are those? Well, remember how we talked about the story of the spies in my Tish'ah b'Av post last year? So, following the Spies saying the Israelites won't be able to conquer the land and the latter group weeping over their presumed future demise, G-d declared in His anger that none if the Israelites who were over 20 at the time nay see the Promised Land, taking them instead on a lengthy tour on the desert during which this entire generation died. So, Jewish tradition has it that throughout the 40 years in the desert, every 9th of Av the Israelites would literally dig their own graves, go to sleep in them and those who wake up in the morning will cover the graves of those who don't. Hopefully no one overslept. Anyway, it is said that in the 39th year, they all got up in the morning. They were baffled. That couldn't be, right? Maybe they had the date wrong. So for an entire week they kept digging their graves, sleeping in them and everyone getting up in the morning as usual. Then they saw the full moon and realized, hey, Hebrew calendar months are lunar, meaning this has to be the 15th of the month, meaning they're officially off the hook! So they celebrated that.

B. This is the day the Tribes of Israel were allowed to intermarry. Why were they forbidden in the first place? Well, basically, the Promised Land was divided in twelve, so that each tribe had their own piece of land. But there were certain occasions when women could inherit lands, and when they marry their land would go to their children - who belong to their paternal tribe. So for the first few years, in order to solidify each tribe's territory, people were only allowed to marry inside their tribes. Which was probably not a great idea for the genetics, but it being short term might be fine. Maybe. Either way, this is the day they were allowed to intermarry, so hurrah! (The points about women inheriting and those women having to marry inside their tribes appear directly in the book of Numbers, towards the end - chapters 27 and 36.)

C. This is the day the rest of the Israelites were allowed to marry Benjaminites. Wait, isn't that... Exactly like the previous one? Well... No. No it isn't. Because this time we're talking about the story of the Levite's Concubine! How fun! The full story is laid out in the book of Judges, chapters 19-21. Short version: a Levite from the Mount of Ephraim attempted to make peace with his concubine from Judah. On their way back to his house, the Levite loathed staying in the Jebusite Jerusalem and opted to stay in the Benjaminite city of Gibe'ah instead... Where the people went all Sodom-like and ganged up on his host to rape either him or his concubine... The Levite pushed the poor girl outside, where the people did what they did and left her to die... The Levite then cut the dead body of his Concubine to twelve parts and sent her all around Israel, gathering most tribes to fight against Benjamin. It was a bloody war that ended with the Israelites vowing to not give their daughters to any Benjaminite to marry.

That's not the absolute end of the story, really. The following part includes the Israelites regretting the oath to practically extinct one of their tribes, then finding out the city of Yavesh Gil'ad didn't take part in the oath. So they massacre every man there (a part of the oath was also killing anyone who didn't participate. Go figure), and bring the women to the Benjaminites. Not enough? Not to worry! We're going to innocently send our daughters to dance in the vineyards, and it syre would be a shame if Benjaminites were to kidnap and marry them! (Wink, wink)

If you think this is messed up... Yes, you're right. Also, I just cross checked (wrote most of it from memory), and apparently there was a holiday in Shiloh, which was actually why young girls were dancing in the vineyards. The fact that the Mishnah I mentioned above also talks about a similar tradition in Jerusalem is obviously coincidental and has no relation. But. Um. I think there should be some other stuff...

D. This is the day the guards were removed from the roads to Jerusalem. What fresh horrors is this about to reveal? Well, much less than previously. Basically, when the Kingdom was split between Israel and Judah, the Israelite King Jeroboam (oh, traditional transliteration, how I did not miss you) was worried his citizens might go to the Temple in Jerusalem and suddenly recall that the Davidic Dynasty are their supposed rightful kings. (Granted, the Book of Kings was written by people from Judea and thus is likely to be biased.) Either way, he founded two Israelite (TM) worship places in his own kingdom and put up guards to prevent people from attending the rival worship site. Those have stayed there throughout the numerous dynasties, until Hoshea Ben Ellah decided that whatever, I don't have the budget for this, let's let people worship wherever they want. (The Israelites would like to say that this entire paragraph is full of Judean propaganda and shouldn't be trusted.) This action, according to the Talmud, took place in this day. So, congratulations, I guess. This particular civil disagreement ended up being less disturbing than the previous one!

