Tu B’Av, the fifteenth of the month of Av, comes in July or August, at a time when the air is sweltering, the sun is ever-present, and the green plant life is wilting. In Israel, Av is a month of extreme heat when nothing grows. It comes just six days after the 9th of Av, Tisha B’Av, the holiday of mourning, when the Temple is destroyed, when the Shekhinah grieves like a widow who has lost her mate. The first of Tammuz, when we recognize our exile and mortality, lingers in the heat of the air. Yet Tu B’Av is a holiday of dancing and choosing lovers, a holiday of life. It is a turning around of time. It is the moment when the fallen fruit breaks open to reveal the new seed.

According to the Talmud, Tu B’Av was a day when women went out in borrowed white clothing to dance in the field and choose spouses from among the men who came to dance with them. They wore borrowed clothing so as not to shame any woman who did not have fine white clothing to wear. They would sing to their potential lovers, telling them to choose goodness and integrity rather than good looks.1 The Talmud tells that “Israel had no more joyful holidays than Yom Kippur and Tu B’Av.” In rabbinic tradition, Tu B’Av also marks a number of miraculous events relating to marriage, union, and rebirth—particularly, that this was the day on which the Israelites were redeemed from wandering in the wilderness and allowed to enter the land of Israel.

Tu B’Av is an unlikely day of joy, coming as it does in a season of sadness. In its essence, Tu B’Av is a hinge between the time of mourning and the time of gladness, between the pathos of reaping and the celebration of harvest. It is a door opening from death back into life. Tu B’Av is a day of rebirth, when the cut-down stem yields the ripe, sweet fruit.

The Story of the Season

Tu B’Av begins the entry into the season of earth, and much about it is earthy—not only the sexuality and fecundity of the young women who went out to dance. Tu B’Av was once the time of the grape harvest.2 Residents of Israel would go to cut down grapes for wine at this season. So Tu B’Av is related to the Kiddush, the prayer over wine that sanctifies holy time among Jews. In Temple times. Tu B’Av was the last day to harvest wood for the sacred temple fires, and was called the Day of the Breaking of the Axe.3 After this date, the sun grew weaker and any wood harvested would be too wet to burn. Therefore human beings were to turn to introspection and Torah study rather than physical labor in the fields. So Tu B’Av represents three hinges in holy time: the harvesting of grapes to make wine for the Shabbat and festivals, the last moment to feed the eternal Temple fires with fresh wood, and the last moment of outward focus on the harvest before one begins the introspection necessary for the renewal of the new year and the quiet of the winter season.
 

Legend also connects Tu B’Av to another kind of harvest. Tu B’Av always comes at the full moon of the month of Av. According to rabbinic legend, when the Israelites were wandering in the wilderness, the former slaves were doomed by God to die before reaching the land of Israel. Every year on the ninth of Av, the Israelites would dig graves, lie down in them, and spend the night. In the morning, the people would arise and count themselves to see who had died that year. This weird ritual seems to represent the randomness and scariness of mortality. The story encourages us to meditate on our own death, just as if we were lying in our own grave.

The story goes that in the fortieth year of wandering, the ritual was enacted, but no one died. Thinking they had miscalculated the calendar, the people slept in their graves a second night, then a third, then a fourth. On the seventh night, Tu B’Av, when the full moon came out, the people knew the decree had ended. They understood that all of them would be able to enter the Promised Land. The time of death and stagnation was over, and the time of life had begun.4 It was truly a Day of the Breaking of the Axe—a day when mortality no longer held
sway.

The Zohar, a mystical commentary, relates that in paradise where the ancestors dwell, this burial and rising happens every day as a daily spiritual ritual.5 This passage suggests that we too, like the Israelites, have moments when we are lying in our graves, unable to sprout into new being. When the full moon rises over us, when new light becomes apparent to us, we realize that we have the opportunity to go on living. Just as the buried fruit gives forth new seed, the human soul has the potential for growth.
 

In fact, the time of Tu B’Av lets us know that it is a day of new conceptions. Tu B’av falls forty days before the 25th of the month of Elul, the day, according to the Talmud, on which the world was created. The Talmud also tells us that forty days before a child is born, God decrees who will be that child’s mate.6 A Chassidic thinker, Rabbi Tzvi Elimelekh Shapira of Dinov, (known as the B’nei Yissachar) teaches that Tu B’Av is a holiday of weddings and dances because it celebrates the moment when the Divine is paired a human mate—in Israel’s sacred story, that mate is Israel.7 Rabbi Arthur Waskow expands this idea and say that forty days before the 25th of Elul, God plans to become the spouse, the eternal companion, of the world that will be born.8 This moment of destiny pushes the year toward its beginning: in Tishrei, the world will be born again, with the Shekhinah bound up in it.9 Tu B’Av is the moment after the nation’s, and the earth’s, symbolic death, the moment after the betrayal caused by the Temple’s destruction, when both the Divine and human partners prepare to love again.

