The Torah wants us to remember the past but to work in building a future. That is why Tu B’Av comes 6 days after Tisha B’Av. As long as we continue as Jews, we have won.
Tu B’Av: Building the Jewish Future
Now for a quick Devar Torah.
Today is Tu B’Av, the 15th of Av, a day the Mishnah describes as one of the happiest days of the Jewish year.
You might even call it the Jewish “Sadie Hawkins Day.” For those who remember the reference, Sadie Hawkins Day was the day when the women could go out and choose the men they wanted to marry.
The Mishnah describes something with a similar spirit. On Tu B’Av, the young women of Jerusalem would go out dressed in white, and the young men would come to meet them. But there was an important detail: the women wore borrowed clothing. The Mishnah explains that this was done so that no one who did not own fine clothing would be embarrassed.
Think about the message. When a young man looked at a young woman, he was not supposed to be looking at her wealth or her family’s social standing. The emphasis was on the person—her middot, her character and qualities. Is this someone with whom I can build a life?
The Mishnah says that there were no days as joyous for Israel as Yom Kippur and Tu B’Av. That seems remarkable. Why these two days?
Because both are about the future.
Yom Kippur tells us that our mistakes do not have to define us. We can repent, change, and begin again. Tu B’Av tells us that after tragedy and mourning, we still have to build.
And look where Tu B’Av falls on the calendar. Just six days earlier was Tisha B’Av, when we remembered the destruction of the Temples and the many tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people.
Jewish history contains terrible chapters. We remember the Crusades, the expulsion from Spain, the Holocaust, and many other tragedies. We have an obligation to remember them.
But you cannot build a people by remembering tragedy alone.
A people must believe that it has a future.
And how do we create that future? We build families. We have children. And then we educate those children.
That connects beautifully with this week’s parsha, Eikev, which contains the second paragraph of the Shema. We are commanded to teach the words of Torah to our children—to speak about them when we sit at home and when we travel, when we lie down and when we rise.
In other words, Torah is not supposed to be something children encounter occasionally. It is supposed to be part of the rhythm of everyday life.
That is how a civilization survives.
The juxtaposition of Tisha B’Av and Tu B’Av therefore carries an extraordinary message. Tisha B’Av tells us to remember what was destroyed. Tu B’Av tells us to start building again.
Yes, terrible things happened to us. Yes, Jewish history contains suffering. But if all we teach the next generation is how much Jews have suffered, eventually someone will ask: Why bother?
Tu B’Av gives the answer.
Because we have a future.
We marry. We build homes. We have children. We educate them. We pass Torah and Jewish values from one generation to the next.
We remember the past not so that we can live in it, but so that we can learn from it and build something better.
Perhaps that is why Tu B’Av is one of the happiest days of the Jewish year. Happiness is not the absence of a painful past. It is the confidence that, despite that past, there is still a future worth building.
Something to think about.
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