E. Well, I think by now we're kind of back to somewhat normal stuff, because this one is just about wood for the Temple. You see, this is the beginning if the end of Summer in the Levant. The Temple required wood to feed the fire on the Altar all year round, but during the Fall or Winter it tended to be too wet or something? So they had to chop off trees for it during this season, up untill this day, and then there was a big celebration. Which is actually fun, for a change! Will this hold?

F. No. No, it would not. The fifth and final cause to celebrate is related both to my SU on Tish'ah b'Av and to the later one on Lag Ba'Omer and the Bar Kokhva revolt. You see, Beitar was the last stronghold of the Bar Kokhva revolt, which fell tragically after two years of independence, signing the fall of the last Jewish independent rule in the area until the founding of the State of Israel. The date of its fall, traditionally, was the 9th of Av. And for the week afterwards, the Romans did not allow for anyone to come and bury the dead fighters. Then, at the 15th of Av, they left and let the Jews bury their dead.

To be fair, this presentation is rather harsh when it probably was a simple matter: the Roman Legionnaires took a week to make sure they completely stumped the rebellion before letting civilians come around. Either way, the Sages decreed this a happy day, because they could finally bury the dead, and those dead were miraculously preserved - even though this is still summer, which is rather hot here, and in such temperatures bodies tend to rot quickly. They also added a fourth part to the blessing said after eating bread, which is an entire thing that I'm not getting into right now.

During the time of the Mishnah there was apparently a tradition for women to borrow dresses from each other and go dance in the vineyards for the explicit reason of finding a match. The Talmud goes to detail how every girl harped on her strong suit - the pretty ones remarked how important beauty is, the rich ones noted that money is also good, and the well-born ones (which doesn't necessarily overlap with being rich) noted that being of important descent is very important. This might come off as slightly disturbing in several ways, but this is probably how match making was done at the time. And yes, there's also a portion on what the poor, not well-born or pretty ones said, which is basically "acquire your purchase for the sake of Heaven, provided you adorn us with golden jewelry". Which might still be disturbing, but is sounds hilariously close to "for heavens sake, if you take us at least give us money". Which would be a gross mistranslation, but it's still kind of funny.

And then, we get to modern day practices. This is another one of the days were we just don't say the Tachanun prayer but otherwise there's no change in religious practices. But then, there's the "Jewish Valentine's" thing.

To be honest, my dislike of that angle might be simply a symptom of my general aversion to most things to do with romance. I would like to note I don't hate romance - some of my favourite bits in books are romantic! But this aversion is something I had from a young age and it didn't disappear when I grew up. However, I like to think it has more to do with how it is yet another symptom of Jews copying Christian traditions. To be fair, I don't really know how Valentine's became what it is today, so this might be a gross misunderstanding of the day. It still feels like that, however, when I pass by a shop that tells you to buy flowers for your girlfriend for "love day". I considered writing a full blown rant about the whole idea of Jewish holidays being actually the same as Christian ones with slight changes, the worst example being the invention of the Hannukah Bush, which is an obvious knock-off of a Christmas tree and has no root in Jewish traditions. I decided against it, though - I might've blown off the steam imagining the rant. I may still do it at some point, we'll see.

So, to summarize: one if the supposedly happiest days of the Hebrew Calendar, during which 1. The Israelites stopped dying in the desert; 2. The Tribes of Israel were allowed to intermarry; 3. The oath against marrying the Tribe of Benjamin was undone (it's actually not about the whole dancing in the vineyards thing, weirdly enough - it's supposedly something that happened a generation later, since the oath only applied for that generation); 4. The guards were removed from the roads between the northern Israelite kingdom and Jerusalem; 5. The chopping of wood for the Temple was finished each year; and 6. The casualties of Beitar were brought to burial. Nowadays, it's commercialised as some sort of "love day", somewhat similarly (from my ignorant perspective) to Valentine's day. 

That would be it for now. Thank you for reading, and have a good day!