Let's Talk About Love

This video was recorded July 21, 2010. Tu B'Av is celebrated in 2011 on August 15. Enjoy the day!

This coming Monday is the joyous Jewish holiday known as Tu B'Av (the 15th of Av). According to the Talmud, Tu B'Av was a joyous time in the days of the Holy Temple, a Biblical version of Sadie Hawkin's Day, when the unmarried maidens of Jerusalem would go out to the vineyards to dance together under the gaze of the unmarried men.

With Tu B'Av now just a few days away, Rabbi Ephraim Z. Buchwald, the founder of Jewish Treat's parent organization, the National Jewish Outreach Program, shares with us his answers to the question, what should one look for in a mate? His advice is this: Write down the Top 10 qualities you are looking for in a mate, and if you meet someone who matches 6 or 7 of those qualities, be willing to compromise.

Read more from Jewish Treats on our blog (http://www.jewishtreats.org), Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/JewishTreats) and JewishTweets on Twitter (http://twitter.com/JewishTweets).

To learn more about the holiday of Tu B'Av, we have posted below a Jewish Treat blog post we prepared entitled, No Holiday As Joyous.

Tu B'Av (The Fifteenth of Av) is no longer the well-known holiday on the Jewish calendar that it was in ancient times. In fact, in Talmudic times it was said: "There were no holidays so joyous for the Jewish People as the Fifteenth of Av..." (Ta'anit 26b).

On Tu B'Av, the unmarried maidens of Jerusalem would go out to the vineyards to dance together under the gaze of the unmarried men (sort of a Sadie Hawkins Day!). Each young lady would be dressed in white clothing that she had borrowed from her neighbor so that those who came from great family wealth would not stand out and none would be embarrassed.

As they danced, the ladies would call out: "Young man, lift your eyes and choose wisely. Don't look only at physical beauty--look rather at the family, 'For charm is false, and beauty is deceitful. A God-fearing woman is the one to be praised...'" (Proverbs 31:30).

While in ancient times the same ceremony also took place on Yom Kippur, the day of Tu B'Av was specifically set aside for this celebration because it was the anniversary of the date on which inter-tribal marriages were permitted after the Israelites had entered the Land of Israel.

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