Why Is Tu B'Av the Best Day of the Year? The Secret You Didn't Know

00:00 The Gemara at the end of Tractate Taanis says: “There were no days as festive for the Jewish people as the fifteenth of Av.” The Gemara there relates that on that day, the daughters of Israel—or, as it says elsewhere, the daughters of Jerusalem—would go out and dance in the vineyards. That is, they would dance in a circle, and this was the day when matches were made, as is well known. The Mishnah tells us what they would say during that dance. They would say: “Young man, lift up your eyes and see what you choose. Do not set your eyes on beauty; set your eyes on family.” As it says: “Charm is false and beauty is vain; a woman who fears Hashem is to be praised.” So what do we know from this? On the fifteenth of Av, they would hold these dances, and the young women who danced would tell a young man to lift his eyes and consider what he was choosing—not to look at beauty, but at family. Then the Mishnah cites the familiar verse from Eishes Chayil: “Charm is false and beauty is vain; a woman who fears Hashem is to be praised.” Now, this Mishnah needs explaining. What is going on here? More generally, what happens on the fifteenth of Av? Why were these dances held on that particular day? What was their meaning? What does “Do not set your eyes on beauty; set your eyes on family” mean? What does “family” mean here? Why is family more important than beauty? And what about the verse? It says, “Charm is false and beauty is vain.” So don’t set your eyes on beauty—but it doesn’t mention family. It says, “A woman who fears Hashem is to be praised.” Where is family in that? These are questions about the Mishnah. Let’s continue to the Gemara at the end of Tractate Taanis. The Gemara cites a baraisa: “Our Sages taught” that there were several groups. The baraisa explains that there were actually several groups among the daughters of Israel at that dance. The Gemara says: “The beautiful ones would say, ‘Set your eyes on beauty, for a woman is for beauty.’ The women of distinguished lineage would say, ‘Set your eyes on family, for a woman is for children.’” So family is

02:30 the important thing. And the unattractive ones would say: “Take what you are acquiring for the sake of Heaven—provided you adorn us with gold.” As if to say, choose us. We have neither beauty nor distinguished lineage, so let it be for the sake of Heaven. But adorn us; give us gold. Rashi says that means jewelry. The Gemara says that a woman is for adornments. Here too, the entire Gemara is puzzling. What is going on? What is the story here? Not only is the Gemara puzzling—what does it mean that they suddenly split into groups? That seems the opposite of Ahavas Yisroel, with each group proclaiming its own importance. And then it says the opposite of the Mishnah. The Mishnah says, “Do not set your eyes on beauty.” Here it says the reverse: they would say, “Set your eyes on beauty.” How does that fit? And the third group, the unattractive women, say, “Take what you are acquiring for the sake of Heaven,” yet at the same time they ask for gold. What is going on here? So the whole Gemara is puzzling from beginning to end. We need to understand the Mishnah, and we need to understand the Gemara. But when we look deeply at what is happening here, we will see that there is a profoundly meaningful story here. Not just a profound story, but one with an empowering message for every one of us. Especially at this time, everyone understands that the fifteenth of Av follows Tisha B’Av, and that is clear from the Gemara as well. When the Gemara begins to explain the reasons for what happened on the fifteenth of Av, we see that some of the things it discusses relate to the Beis Hamikdash and to its destruction. Several of the things the Gemara mentions have a direct connection to Tisha B’Av. In other words, the fifteenth of Av—and the Arizal says this explicitly—is the ascent that follows the descent. The greater the descent of Tisha B’Av, the greater the ascent of the fifteenth of Av. That means

04:44 that there is a kind of restoration and ascent here after the descent of Tisha B’Av. From this we understand that if we know what happened on Tisha B’Av—the depth of the destruction, the depth of exile, the depth of the mourning—then the fifteenth of Av comes to bring the opposite, the good news. Tisha B’Av was, in effect, a state of divorce. It was a situation in which, as we also see in Megillas Eichah, “She has become like a widow,” and in various other verses, there is an expression of the seeming disconnection, divorce, and separation between Hakadosh Boruch Hu and Knesses Yisroel, the collective soul of Israel. We all know from Shir Hashirim that husband and wife symbolize Hakadosh Boruch Hu and Knesses Yisroel. At the giving of the Torah, Hakadosh Boruch Hu chose the Jewish people and betrothed them. Those were the betrothal and marriage of Hakadosh Boruch Hu and Knesses Yisroel. The destruction of the Beis Hamikdash symbolizes the seeming separation. The husband has gone overseas; the husband has gone elsewhere. There is a kind of divorce here. Then comes Tisha— the fifteenth of Av, and Knesses Yisroel—represented by those whom the Mishnah calls the daughters of Jerusalem, the daughters of Israel—comes and asks Hakadosh Boruch Hu, as it were: “Lift up Your eyes and see.” They ask Hakadosh Boruch Hu, as it were, to choose Knesses Yisroel again. Now, of course, this also happened in the literal sense during the time of the Beis Hamikdash, or even around that period and for some time afterward, as the Gemara indicates. The fifteenth of Av was a day when matches were made in the literal sense too. But all of this was an expression of the truly profound, all-encompassing marriage—the root of marriage—between Hakadosh Boruch Hu and Knesses Yisroel. With that in mind, let’s now delve into

