It’s a little bizarre that the holiday of love, the Jewish Valentine’s Day, so to speak, falls only 6 days after Tisha b’Av, the saddest day on the Jewish calendar. But here we are. Today is Tu B’Av, the 15th of Av. The mishna teaches us that on this day, the maidens would go out into the fields to find their suitors. They’d all wear borrowed white dresses to not shame any woman who didn’t have her own. As the men would approach the vineyards and see their dancing, the women would call out, “young men, look and observe well who you are about to choose, regard not beauty, but rather look to what your family could be.” It was through this call for companionship, for community, for values, that the people would partner off.
Perhaps the relationship between Tisha b’Av and Tu b’Av teaches us something important about the glue of Jewish community. While we mourn the destruction of the Temple on Tisha B’Av, the emphasis on connections between people on Tu b’Av - romantic or otherwise - reminds us of what’s really to be treasured. We can be devastated about the loss of a building, especially a holy structure that enhanced our connections to God, but we will build ourselves back up through the connections and relationships between people. The strength of these relationships will be part of the way that we connect to the Divine. It’s through coming together as a people that we will transform sadness to joy.
This week, in fact, on Sunday, at the very end of Tisha B’Av, I was honored to be a part of an interfaith ceremony through the Lynching Sites Project. As a part of an effort to mark every location where lynching atrocities occurred, clergy of different faiths conducted a ceremony unveiling a marker for Lee Walker, lynched on July 23rd, 1893. As Tisha b’Av was ending, despite my thirst and headache, I looked around the space with people of different races, religions, and political persuasions. We had come together. This was the most appropriate way to end the saddest day, to pull ourselves out of destruction and bring ourselves towards healing, towards relationship, towards love.
On this Tu B’Av, I hope we can all feel a bit more love in our world.
