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RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL:TU B'AV:15TH OF AV:TALMUD YERUSHALMI:BREAKING OF THE AXES
and young men would dance in the vineyards and meet each other. The girls would all wear the same white simple dress so that rich girl, and poor girl would all look alike, none adorned with jewelry or make up, so that the males would get to know them for their intelligence and chesed, and not for their external attributes.
The Yerushalmi Talmud gives its historic etiology:
''On the eve of each ninth of Av in the wilderness, Moses would announce through the entire camp, 'Go out for the grave digging! Go out for the grave digging!' They would go out and dig grave for themselves and go to sleep. In the morning they would get up and find themselves 15,000 fewer. But in the last year they did so and arose and found themselves whole. No one had died.
They said: Is it possible we have made an error in counting?
So they did the same on the 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th of Av.
When the full moon on the 15th came they said: It would appear that the Holy One Blessed be He, has annulled the evil decree against us. They arose and declared that day a holiday. (Talmud Yerushalmi Ta'anit 4:7)
''What would the beautiful ones among them say? "Look for beauty, for a woman is for beauty."
What would those of prestigious lineage say? "Look for family, for a woman is for children."
What would the ugly ones say? "Make your acquisition for the sake of Heaven, as long as you decorate us with jewels" (Talmud Bavli Tractate Ta'anit 31a).''
The Gemorra, as always, puts a spiritual spin on this.
"A woman is for beauty," call these souls to God; take us as Your bride, and You will be rewarded by the pleasure You derive when Your creations realize the potential for perfection You have invested in them.
Then there are the souls of "prestigious lineage." They have hereditary love which God has implanted in all of us. "A woman is for children": our relationship will bear fruit -- the mitzvoth generated by our natural love for You. For is not our ultimate purpose in creation that we humans fulfill God's will?
"Do for Your sake, if not for ours," call the "ugly" souls of Israel. Only You know what lies behind our appearance, and only You know the truth of what You can inspire in us. For You know that, in truth, "The daughters of Israel are beautiful, it is only that spiritual poverty obscures their beauty.You know that our "ugliness" is not our true essence, but imposed upon us by spiritual poverty.
When any Jew is decorated with the jewels of Torah learning, he or she is not ugly.''
The Talmud Yerushalmi gives the reason for Tu B'av as a '''death decree'' that God put on the Hebrews, on every 9th of Av,[Tisha b'Av] where 15,000 died on that day, that ended one year,(1274 BCE? ) but they did not discover that it truly ended until the full moon in the mid month on the 15th of Av (Tu B'Av).
Now we can search through the Torah and not see this story at all.
The Talmud does have illusions to other events involving massive death and mass burials however for this date:
The Talmud states that there were no holy days as happy for the Jews as Tu B'Av and Yom Kippur. Various reasons for celebrating on Tu B'Av are cited by the Talmud and Talmudic commentators (Talmud Yerushalmi Tractate Ta'anit , 4:7,4:8 and Talmud Bavli Tractate Ta'anit 30b and 31a),and (Rashi):
While the Jews wandered in the desert for forty years, female orphans without brothers could only marry within their tribe, to prevent their father's inherited land in the Land of Israel from passing on to other tribes. On the fifteenth of Av of the fortieth year, this ban was lifted.
That same year, the last of the generation of the sin of the spies which had been forbidden to enter the Promised Land, died out.
The Tribe of Benjamin was allowed to intermarry with the other tribes after the incident of the Concubine of Gibeah (see Judges chapters 19-21).
Cutting of the wood for the main altar in the Temple was completed for the year. The event was celebrated with feasting and rejoicing (as is the custom upon the conclusion of a holy endeavor) and included a ceremonial breaking of the axes which gave the day its name, the breaking of the Ax.
The nights, traditionally the ideal time for Torah study are lengthened again after the summer solstice , permitting more study.
The Roman occupiers permitted burial of the victims of the massacre at Bethar . Miraculously, the bodies had not decomposed, despite exposure to the elements for over a year. (148 CE),
Hosea ben Eilah opened the roads to Jerusalem. Upon the division of the Holy Land into two kingdoms following the death of King Solomon in the year 2964 from creation (797 BCE), Jeroboam ben Nebat, ruler of the breakaway Northern Kingdom of Israel, set up roadblocks to prevent his citizens from making the thrice-yearly pilgrimage to the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, capital of the Southern Kingdom of Judea. These were finally removed more than 200 years later by Hosea ben Eilah, the last king of the Northern Kingdom, on Av 15, 3187 (574 BCE).
