Tu B’Av: The Fifteenth of Av, the Day of Vineyards and Weddings

“No Days as Joyous”: The Mishnah

The last mishnah of tractate Ta’anit, a tractate largely about fasting and calamity, ends with joy:

Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel said: There were no days as joyous for Israel as the fifteenth of Av and Yom Kippur. On them the daughters of Jerusalem would go out in borrowed white garments, so as not to put to shame anyone who had none… and the daughters of Jerusalem would go out and dance in the vineyards.

The details are tender. Every young woman wore a borrowed garment, so that the poor would not be distinguished from the rich; the Talmud adds that even the daughter of the king borrowed from the daughter of the high priest. All the garments had to be immersed first, so that no one would be excluded for reasons of purity. Dancing in the vineyards, the young women would call to the young men: “Young man, lift up your eyes and see whom you choose for yourself. Do not set your eyes on beauty; set your eyes on family.” They quoted the end of Proverbs: “Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth Hashem, she shall be praised” (Proverbs 31:30).

The Mishnah then closes the tractate with a verse from the Song of Songs:

Go forth, O ye daughters of Zion, and behold king Shlomo with the crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals, and in the day of the gladness of his heart.

It interprets the verse as Israel’s own marriage to Hashem: “the day of his espousals” is the giving of the Torah, and “the day of the gladness of his heart” is the building of the Temple, “may it be rebuilt speedily in our days.” Why Yom Kippur is so joyful the Talmud explains simply: it is the day of forgiveness, and the day on which Moshe brought down the second tablets.¹ Tu B’Av needed more explanation.

Six Reasons: The Talmud’s Answers

The Babylonian Talmud gives six answers, in the names of different sages, to what happened on the fifteenth of Av.² Several concern the healing of breaches within Israel.

1. The tribes were allowed to intermarry. In Numbers 36 the daughters of Tzelofchad, who inherited their father’s land, were commanded to marry within their own tribe so that tribal land would not pass to another tribe (Numbers 36:6–9). The sages held this binding only on the generation that entered the land; when it was lifted, Israel became one people at the wedding canopy.

2. The tribe of Binyamin was readmitted. After the terrible crime at Gibeah and the civil war that followed (Judges 19–21), the other tribes swore not to give their daughters to Binyamin, and the tribe was nearly wiped out. To save it, the elders devised a plan tied to a festival:

Behold, there is a feast of Hashem in Shiloh yearly… And see, and, behold, if the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in dances, then come ye out of the vineyards, and catch you every man his wife of the daughters of Shiloh.

The Talmud dates the reconciliation with Binyamin to the fifteenth of Av. Many scholars see in the dances of Shiloh an ancient vintage festival that may lie behind the vineyard dances of the Mishnah, though the connection cannot be proved.³

3. The generation of the wilderness stopped dying. After the sin of the spies, the generation that left Egypt was condemned to die in the wilderness (Numbers 14:29–35). The commentators explain, drawing on midrash, that the deaths came each year on the ninth of Av, and that in the fortieth year none died; when the full moon of the fifteenth came and they saw the decree had ended, they rejoiced.⁴ Here Tu B’Av directly answers Tisha B’Av: the day of weeping is followed by the day the dying stopped.

4. Hoshea ben Elah removed the guards. When the kingdom divided, Yerovam set up golden calves at Bethel and Dan and, according to the Talmud, posted guards to stop the northern tribes from going up to Jerusalem for the feasts (compare 1 Kings 12:26–29). The last king of Israel, Hoshea ben Elah, removed them. The Talmud sees this as the reason Scripture says he did evil, “but not as the kings of Israel that were before him” (2 Kings 17:2).

5. The dead of Beitar were allowed burial. After the fall of Beitar at the end of the Bar Kochba revolt, the Romans refused to let the dead be buried. When permission was finally given, the bodies had miraculously not decayed. The Talmud says the sages then added the fourth blessing of the Grace after Meals, HaTov VeHaMeitiv, “who is good and does good”: good, that the bodies had not decayed, and does good, that they were given burial.⁵

6. The cutting of wood for the altar ended. The fire on the altar was never to go out (Leviticus 6:13), and it needed a constant supply of wood. Each year the cutting of wood for the altar concluded on the fifteenth of Av, because after that, as the sun weakened, newly cut wood would not dry properly. The day the work was completed became a festival.

The Talmud adds a practical note: from the fifteenth of Av the nights grow longer, and one who adds to his Torah study in the lengthening nights adds to his life.⁶

The Festival of the Wood Offering

Of the six reasons, the wood offering is the best attested outside rabbinic literature. After the return from Babylon, the people bound themselves by covenant to provide the altar’s wood:

And we cast the lots among the priests, the Levites, and the people, for the wood offering, to bring it into the house of our God, after the houses of our fathers, at times appointed year by year, to burn upon the altar of Hashem our God, as it is written in the Torah.

The Mishnah lists nine dates on which particular families brought wood, and gives the fifteenth of Av as the day of the family of Zattu ben Yehudah, together with priests, Levites, and anyone who was unsure of his tribe.⁷ Megillat Ta’anit, an ancient list of days on which fasting and eulogies were forbidden, includes the fifteenth of Av as “the time of the wood of the priests.”⁸

Josephus, describing events in Jerusalem in the summer of 66 CE, mentions “the festival of Xylophory” (wood-carrying), “upon which the custom was for every one to bring wood for the altar.”⁹ He places it in the month of Lous (Av), and scholars debate whether he means the fourteenth or the fifteenth. The Temple Scroll from Qumran also describes a festival of wood offering, though its calendar differs from the rabbinic one.¹⁰ Together these sources show that a joyful wood festival in Av was a real feature of Second Temple life.