It is fitting that this day be a day of mythic healing and perfection. Rabbi Zadok haKohen of Lublin tells us that the Shekhinah, the Divine Presence, will descend on Tu B’Av to reside in the Third Temple, the house of the Divine where all people will be free to worship.10 In this telling, Tu B’Av is the day when the world will be made whole. As we move through the cycle of seasons, Tu B’Av is a day of human and Divine rebirth after loss, just as the harvest is a time when we cut everything down to produce the food and seed that allows us to grow again. On Tu B’Av, we can imagine the Shekhinah dancing among her maidens in borrowed white clothing—clothing that represents loss and poverty even as it represents joy and abundance.

Steps of the Season

From Tu b’Av onward is a countdown to the new year. The remainder of Av yields to the month of Elul, which some say is an acronym for Ani L’dodi Vedodi Li—I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine. Elul is a month when the Divine goes into the field, when God comes closer to humankind so that they can share their hopes and fears before the awesome holy days of the new year. Elul, a month of harvest, is also a time to harvest memories and feelings so we may offer them up at the new year. We blow the shofar every morning to awaken ourselves to inner truth.
 

The first of Elul, according to the Talmud, is the new year for animals—the time when farmers counted all of their animals a year older for purposes of tithing.11 Perhaps this was in preparation for the new year of Tishrei, the new year for people—to remind us that animals were created before us. Another explanation: the first of Elul, one month before the first of Tishrei, reminds us that to discover our humans selves fully we must first discover our animal selves—what our instincts are telling us, and whether we are aware of our most basic needs and feelings. Only when we discover these things can we begin to plan for change.

As Elul winds down, we begin selichot, or penitential prayers. The service of selichot is a cleansing ritual, performed for the first time at midnight about a week before Rosh haShanah, and thereafter at dawn until Yom Kippur, to allow us to meditate on the changes we want to bring into our lives so that we may draw the Divine who dwells within the world closer to us.

The last half of Av and the month of Elul comprise the days when God is preparing to give birth to the world. They are a pregnancy of sorts, marked by deep feelings, careful planning, quiet listening, and a great love of new life. The seed of life has not yet been rooted in the world, but it soon will be. During this time of pregnancy, we too are pregnant with the seed of our new selves.

Other Paths

Tu B’Av tends to fall near the Celtic and modern Wiccan holiday of Lammas, a late summer harvest holiday of rejoicing in plenty while recognizing that death is inherent in the harvest.12 Lammas celebrates the Goddess as harvester , and in Scotland the first cut of the harvest was made on Lammas. Interestingly, like Tu B’Av, Lammas was a holiday of weddings—according top some accounts, in Ireland and Britain, “handfastings” or weddings that were binding for a year and a day took place at “Lammas Fairs” each year. Christian harvest holiday as well, celebrating the offering of new loaves of bread from harvested grain on the church altar. Around the world, near this time are both a Japanese festival of the dead and a Japanese festival of harvest, as well as a Chinese harvest festival of the full moon (the same full moon as Tu B’Av). So too, through Tu B’Av, we re-enact the cycle of death and rebirth, as the grain and vegetation around us is beginning to die in order to be reborn in spring. We honor the harvest of our hearts: the gifts of love we have been given, and our will to share them with others.

Ideas for Celebration

While celebrations of Tu B’Av are rare in modern times (except for modern Israeli romance-parties which treat Tu B’Av as a kind of Valentine’s Day), Melila Helner, Tamara Cohen, and others have called for new celebrations of loss, love, and new life on this day.13 We can celebrate Tu B’Av by meeting in the fields to dance in borrowed white clothing as the ancient Hebrews did. We can re-enact the ritual of the wilderness—lying down on the earth or even digging shallow holes to represent our own graves, and then rising again to fuller life. We can go out to harvest twigs, just as the priests of the Temple harvested wood for the last time on Tu B’Av. We can hang the bundles of twigs we harvest in our houses as a reminder that we hold the power to rekindle the sacred fire as the year turns toward darkness. We can visit a vineyard to see with our own eyes the grapes that will be picked to make the wine that represents the vigor of life, and use this day to bless the wine we will use on Shabbat in the coming year.

A way to mark the time between Tisha B’Av and Tu B’Shevat is to meditate on each of the seven nights that span the two holidays, rising on the final day, Tu B’Av, to light a candle, don white clothing, and celebrate the body’s rebirth. Also, one can count the forty days from Tu B’Av to the twenty-fifth of Elul when the earth is born, on each day noting one thing that we want to see born in the world. On the twenty-fifth of Elul, find a patch of earth, plant a seed, and recite the forty things you hope will bless the earth in the coming year.

—Jill Hammer

Articles

• New Moon Ritual for Elul/The Maiden
• Two Shofar Rituals for the New Moon of Elul
• Ritual for the Grape Harvest
• The Shekhinah as Exile
• Ritual for Tu b'Av 5764/Aug. 2, 2004