Tu B'Avט״וּ בְּאָב

Tu B’Av (Hebrew: ט״ו באב, the fifteenth of the month Av) is a minor Jewish holiday. In modern-day Israel, it is celebrated as a holiday of love (חג האהבה Ḥag HaAhava). It has been said to be an auspicious day for weddings. For all its modern reputation as a day of love, Tu B'Av carries deep traditional weight. The Mishnah (Ta'anit 4:8) places it on a remarkable level, quoting Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel that "there were no days as festive for Israel as the Fifteenth of Av and Yom Kippur," pairing a day of romance and rejoicing with the holiest fast of the year. Its gladness is sharpened by timing: it arrives just six days after Tisha B'Av, marking the turn from the deepest mourning of the Jewish calendar toward consolation and hope. The Talmud (Ta'anit 30b–31a) offers several historical reasons for the day's joy, commonly enumerated as six, among them the lifting of restrictions on intermarriage between the tribes, the re-admission of the tribe of Benjamin, the end of the wilderness generation's dying, and the removal of roadblocks that had blocked pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Though its observance is rabbinic and post-biblical rather than Torah-mandated, the day is at least two thousand years old, and its themes of renewal, reconciliation, and love after sorrow have made it newly resonant in modern Israel.

Tu B'Av falls on the 15th of the Hebrew month of Av. The name itself encodes the date, since the letters tet-vav (ט״ו) have the gematria value of fifteen. It begins at sundown on the night between 14 and 15 Av, a full moon, six days after Tisha B'Av and roughly 45 days before Rosh Hashanah. There is no Israel/Diaspora distinction in its date or observance, and unlike rite-specific practices on other holidays, Tu B'Av's minimal liturgical footprint is essentially uniform across communities. It is a minor holiday and an ordinary workday everywhere, with no formal legal-holiday status even in Israel. (Date conversions follow the standard Hebrew calendar; confirm the civil date for the specific year in question.)

No special Torah, Haftarah, or Megillah reading is assigned specifically to Tu B'Av, and so there is no special cantillation melody tied to the day, unlike the Eicha (Lamentations) trope of Tisha B'Av, the Esther trope of Purim, or the distinctive High Holiday trope of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Because Tu B'Av is a minor holiday that can fall on any weekday, the service simply uses whatever the ordinary weekday or that week's Shabbat reading would be. Its only liturgical mark is an omission: Tachanun, the penitential prayer, is not recited at Mincha the afternoon before, nor on the day itself. (Reported as an absence of any assigned reading; we note this for review rather than as an explicit liturgical ruling.)

The signature ancient custom (Mishnah Ta'anit 4:8) is the daughters of Jerusalem going out to dance in the vineyards dressed in white garments borrowed from one another (so that no one would be embarrassed for lacking her own), while young men came to find a spouse, making it a major matchmaking day. The date also marked the start of the grape harvest and the end of the season for cutting wood for the Temple altar. Liturgically, Tachanun is omitted at Mincha the prior afternoon and on the day, and a bride and groom whose wedding falls on Tu B'Av do not fast as a couple normally would on their wedding day. In modern Israel the day is celebrated as Hag HaAhava, the Jewish day of love, with weddings, proposals, festivals of song and dance, and romantic gestures among both secular and observant Jews. It carries no obligatory festive meal, candle-lighting, or prohibition on work.