What’s Love Got to Do with It?

Today was Tu B’av, the 15th of Av, which is a sort of Jewish Valentine’s Day- yes, we have a day dedicated to love and joy of finding love, and not love as a metaphor for God, or love of God, but human to human love.

Last week was Tisha b’Av, the Jewish day of fasting and mourning for the destruction of Jerusalem and many other of the worst tragedies in Jewish history. (Thanks by the way to all who came to our service; it was inspiring to me to see how many came to honor this day that is not much observed in most Reform temples.) Every year, for thousands of years, six days after the saddest day in our calendar comes one of the most joy-centered days, Tu b’Av. This shows that while Jews remember the persecutions of our past, we should not get stuck there. Grieving is important, but joy and life are more important. Those are God’s greatest gifts to us.

In the Mishnah, the first collection of Rabbinic law following the destruction of the Jerusalem, at the end of the section on Fast Days, we read:

Rabbi Shimon ben Gamaliel said: There were no days of joy in Israel greater than the fifteenth of Av and Yom Kippur. (Mishnah Taanit 4:8)

The Mishnah and later the Talmud go on to tell us that on Tu b’Av, all the young eligible women would wear white, and they would dance in the vineyards, and all the eligible young men (yes, the Mishnah assumes a binary hetero joy here) would be there for something that seems a bit like speed dating in which people often chose partners not arranged for them by their families.

Why on this day? Well, the pshat, the simple answer is that it was the beginning of the grape harvest, and wine has always been a symbol of joy, pleasure, and life’s fullness. By the way, the grape harvest ended at Yom Kippur, and back in the day, on the afternoon of Yom Kippur, people again wore white and young eligible people again had an opportunity to pair off. Maybe we should do that at Yom Kippur this year?

So grapes have a lot to do with it, but in the Talmud there are two other explanations I think are both worth mentioning.

In one, it gives a list of the good things that happened on Tu b’Av, days when plagues ended, when people stopped dying in the wilderness, and when Moses regained the gift of prophecy after God gave him the silent treatment after the spy incident. I think this is worth mentioning because we often tend to focus on trauma and tragedy and forget to celebrate the days on which bad events ended. In that way, Tu b’Av is a way of balancing and repairing the sadness and loss of Tisha b’Av, a way of returning to the blessings in life.

The other story as to why this day is particularly fascinating to me. It retells the story of the Daughters of Zelophechad who demanded from Moses and the Elders the right of daughters to inherit property from their fathers. The right is granted but those women who inherit tribal property from their fathers must marry within the tribe, so that the property stays in the tribe. Well, the rabbis found a loophole, a fine point of Hebrew grammar that allowed them to say that the rule of having to marry within the tribe was only in effect for that generation, but that now, that rule is lifted and people can marry between tribes. This was on Tu b’Av and this ruling prompted so much joy among people wanting to marry members of other tribes that it became a day of love and celebration.

While this is never what the rabbis meant, many modern Reform Jews seem to find joy and love between tribes, so perhaps subversively, Tu b’Av can be seen as a day to celebrate the power of love across boundaries, whether they are tribes of religion and culture, or tribes of gender and sexuality.

Whatever the reasons, this day reminds us that our tradition recognizes the profound and transformative power of human love, the joy of falling in love and the sacred intimacy of physical love. Love is perhaps the greatest joy in all of creation.

Indeed, our tradition sees in our physical love relationships the manifestation of the love of God. We are taught to respect, obey and even fear God, but more than any of those, we are taught to love God with all our hearts and all our souls.

That is why the heart our service every morning and evening is love. It starts with Ahavat Olam, God’s love for us and then moves to the V’ahavta, how we are to love God. Both see love not as a feeling, but as a series of acts, of commitments, of agreements. God loves us by giving us Torah and the wisdom to discern and learn, and we love God by reminding ourselves repeatedly each day of how blessed we are and then teaching that to our children. And what comes smack in the middle of these two prayers about love - The Shema, our most sacred expression.

So on this Tu b’Av we affirm the goodness, the sacredness of life and love even in the face of loss and destruction. We affirm embodied love even in the face of betrayal and heartbreak. We affirm that love is both what makes us human and what makes us holy. Shabbat Shalom.