Tu B'Av

Tu B'Av
Dancing girls on Tu B'Av
Official name	Hebrew: ט״ו באב English: Fifteenth of Av
Type	Jewish
Observances	Tachanun and similar prayers are omitted from daily prayers
Date	15th day of Av
2023 date	Sunset, 1 August – nightfall, 2 August
2024 date	Sunset, 18 August – nightfall, 19 August
2025 date	Sunset, 8 August – nightfall, 9 August
2026 date	Sunset, 28 July – nightfall, 29 July
Frequency	Annual

Tu B'Av (

• While the Israelites wandered in the desert for forty years, female orphans without brothers could only marry within their tribe to prevent their father's inherited territory in the Land of Israel from passing on to other tribes, following the incident of the Daughters of Zelophehad. After the conquest and division of Canaan under Joshua, this ban was lifted on the fifteenth of Av and inter-tribal marriage was allowed.
• At the end of Israel's wandering in the wilderness, the last remnant of the generation of the sin of the spies, which had been forbidden from entering the Promised Land, found that they were not destined to die. For forty years, every Tisha B'av the Israelites made graves for themselves in which they slept expecting to be their last night; every year a proportion of them died. In the 40th year, the fifteen thousand who had remained from the first generation went to sleep in the graves and woke up the next day to their surprise. Thinking they made a mistake with the date, they kept sleeping in graves until they reached Tu B'Av and saw a full moon. Only then did they know they were going to enter the Land of Israel with the new generation.
• The
  Concubine of Gibeah (see Judges 19–21
  ).
• Cutting of the wood for the main altar in the Temple was completed for the year. The holiday celebrated the wood-offering brought in the Temple (see Nehemiah 13:31). Josephus refers to it as the Feast of Xylophory ("Wood-bearing").^[8]
• King
  ten tribes to once again have access to the Temple
  .
• 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
  Bar Kochba rebellion. Miraculously, the bodies had not decomposed
  , despite exposure to the elements for over a year.

Tu B'Av is a day of joy that follows Tisha B'Av by six days and contrasts with the sadness of Tisha B'Av.^[9] Tu B'Av does not have many established religious rituals associated with its celebration except that Tachanun is not said—either at mincha the day before or on the day itself—and a bride and groom traditionally do not fast if their wedding falls on Tu B'Av. These customs commemorate the happy events that occurred in the history of the Jewish People.^[10]

In modern times, it has become a romantic Jewish holiday among secular Jews who mostly see it as the Jewish equivalent of

In Isaac Blum's 2022 novel, The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen^[16] the story begins during Tu B'Av.

References