I respectfully opine that the story in Yerushalmi is a combination of Bethar and the last of the generation of the Spies dying. The 9th of Av is already a horrid day with two Temples destroyed, and the rabbis are still adding to the Gemorah after Bar Kochba's failed revolt and the Martyred ten rabbis circa 135 CE.
Unlike the Bavli which places blame for the second Temple's destruction on Jewish behavior, Yerushalmi, finds that the 9th of Av is decreed by God long ago, to be a bad day for the Jews.
So each year, 15000 Jews of the old generation all die on the same day, the 9th of Av, according to Yerushalmi. On one 15th of Av, the Hebrews realized it stopped, and hence all of the old generation had died.
We are taught only Joshua and Caleb, not even Moses, Aaron or Miriam, were the only ones of the old generation that crossed into Jordan. Further we are taught that 600,000 able bodied men left with Moses from Egypt. When we add to that their wives, kids, and non- able bodied parents and grand parents, plus the mixed multitude that came with us, which the Talmud said numbered 3 million, we would need , even subtracting the folks who died in Korach's rebellion, and other tragedies, 190 years in the desert, not just 40, for 15000 to die out on each 9th of Av.
In reality, I think the holiday was created, as this is also the beginning of the 7 weeks of comfort, Nachamu, to keep folks minds off Tisha b'Av's events, and focus on the future. And what better way to do think of the future, then to have a fertility party, with the hopes of children and grandchildren?I'd like to end on a Jewish Spiritual Renewal aspect of the Holiday....the fact that it is in the middle of the month, and is always when there is a full bright moon.
How can we explain Rabbi Shimon's amazing statement that "There were no greater festivals for Israel" in Talmud Bavli Tractate Ta'anit? In what way is the 15th of Av greater than Passover, or Shavuot, or even the other "great festival," Yom Kippur?
It has to do with our lunar calendar. The Zohar explains that we mark time with the moon because '' we rise and fall through the nights of history knowing times of growth and diminution, our moments of luminous fullness alternating with moments of obscurity and darkness. And like the moon, our every regression and defeat is but a prelude to yet another rebirth, yet another renewal.'
So even though our Exodus process began on Nissan One, we celebrate it on Nissan 15 when the actual Exodus occurred. Even though One Tishrei is Rosh HaShanah, we truly rejoice on Sukkoth, the 15th of Tishrei. The Talmud tells us to ''sound the shofar on the moon's renewal, which is concealed until the day of our festival, Sukkoth.''
The full moon is a sign of comfort, nachamu, for us, after the horrible events of the 9th of Av. The full moon of Tu B'av gives Tikvah, hope, to the Jews, in Galut.
More than this is that the 15th of Av is also the holiday of the ''Destruction of the Ax's.'' We used the axes to make the fire wood for the altar for the Temple.
Why break the axes? Why not store them for next year's cutting? Because the ax represents the very antithesis of what the Altar, and for which the Temple as a whole, stood.
"When you build a stone altar for Me, do not build it of cut stone; for if your sword has been lifted upon it, you have profaned it"; "Do not lift iron upon it… The altar of God shall be built of whole stones" (Ex. 20:22; Deut. 27:5-6) If any metal implement as much as touched a stone, that stone was rendered unfit for use in the making of the altar.
Our sages explain: "Iron was created to shorten the life of man, and the Altar was created to lengthen the life of man; so it is not fitting that that which shortens should be lifted upon that which lengthens" (Talmud Bavli Tractate Middot 3:4). Iron, the instrument of war and destruction, has no place in the making of the instrument whose function is to bring eternal peace and harmony to the world.
While, it seems to be our destiny to wax and wane like the moon, I do pray that we have more days and years like a full bright moon, with no instruments of war aimed at us, or forced into our hands to defend ourselves, and that our shovels and backs are used to plant fruit trees and not to dig graves. Amen.
Shalom and happy Tu B'Av, the 15th of Av.Rabbi Arthur Segal
Hebrew College, Newton Centre, MA, USA,
via Shamash Org on-line class service
Hilton Head Island, SC
Bluffton, SC
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