SUNDAY IS FEBRUARY 14, the day retailers devote to selling the idea of love, love, love.
For jewelers and restaurants, February 14 is an important sales date.
But it is NOT a Jewish holiday.
It IS, however, a significant date in Jewish history - and U.S. history, too.
THE FIRST "CLUE" we have that Valentine's Day is NOT a Jewish holiday is its name: SAINT Valentine's day. There is speculation there are more than one "Saint Valentine." Perhaps the most popular is the one about St. Valentine of Rome. Since a person canonized as a saint must be Catholic, the Catholic Online should have the best information about the fellow.
Jews remember Saint Valentine's Day not as a day of love but as a day when the French massacred Jews in Strasbourg, France.
According to the web site History Headlines:
In 1349, only a year after an epidemic of Bubonic Plague (Black Death) had devastated Strasbourg, a tide of hatred swept over the city, and public hysteria blamed Jews for “poisoning the wells.” In “retaliation,” about 1,000 Jews were burned to death! (In comparison, only 6 gangsters were murdered in Chicago on February 14, 1929.) What was left of the Jewish population was kicked out of the city.
As if the mass murder was not enough, laws were then enacted that forbade Jews from being within the city after dark, and the 10 o’clock p.m. curfew was sounded by a special horn to ensure this! Incredibly, this policy lasted all the way until the French Revolution! And if that was not enough, a special tax was levied on Jews for any horse they brought into the city, supposedly for pavement maintenance!
In the U.S., probably as forgotten as December 7 (1941), The February 14th of 1929 massacre in Chicago IL when as history.com relates:
(S)even men associated with the Irish gangster George “Bugs” Moran, one of Capone’s longtime enemies, were shot to death by several men dressed as policemen. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, as it was known, was never officially linked to Capone, but he was generally considered to have been responsible for the murders.
When do Jews celebrate the "lovers' holiday"
Jews celebrate the lovers' holiday on t"u b/Ab (the 15th of Av). It's a major change of attitude falling as it does only 5 days after one of Judaism's most prominent days of mourning (9 Ab).
Unlike the common solar calendar, Jewish events are marked according to the lunar calendar; translation, the month of Av typically falls in July or August.
According to the My Jewish Learning web site:
Tu B’Av, the 15th Day of Av, is both an ancient and modern holiday. Originally a post-biblical day of joy, it served as a matchmaking day for unmarried women in the second Temple period (before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 C.E.). Tu B’Av was almost unnoticed in the Jewish calendar for many centuries but it has been rejuvenated in recent decades, especially in the modern state of Israel. In its modern incarnation it is gradually becoming a Hebrew-Jewish Day of Love, slightly resembling Valentine’s Day in English-speaking countries.
There is no way to know exactly how early Tu B’Av began. The first mention of this date is in the Mishnah (compiled and edited in the end of the second century), where Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel is quoted saying, “There were no better (i.e. happier) days for the people of Israel than the Fifteenth of Av and Yom Kippur, since on these days the daughters of Israel/Jerusalem go out dressed in white and dance in the vineyards. What were they saying: Young man, consider whom you choose (to be your wife)?”(Ta’anit, Chapter 4).
The Jewish "lovers' holiday" precedes the Catholic saint's day by several hundred years. On the other hand, the Catholics may have "adopted" the pagan Lupercalia festival; only the name was changed "to protect the innocent." "Converting" pagan festivals to Catholic saints' days (e.g., Easter, Christmas) or Jewish events (e.g., New Year's Day, known to Catholics as the "Feast of the Circumcision," most certainly a Jewish event) in order to make potential converts (before the choice was "the cross of the sword") feel more comfortable in their new religion.