Tu B’Av in Jewish Practice

After the destruction of the Temple, Tu B’Av became a minor day. Its observance in Jewish law is simple: Tachanun, the daily prayer of supplication, is omitted, as on other days of joy, and eulogies are avoided.¹¹ There is no special Torah reading or festive meal required.

In modern Israel the day has been reborn as a popular day for weddings, engagements, concerts and matchmaking, sometimes called the Israeli Valentine’s Day, though its roots are far older and its meaning covenantal rather than merely romantic.

The Mishnah’s description holds lasting lessons for any community: no one should be shamed for poverty; everyone wore the same borrowed white; character and family were valued above appearance; and the joy was public, holy and modest at once.

The Bridegroom and the Bride

The imagery of Tu B’Av, of daughters of Zion going out to meet the king on the day of his espousals, runs through the whole Bible. In the Tanakh, Hashem is Israel’s husband: “For thy Maker is thine husband; Hashem of hosts is his name” (Isaiah 54:5). Jeremiah recalls “the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness” (Jeremiah 2:2), and the Mishnah reads Sinai as the wedding day.

In the Brit Hadashah (the New Testament), the bridegroom imagery is applied to the Messiah. Yeshua’s parable of the wedding feast describes “a certain king, which made a marriage for his son” (Matthew 22:2). The King is the Father; the Son is the Messiah He has appointed; the wedding is the King’s gift. Yeshua answered a question about fasting with the same image:

Can the children of the bridechamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them? but the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast.

That saying holds Tisha B’Av and Tu B’Av together: fasting when the bridegroom is absent, joy when he is present. Yochanan the Immerser described himself as “the friend of the bridegroom,” who “rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice” (John 3:29). Yeshua’s parable of the ten virgins (Matthew 25:1–13) calls his followers to keep their lamps burning while they wait for a bridegroom whose arrival time is unknown. Popular teachings often decorate these passages with detailed claims about “ancient Jewish wedding customs”; many of those claims are not well documented, and the passages need no embellishment to make their point.

The Revelation brings the theme to its climax:

Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white… Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb.

The daughters of Jerusalem wore borrowed white so that no one would be ashamed; the bride of the Lamb is “granted” her clean linen. The comparison is homiletical, but true to both texts.

Paul draws from the same source when he writes about marriage. He tells husbands to love their wives as the Messiah loved his community and gave himself for it, and quotes Genesis 2:24 on the two becoming one flesh, adding, “This is a great mystery” (Ephesians 5:25–32). For Paul, human marriage is a covenant that mirrors the covenant between Hashem’s Messiah and His people. That is the deepest meaning of Tu B’Av for a Messianic congregation: marriage is not merely romance but covenant, and every faithful marriage is a small sign of the faithfulness of Hashem.

The Voice of the Bridegroom Returns

The prophets used the silence of weddings as an image of judgment. Jeremiah warned that Hashem would cause to cease from Jerusalem “the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride” (Jeremiah 7:34; 16:9; 25:10). But in the darkest days of the siege, while Jerusalem was still surrounded, he promised that the voice would return:

Again there shall be heard in this place, which ye say shall be desolate… in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem… the voice of joy, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, the voice of them that shall say, Praise Hashem of hosts: for Hashem is good; for his mercy endureth for ever.

These words are sung at every Jewish wedding. The last of the seven wedding blessings prays that there may soon be heard “in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem” the voice of joy and gladness, of bridegroom and bride. Every Jewish wedding is thus a small prophecy of Jerusalem’s restoration, and Tu B’Av, coming six days after the mourning for Jerusalem, makes the same point on the calendar.

Hosea, whose own marriage became a picture of Israel’s unfaithfulness, ends with Hashem’s renewed betrothal:

And I will betroth thee unto me for ever; yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in lovingkindness, and in mercies. I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness: and thou shalt know Hashem.

Jewish men recite these verses every weekday as they wind the strap of the tefillin around the finger like a ring. And Isaiah, in the chapters of consolation read after Tisha B’Av, promises that the land called “Forsaken” and “Desolate” will be called Chefzi-vah, “My delight is in her,” and Beulah, “married”: “as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee” (Isaiah 62:4–5).

Tu B’Av points to the regathering of Israel, the rebuilding of Jerusalem, the Messiah’s wedding feast, and the nations coming up to Zion to rejoice with her. When, no one knows. But the dances in the vineyards, six days after the fast, promise that mourning is not the end of the story.

Celebrating Tu B’Av

• Rejoice with the joy of the season. After Tisha B’Av, let the full moon of Av be a day of gladness.
• Bless marriages. Pray for married couples and for those hoping to marry; it is a fitting day for weddings, engagements, and renewals of vows.
• Remember the borrowed white. Do something so that no one in your community is shamed by poverty: share clothing, provide for a wedding, include the lonely.
• Read the texts: Mishnah Ta’anit 4:8, Judges 21, Jeremiah 33, the Song of Songs, and Revelation 19.
• Add to your study as the nights lengthen, in the spirit of the Talmud’s advice.
• See our calendar for the date in any given year.

For as a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee: and as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee.