Here's a sentence from the Mishnah that stops people cold when they first encounter it: "There were no greater festivals for Israel than the 15th of Av and Yom Kippur." The 15th of Av. A holiday most Jews today couldn't describe. Placed alongside the holiest day of the year. What was going on?
Tu B'Av — the 15th of Av — is the Jewish festival of love. In modern Israel it's been embraced as a romantic holiday: roses, candlelit dinners, couples who got engaged on this date. But the original tradition is stranger and more interesting than a Jewish Valentine's Day. The Mishnah describes young women going out to the vineyards in borrowed white dresses and dancing so that young men could come and choose their future wives. That's a remarkably vivid scene for a 2,000-year-old text.
Ani l'dodi v'dodi li — "I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine" (Song of Songs 6:3)
The Dancing in the Vineyards
The Mishnah's description is specific. The daughters of Jerusalem went out to the vineyards in white borrowed garments — not their own, so that no one would be embarrassed by having nicer clothes than someone else. They danced. The young men came to watch and choose. The women called out: "Young man, look up and see who you're choosing. Don't fix your eyes on beauty — look at family."
That instruction — character over appearance — lands a bit differently in a world of dating apps and curated photos. It's the ancient version of a maxim that's still getting ignored constantly. But the borrowed white dresses are the detail that sticks: equality built directly into the ritual. Rich or poor, fashionable or plain — everyone in the same borrowed white. No hierarchy in the vineyard.
Six Reasons for the Holiday
The Talmud (tractate Ta'anit) gives six separate historical reasons why the 15th of Av became a festival. They're worth listing because they're genuinely varied:
- A biblical-era restriction on inter-tribal marriage was lifted — more freedom in who you could marry
- The tribe of Benjamin was readmitted to the community after a devastating civil war, ending a marriage ban against them
- The last of the desert generation — those condemned to die in the wilderness because of the spies' faithless report — finally died out, and God resumed speaking to Moses directly
- King Jeroboam's roadblocks preventing northern Israelites from reaching Jerusalem were removed
- The slaughtered defenders of Beitar (after the Bar Kokhba revolt) were finally allowed burial — and a new blessing was added to daily prayer in gratitude
- Woodcutting for the Temple altar ended for the year, and long nights of Torah study began
What connects these six things? Endings of separation. Resumptions of connection. The lifting of barriers between people, between communities, between Israel and God. Tu B'Av is a festival of reconciliation as much as romance.
Six Days After the Saddest Day
Tu B'Av falls exactly six days after Tisha B'Av — the saddest day in the Jewish year. That proximity is the point. The same calendar that hits its lowest point on the 9th of Av begins turning on the 15th. The full moon of Av — the same month that saw the Temple's destruction — rises in the summer sky and the tone shifts entirely.
This is a very Jewish structure: you don't skip from sadness to joy. You earn the joy by sitting with the sadness first. You don't recover from Tisha B'Av by pretending it didn't happen — you walk through it, and six days later something opens. Not because the grief is gone, but because the turning of time is real and doesn't wait for you to finish mourning.
Tu B'Av in Modern Israel
Israelis have enthusiastically claimed Tu B'Av as a romantic holiday. Flower shops sell out. Restaurants fill up. The song Ani L'Dodi plays everywhere. Many Israeli couples pick Tu B'Av for engagements. On a warm August evening with a full moon rising over the hills, the ancient dancing-in-the-vineyard energy is genuinely accessible.
The combination of summer heat, full moonlight, and a holiday explicitly about love and human connection makes Tu B'Av one of the most atmospheric dates of the year. If you're in Israel on this night, go outside.
"There were no greater festivals for Israel than the 15th of Av and Yom Kippur, when the daughters of Jerusalem would go out dancing in the vineyards."
— Mishnah, Ta'anit 4:8
That the Mishnah places Tu B'Av beside Yom Kippur is a theological statement. Joy is not trivial. To love and seek connection and celebrate human partnership — these are, for Judaism, acts of holiness. The dancing in the vineyard wasn't entertainment. It was service. Tu B'Av Sameach!