Today Israel celebrates the day of love
Last reviewed: 16.10.2021
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Love Day - Tu B'Av - does not apply to the generally accepted Jewish holidays, rather, like Valentine's Day for Christians, is a pleasant occasion to congratulate a loved one and (or) offer a hand and heart.
The history of the holiday was beautifully written by Meir Levinov: Fifteenth Ava is the day of the unification of the people.
Celebrating 15 Av in ancient times.
The 15th day of Av is marked on the Jewish calendar as a holiday. Actually, this celebration is limited to festive events: no special customs, nothing unusual, a normal working day, except that the prayer in the synagogues is somewhat shorter - penitential texts are excluded from it. And it's all.
But after all, "... There was no more beautiful holiday in Israel than the 15th Av. Jewish girls went out into the gardens in white dresses - borrowed, according to custom, each other, so that no one was ashamed of the lack of beautiful clothes. In the gardens, they conducted dances, and everyone who was looking for a bride went there. "
This holiday existed since ancient times. Even before the establishment of the kingdom in Israel, even before the conquest of Jerusalem - even then the girls who wanted to marry, went out to dance in the vineyards in the vicinity of the Temple in Shiloh. This holiday was very important. The fact is that at that time, each of the tribes of Israel lived on its territory, and the people more likely resembled a coalition of twelve "cantons" connected only by common religion and agreements on military assistance in the hour of danger. In this case, all the tribes followed their allotment of the earth, trying not to let representatives of other tribes settle on their territory.
The law of the time allowed the girls who owned the real estate to marry only the representative of their tribe, so that the land did not pass into the possession of another tribe, and that there were no enclaves of one tribe within the other. All this helped to preserve the ethnic isolation of each tribe, its customs and traditions, but at the same time it did not allow the people of Israel to merge into a single whole.
Intercommunal marriages are the way to unite the tribes into one people.
The meeting place of the tribes at that time was the Temple in Shiloh, where all the tribes of Israel gathered on the holidays established by the Torah. There the elders of the tribes discussed the cases, they concluded treaties and made joint decisions. Actually, it was the Temple in Shiloh and the meetings there that united the tribes into a single union. However, the union at the leadership level still does not make the people a single whole. Whatever the leadership thinks, the people unite into a single whole not at all by orders from above. And even the common past can not build a single people.
Fifteenth Ava is a holiday not established by the Torah, which arose on its own, as a fun for the harvesting of grapes - it was he who gave the people the opportunity to unite. On this day, guys and girls from different tribes of Israel could get to know each other. And it was on this day that the elders of Israel decided to abolish all restrictions on inter-knee marriages.
All the historical events related to the day of 15 Av are the events that unite the people of Israel. The abolition of restrictions on inter-marriage marriages marked the beginning of a long process of integration of Jews into a single nation. For the most important thing in national unity is inter-communal marriages, children from whom belong not only to one tribe.
15 Av - the day of correcting political mistakes.
At one time, thanks to tradition, 15 Awa was also able to cope with the consequences of a severe civil war in which all the tribes united against the tribe of Benjamin, deciding that for the sins of the Binyamites "their name should be erased from the sky." The knee task, unfortunately, was almost completely fulfilled: they destroyed the cities of Binyamin, all the girls were taken prisoner and vowed not to extradite their daughters for those who survived. After all, the tribes changed their minds, but, not wanting to violate the oath they had just made, they remembered the feast of the 15th Av and sent the following message to Binyamin's remnants: "15 Ava, when the girls go out for a walk in the vineyards of Shiloh, come and steal them and marry "(it is clear that in those years only those girls who wanted to be stolen left the vineyards).
Another historical event, connected with the 15th Av, is the abolition of the border guards between the two Jewish states of antiquity, the Northern and Southern kingdoms. After the collapse of the kingdom of Solomon, the first king of the Northern kingdom felt it necessary to establish a guard on the border so that the Jews from the North would not go on holidays to the South, to the Temple of Jerusalem. The purely political decision, taken out of the desire to prevent the religious influence of the Southern Kingdom on the subjects of the North, in practice led to the division of the people. But the subsequent kings of the Northern kingdom abolished this decree, so that everyone could go on holidays to Jerusalem, so that the Jews remain a single people.
Wherever danger can not unite, love can unite.
It is hardly coincidental that the uniting holiday of 15 Av is located in the calendar right after the day of mourning for the destroyed Temple - the day from which the exile began and in which the people of Israel were again scattered to different ends of the world, again divided into separate communities. It was the Ninth Ava that led to the present situation in Israel, when for the people's outlook the people seem monolithic, but the first thing about every Israelite that comes to light is that it belongs to one or another community: the Moroccans, Russians, yeks, Kurds, and so on. Ethnographic differences are added to the political camps, and to them - religious delimitation.
The events of recent decades have shown that today the people of Israel are not able to unite even external danger. Moreover, it has caused one of the most serious schisms in Israeli society. But if even danger does not unite, then maybe it will be able to unite love? No, not one that politicians willingly talk about, calling for love of everyone and everything, but the most common love, when guys and girls from different communities and different political camps meet, get acquainted, marry and give birth to children. Today, this is perhaps the only hope of uniting the disunited people of Israel.