Before Valentine’s Day, there was the Jewish holiday of Tu B’Av.
In a time when fear often becomes the organizing principle of Jewish discourse, Tu B’Av suggests another foundation: joy as defiance, family as strategy, hope as infrastructure.
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This is a guest essay by Vanessa Berg, who writes about Judaism and Israel.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
In Jewish tradition, Tu B’Av — the fifteenth day of the Hebrew month of Av — is considered the ancient holiday of love and matchmaking.
Long before roses were imported from Ecuador and Hallmark printed its first card, Jewish women were dancing in vineyards under the summer moonlight, and young men were seeking their future spouses. Valentine’s Day showed up fashionably late.
Tu B’Av is not merely a charming folkloric footnote; it is one of the most fascinating examples of how Jewish civilization weaves together history, tragedy, romance, and renewal — transforming even the saddest month on the Jewish calendar into a celebration of hope.
The earliest recorded description of Tu B’Av appears in the Mishnah (Ta’anit 4:8), later elaborated upon in the Talmud. The rabbis famously state: “There were no days as joyous for Israel as the fifteenth of Av and Yom Kippur.” To rank Tu B’Av alongside Yom Kippur, the holiest day of our year, signals that something profound was happening.
According to the Talmud, on Tu B’Av during the Second Temple period, the daughters of Jerusalem would dress in simple white garments, borrowed so that no one would be embarrassed by wealth disparities, and go out to dance in the vineyards. The young men would watch and choose potential brides. The dancing likely took place near ancient Shiloh, which had earlier served as Israel’s spiritual center before Jerusalem.
The women would call out, “Young man, lift up your eyes and see what you choose for yourself.” This was not superficial flirtation. The message emphasized character and lineage over beauty alone. The ritual dissolved tribal boundaries and strengthened national unity through marriage.
The borrowed white garments deserve more than passing mention. In an ancient society deeply aware of status, lineage, and wealth, Tu B’Av deliberately flattened visible hierarchy. No woman was to be shamed by poverty. No family was to be excluded by lack of means. The aesthetic of equality was intentional. It was, in many ways, the original anti-status holiday — a rebuke to performative display long before modern consumer culture turned courtship into spectacle.
Jewish love, at least in its ideal form, was not meant to be transactional. It was meant to be dignified, covenantal, and oriented toward building a future.
Why the fifteenth of Av? The Talmud lists multiple historical events that occurred on this date, each carrying themes of reconciliation and restoration: the inter-tribal marriage ban following the tragic episode of the Tribe of Benjamin was lifted; the generation of the desert stopped dying after the sin of the spies; Roman authorities eventually allowed the burial of those killed in the Bar Kochba revolt; restrictions on tribes marrying outside their tribal lands were removed.
In each case, Tu B’Av represents healing after rupture.
It is especially powerful that this celebration occurs in the Hebrew month of Av — the very month marked by Tisha B’Av, commemorating the destruction of both Temples. Just six days after the Jewish calendar’s darkest day, the nation pivoted toward joy, love, and rebuilding.
This pivot is psychologically astonishing. Judaism forces collective mourning on Tisha B’Av (fasting, lamentation, sitting on the floor) and then, almost immediately, demands re-entry into hope. The calendar refuses to let despair become permanent identity. It builds resilience into time itself.
Tu B’Av is not escapism; it is a civilizational refusal to allow catastrophe to have the final word. Jewish history acknowledges grief, but it does not enthrone it. After destruction comes rebuilding. After division comes unity. After grief comes love. After exile comes return.
Following the destruction of the Second Temple and the long exile that followed, Tu B’Av largely faded from public observance. Without vineyards in Jerusalem and without sovereignty, the holiday’s matchmaking rituals disappeared. Unlike Passover or Sukkot, Tu B’Av had no elaborate ritual structure to sustain it in exile. It became a minor date mentioned in liturgy, when certain penitential prayers were omitted, but without major communal expression.
In exile, Jewish romance retreated into the domestic sphere. Matchmaking remained central — the figure of the shadchan (matchmaker) became a staple of Jewish communal life — but the vineyard dances vanished. Marriage was still understood as binyan bayit (the building of a home), but the land itself was absent from the equation.
The holiday waited for history to turn again: With the rebirth of Jewish sovereignty in 1948, Tu B’Av quietly returned — this time not only as a rabbinic memory, but as a living cultural holiday.
In contemporary Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Tu B’Av has evolved into Israel’s version of Valentine’s Day, but with distinctly Israeli character. Restaurants offer special menus. Musicians hold open-air performances under the summer sky. Tel Aviv’s coastline fills with couples watching the sunset. It has become an especially popular day for proposals and marriage ceremonies. In some communities, symbolic vineyard dances have even been revived as heritage reenactments.
Yet unlike the heavily commercialized model of Valentine’s Day, Tu B’Av in Israel carries a subtle national undertone. It is not only about private romance; it is about building homes and, by extension, building the nation.
The revival of Tu B’Av in a sovereign Jewish state is not accidental nostalgia. It is the restoration of a land-based love ritual in a land-restored civilization. The daughters of Jerusalem are dancing again — not in metaphor, but in geography. Beaches replace vineyards, but the principle is the same: love unfolding in public space, in Hebrew, under Jewish sovereignty. The arc from ancient Shiloh to modern Tel Aviv is not merely historical; it is civilizational continuity reasserting itself.
There is something profoundly countercultural embedded in Tu B’Av when contrasted with modern Western dating culture. Valentine’s Day celebrates falling in love. Tu B’Av celebrates forming a future. The ancient ritual was communal, not algorithmic. It was society creating conditions for durable unions, not individuals curating personal brands. The emphasis was not on endless choice, but on meaningful selection.
In a fragmented age marked by loneliness, transient relationships, and declining marriage rates, Tu B’Av reads less like a quaint tradition and more like a social blueprint.
For Jews in the diaspora today, Tu B’Av offers more than a romantic anecdote. It poses a question: What does it mean to build Jewish homes intentionally in an open society? It reminds a scattered people that continuity requires partnership, and that love is not merely personal fulfillment, but generational responsibility.
In a time when fear often becomes the organizing principle of Jewish discourse, Tu B’Av suggests another foundation: joy as defiance, family as strategy, hope as infrastructure. The rabbis were right to rank Tu B’Av among the happiest days of the year. Civilizations do not survive because they defeat their enemies alone; they survive because they build families. Tu B’Av is the Jewish reminder that love is not sentiment. It is covenant. It is continuity. It is strategy.
Valentine’s Day celebrates romance. Tu B’Av celebrates the future. And in Jewish history, the future has always been the greatest love story of all.
I discovered Future Jewish by accident in the sea of Substack writings, a lot of them by my own people. I wanted to read them all. But yesterday’s article about Judaism being a civilization gave peace to my questing Jewish soul and now I will read every word. Being not a very scholarly Jew, I did not know about this holiday. What moved me most was the fact that the Jewish maidens all wore simple white gowns in which to dance and sing, eliminating “show offs.” I grew up on a block in Pittsburgh where, if one family had more money than the rest of us, it was carefully hidden. Again, superb writing, first rate thinking.
More and more I think we are, by and large, a brilliant people.