AS WITH MANY THINGS JEWISH, many – perhaps most – non-observant Jews are ignorant about the 15th (ט’’ו) of Av.
Every non-observant Jewish woman knows about Valentine’s Day, albeit she may not know much about the martyr for whom the day is named.
Many older non-observant Jewish men relate the name to the St. Valentine’s Day massacre in Chicago in 1929.1
Looking at both – Valentine’s day and Tu b’Av.
WE'LL DEAL FIRST WITH Valentine’s day, even though Tu b’Av precedes it by centuries and is mentioned in the Talmuds.
According to several web sites, Valentine was an early follower of Paul (Jesus’ PR man par excellence) whose real claim to fame was encouraging fellow followers to marry. This apparently was counter to the local Roman ruler’s desire since he wanted an army of single men. Emperors being testy, Valentine allegedly paid with his life. His bones can be found in a dozen churches across Europe.
Where did the ruler get THAT idea? Open a humash to Devarim (Deuteronomy), chapter 20, verses 1 to 9, and chapter 24, verse 5. where we learn what exempts a man from going to war.
None of the Valentine sites suggests the priest, a contemporary of Emperor Claudius Gothicus (269-270 CE) and the man who ordered Valentine’s death, ever married (permitted at the time). The closest Valentine is alleged to have come to anything romantic is encouraging couples to marry.
On the other hand, despite the fact he was – again “allegedly” – executed on February 14, he has no connection with the events in Chicago in 1929.
Some have suggested2 that Valentine’s Day is a Christian reconstruction of a pagan fertility festival known as Lupercalia. However, in his paper St. Valentine, Chaucer and Spring in February, 20th-century literary scholar Jack B. Oruch debunks this theory, showing that it was based on a mistaken understanding of Church chronology put forth by the English antiquarian Alban Butler in 1756 and propagated by other scholars in the 19th century.
An aside. Even the date, February 14, must be suspect. The Catholic church changed from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar.3 starting in 1582, long after Valentine’s bones were scattered to churches around Europe.
THE JEWISH LOVER’S DAY
The My Jewish Learning site4 offers that
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.
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)
While HaAretz !4 offers several suggestions as the origin of Tu b’Av, the one I learned early on is
Rabbah bar Hana got more specific. He said that Rabbi Johanan bar Nappaha (usually referred to simply as R. Yochanan) said the 15th of Av marks the end of a prohibition to marrying the daughters of the tribe of Benjamin, as described in the Book of Judges, no doubt due to the passage in that story that reads: “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, and go to the land of Benjamin.” (21:21)
According to Wikipedia5
The Battle of Gibeah is an episode related in the Book of Judges. The battle was triggered by an incident in which a concubine of a man from the Tribe of Levi was raped and abused by members of the Tribe of Benjamin and later died. The Levite had offered his concubine to the mob in his place. In the morning he found the concubine unresponsive on the doorstep. He later cut her body into twelve pieces, and sent the pieces throughout all the territories of the Israelite tribes.
The outraged tribes of Israel sought justice, and asked for the miscreants to be delivered for judgment. The Benjamites refused, so the tribes then sought vengeance, and in the subsequent war, the members of Tribe of Benjamin were systematically killed, including women and children; when Benjamin was nearly 'extinguished', it was decided that the tribe should be allowed to survive, and all the men from another town, Jabesh Gilead, who had refused to take part in the punishment of the Tribe of Benjamin, were killed, so that their daughters could be wed to the surviving men of Benjamin. The first king of Israel, Saul, was descended from these surviving men. Due to this war, the Tribe of Benjamin was subsequently referred to as "the smallest of all the tribes
The story I heard was that the daughters of the other tribes went out into the fields, all attired in similar fashion, and the remaining Benjamite men “captured” the maidens and made them their wives.
HaAretz, a once independent and professional newspaper (c 1975), offers a number of other interesting possibilities.
BOTTOM LINE
According to the My Jewish Learning site2, “The academic work of Oruch and other scholars further proves that Valentine’s Day is not derived from the pagan holiday Lupercalia. Finally, the desire to express love and to offer gifts as a symbol of those feelings is certainly in line with Jewish tradition and values. The idea of a special day set aside to encourage couples is also well rooted in the Jewish tradition: Tu B’Av, the 15th day of the Jewish month of Av, was an ancient day of matchmaking that has experienced something of a revival in modern times.
While it does not represent every opinion in Jewish literature, the source from the Rama6 does provide the most salient criteria for making this decision according to Jewish law and it is the basis upon which many rabbis allow Jewish participation in Valentine’s Day rituals.”
Sources
1. http://tinyurl.com/ycusjalr
2. http://tinyurl.com/ya8t4vfz
3. http://tinyurl.com/jp9bk4f
4. http://tinyurl.com/yavxwhoy
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gibeah
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Isserles
PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.
Truth is an absolute defense to defamation. Defamation is a false statement of fact. If the statement was accurate, then by definition it wasn’t defamatory.
