Happy Tu Be'Av and Much Much More

Happy Tu Be'Av. The Rabbis had this to say about this day:


R' Shimon ben Gamliel said, "There were no festivals in Israel as great as the fifteenth of Av and Yom Kippur, for on these days the maidens of Jerusalem would go out, wearing borrowed white garments (to avoid embarrassing those poor girls who did not have fine clothes). They would dance in the vineyards and say, 'Young man, lift your eyes and see what you are choosing. Do not look for superficial beauty... because "False is grace and vain is beauty; a G-d fearing woman - she should be praised. Give her the fruits of her hand, and let her be praised in the gates by her very own deeds'" (Mishlei 31:30-31, Taanis 26b).


It is interesting that this day seems to rank higher than Rosh HaShanah or Shavuot, higher than Sukkos and Pesach. You see from here how important marriage is. But why the praise of comparison to Yom Kippur, which other holidays do not garner? Rabbi Abraham Twerski (thanks to Rabbi Tzvi Pittinsky for alerting me to this article) marshals the idea what links this day with Yom Kippur is the importance of acting properly in the realm of person to person. The first detail we're told about this holiday is that the women all wore the same borrowed simple clothing. This was done to play up the commonality of people and to play down class differences (the garments are strikingly similar to burial clothing, which are also ordained to be equal to all to reflect that at the time of truth all stand equally before G-d). Yom Kippur cannot atone alone for the many sins we ask forgiveness for, we also need to be forgiven by the people we've hurt. Tu Be'Av reminds us of how sensitive we need to be in out interactions with others. In particular this day tells us that the most important real for working on our social behavior is in the realm of marriage and marriage directed activities.



Rav Chaim Vital (cited elsewhere by Rabbi Twerski) stated that “A person’s character is evaluated “ach verak – only on how he relates to his spouse. If a person does chesed with alfei alafim and is sure he’s set for olam habah due to his chesed, he should know for a fact that beis din shel ma’alah will check on his chesed toward his wife.If he was kind then tov lo, if he was provocative or irritable and did not act with chesed, that’s what will decide his din. And there will be no mention of all the chesed he did with others."


The Gemorah in Kiddushin states that a person must meet whom they are going to marry, lest something they can't bear be discovered (davar meguneh) and it says in the Torah "ve'ahavtah le'rei'achah kamochah." I think that the message here is profound. The one situation in which a person truly gets to work on loving another as oneself (good luck to someone with someone else who doesn't love themselves, an issue which many of us struggle with today) is within marriage. From that foundation people can branch out and work on kindness to others, but the primary fulfillment of loving another as oneself is within marriage.


On Tu B'Av the wisdom of King Solomon was cited, "Sheker hachein vehevel hayofi, ishah yirat Hashem hi tithalal" - "Charm is a falsehood and beauty is fleeting.(Proverbs 31:30)" If the idea is to play up fear of G-d and play down beauty and charm why are beauty and charm dismissed with different adjectives? It is a well known truth that physical appearance is not the reason to choose a partner. External beauty withers and fades and is not the mark of value of a human being - this is widely accepted by thinking people as a fact. However many smart people buy into charm presented by others, after all it's personality that counts. Shlomo HaMelech tells us that while beauty is fleeting, a breath, a vanity, charm can be worse than that - it can be a lie. While beauty is something that someone is blessed to be born with, like being tall or short - and clearly doesn't make a person better or worse, charm is something readily feigned. And we buy it. If someone seems "nice," if they smile a lot, if they manipulate us into with their charming demeanor we buy in. And we think it's real. Shlomo HaMelech addresses charm up front, because it's the one we need to hear about more urgently, and he tells us to be aware that charming dispositions can be deceptive (as a popular song puts it, "Smiling faces tell lies.") Then he tells us the less shocking truth that beauty is what it is, nothing to be impressed by or proud of; it is fleeting as a breath.


On this Tu Be'Av, may we be blessed to remember the truths about life and relationships, what truly counts and what actually counts as being true.


Should I be publishing somewhere with more readership than this blog?


I have a tentative relationship with questions. I tend to not ask so many questions. part of that is because it's hard to ask without a presumption and that presumptuousness can fly in your face. "How's your wife?" "We got divorced." "Don't you think Obama is doing a rotten job?" "I think he's great. Leave the guy alone." "How are you?" "So glad you asked - I'm not well; it all started..."


Here's the type of question that I've (almost) learned the hard way not to ask, "Can I ______?" regarding permission to speak. Whatever it is you're asking permission to say (fill in the blank from these choices, or add your own: be blunt, tell you something, be honest, offer constructive criticism, read you a poem, tell you a story) you're indicating to the other person that you want to say it, and kind of making them feel like who are they to tell you no. But your words are hidden and they will still feel blindsided when your words feel too sharp, are a total surprise.

We shouldn't ask questions that we don't want to hear wild card answers to. Even when we ask how someone is, we shouldn't assume that they're signed in to our code. To ask a question genuinely is to be prepared to hear the whole story.

Speaking of stories, I love 'em. The cool thing about questions is that if you ask the right one to the right person what will pour forth could be a beautiful story. It could even lead to a new story between the two people conversing.

Rav Nachman MiBreslov said that people think that stories are for putting people to sleep but he thought that they are for waking people up. He also said that if stories are unsophisticated they should take their complaints to G-d who starts and fills The Torah with stories.

There's a lot more to say about questions. At this moment I'm more interested in stories than questions, but they are related, aren't they? This piece from Mark Kurlansky's book, "What?" comes to mind. "Aren't we driven by a fear of being nobody? A fear of the answer to the question: "Who am I?"Isn't this why, when facing arrogance, the question of choice is "Who the hell do you think you are?' Who can answer that one for sure? But aren't there worse questions? Even if you found that you were nobody, would that be so terrible? Wouldn't it still be better than not existing at all? Is it so bad to be a nobody among nobodies? Is that what the poet Emily Dickinson thought when she wrote her poem 'I'm Nobody! Who are you?'" (What? pages 54-55)

Aviva Zorenberg believes that Sefer Yonah is a book about questions and stories. In a remarkable piece - that I worked through over Shabbos - which I won't be able to sum up here and now, she notes that the book and character of Yonah are an enigma. On the surface it seems to be the story of a prophet sent to tell a city to repent who, literally (or literarily) tries to flee from G-d. In the end he has a stand off with G-d in which G-d creates a narrative and then asks Yonah for his thoughts about the story of a tree. I hope to write more about this in time, to take on the task of summarizing her brilliant tapestry of words.

For those of you have been counting on the daily excerpts I've been posting from Beautiful Unbroken, I apologize for missing yesterday. In the fifth chapter of the book, which is the end of the first section, we find Mary Jane working in the cancer ward where her younger brother is suffering from cancer. Her father takes to drinking and she doesn't blame him: "I found I loved my father even more for his failure. My mother's way of being sad and praying and her suffering were the things that built my rage. We were all angry and circling each other like prisoners in an exercise yard. My sister slowly aligned herself with my mother and I slowly aligned myself with my father, and unwittingly we were already making a way for the family to exist without my brother, even though at the time it seemed unthinkable."


I have a book that is dear to me which has a piece of CS Lewis' writing for every day of the year. Recently I read one of the passages to a friend. He liked it and asked me email it to him. I have issues with scanning text, so I copied it. it is relevant for this holy day of Tu Be'Av. I will post it in the comments.