Tu B'av

Sorry about the extended absence. You will be shortly hearing about my escapades in the past week which lead to a separation from my laptop and hence an inability to blog.

But first.

It was Tu B'av on Sunday night/Monday this week.

This day on the Jewish calendar is known for various love related customs. such as single girls wearing borrowed white dresses and going out into the field (or streets/clubs) to dance. It's a day for dating & marriage. Indeed I even went to a wedding of a close friend on Tu B'av.

But where does this tradition come from you may ask?

Well, the gemara in bava batra 121 a,b gives a couple of different answers but the most interesting (& also most accepted version) is the following story.

Now I know you are about to switch off but I'm telling you this is a good bible story. It's definitely worth a read.

So in the book of Shoftim (19-21 specifically.... impressed much?) we have a story about the pilegesh b'givah. It goes as follows...

A man and his concubine are travelling back from visiting the in-laws when they come upon a village in the tribe of Benjamin. They try to find somewhere to stay but nobody is willing to have them. Eventually a guy is super concerned about them spending the night on the street and agrees to take them in. In the night the villagers, having heard about the strangers in the house, come knocking on the host's door.

The mob demand that the host send out the man so that they can rape him. (WTF?!?) Anyways there's a bit of an argument and then they conclude that they will be satisfied with just the concubine being given to them. They then take the concubine and gang rape her all night.

In the morning they let her go, she crawls back to the house where her husband was staying and died on the front doorstep. When he awakes (seriously, what type of bastard can sleep while his concubine is being gang raped?) he opens the front door and finds her there.

Now what would a normal person do at this point?

-Cry?

- Bury her?

- Call the local police/law enforcers?

Well I'll give you a hint - none of the above.

Instead he choses to cut her into 12 pieces and send each piece to a different tribe all around Israel so that they will know what happened to his concubine.

Oh right, that's a healthy response. I feel like I may have seen something similar on Law & Order: S.V.U.

Anyways, the tribes of Israel freak out and declare that gang rape is totally not ok. To demonstrate this point they wage war on the tribe of Benjamin and massively decimate them. Seriously, there were like almost no Benjaminites left.

The elders of Israel were pretty concerned about the near extinction of a tribe and so they decide that something must be done about this. The problem was that the tribes had sworn not to give their daughters to the Benjaminites as wives. And in the bible promises are taken very seriously.

The solution went as such.

There was a festival on the 15th of the month of Av where virgins went out into the field and danced (apaz some sort of agricultural thingo). So the Benjaminites were instructed to go there and take the girls and rape them. You see in Judaism if you rape a virgin you are then meant to marry her (don't worry there'll definitely be a blog about rape & Judaism at some point). This solution meant that the tribes of Israel didn't actually give their daughters to Benjamin and therefore didn't break their vows but that the tribe could be replenished with these girls (against their will).

And therefore in celebration of this delightful tale young Jewish women world wide dress up in white and go out dancing and dating on Tu B'av. Charming aye?