06:57 the words of the Mishnah and the Gemara and see them in a different, deeper, and wonderful way, based on the Rebbe’s sichos, which explain the fifteenth of Av with remarkable depth. What I’ll discuss today is based on a sicha the Rebbe gave on the fifteenth of Av exactly fifty years ago, in 5735. That was actually the first time—the first time, in 5735, that the Rebbe held a farbrengen on the fifteenth of Av. It was an unexpected farbrengen: the Rebbe announced that he would hold a farbrengen in honor of the fifteenth of Av. It had not been a special holiday in Chabad on which farbrengens were held, but from that time, from that year onward, year after year, we had the privilege of the Rebbe holding a farbrengen on that day. Thanks to that, we also received wonderful, profound explanations that shed light on this great day, reveal its depth, and give us strength. So let’s take the baraisa, which divides the women into three groups. As we said, there are three groups among the daughters of Israel: the beautiful ones, the women of distinguished lineage, and the unattractive ones. Now, we know that the Jewish people can be divided into three groups. We see this in Tanya. The Alter Rebbe teaches us in Tanya, based on the Gemara in Tractate Berachos and also in Tractate Rosh Hashanah, that the Jewish people are divided into three groups: the tzaddikim, the beinonim, and the reshaim. As the Alter Rebbe explains at length in Tanya, the deeper and more accurate meaning of these terms—the definitions that truly capture what a tzaddik, a beinoni, and a rasha are—is not the simple meaning people usually have in mind. Rather, a tzaddik is someone who has reached the ultimate degree of refinement, purity, and holiness, who has transformed even his evil inclination into good. A tzaddik is a person who is entirely holy, entirely good. A beinoni is a person who, in fact,

09:16 He has a struggle. He still has a yetzer hara, an animal soul, a constant battle. But he has the strength, because he awakens within himself the love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu that every Jew possesses, which we inherited from Avraham Avinu. As the Alter Rebbe explains at length in Tanya, every Jew has an inheritance from Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov: the strength and the hidden love that we inherited. When a Jew awakens that love, it gives him the strength to overcome his yetzer hara in thought, speech, and action, and to serve Hashem by observing Torah and mitzvos fully. So although the beinoni is not like the tzaddik—he has not yet managed to cleanse his heart completely and perfectly, and he still has inner battles—in practice, his thought, speech, and action are entirely devoted to serving Hashem. All of this is because of the hidden love we inherited from our forefathers. The rasha, on the other hand, is someone who sometimes falls or stumbles. He gets up and is stirred to do teshuvah, but his ongoing battles sometimes have practical consequences: he falls in thought, speech, and action as well. Nevertheless, the rasha too is a Jew. “A Jew, even though he has sinned, is still a Jew.” A Jew has mesirus nefesh and pure faith. He always has that strength—the faith and the capacity for mesirus nefesh that we received from Above. From time to time, Hakadosh Boruch Hu awakens even the rasha and gives him strength from Above. There is siyata diShmaya, help from Heaven; there is an awakening from Above that gives a person the push to do teshuvah. With this in mind, let’s now look at the words of the braisa at the end of Tractate Taanis. “The Rabbis taught”: After Tisha B’Av, after the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash, the Jewish people are in exile. The Shechinah is in exile, the Jewish people are in exile, and Knesses Yisroel

11:23 comes to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. They go out and dance in the vineyards, coming to Hakadosh Boruch Hu to awaken the hidden love, to awaken our connection with Him. They ask Hakadosh Boruch Hu to choose us anew. And then there are three groups. The first group is the tzaddikim. These are the ones the braisa calls “the beautiful ones.” The beautiful ones correspond to tzaddikim: beautiful, perfect, their service of Hashem complete. So they say, “Set your eyes on beauty.” They say this, as it were, to the young man—the “young man” here meaning “a young man like the cedars,” as it says in Shir Hashirim in reference to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. They tell Hakadosh Boruch Hu, as it were, to look at the beauty, at the tzaddik and his service of Hashem, at the holiness. Yes, “A woman is only for beauty”—the beauty of Knesses Yisroel. When a Jew serves Hashem with absolute perfection, these are people who have reached the ultimate perfection of beauty. The beinoni belongs to the category of those of distinguished lineage. As we said, the beinoni does not possess perfect beauty. He still has evil in his heart; he still has an inner battle. But what does he have? His lineage: the love we inherited from Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov. He succeeds in awakening that love. This is a love we received through our lineage, an inheritance from our forefathers. As the Alter Rebbe explains in Tanya, “the Patriarchs are the chariot,” and therefore they merited to bequeath to their children after them an exceedingly powerful love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. When a Jew awakens this love, it enables him to have Torah and mitzvos. That is why the women of distinguished lineage say: We have lineage; we have the love we inherited. “Set your eyes on the family,” on where we received this love from. And “a woman is only for children.” “Children,” the Gemara in Tractate Sotah says, means good deeds. “Children are nothing other than good deeds,” the Gemara says at the end of Tractate Sotah. In other words, because of this love we inherited through our lineage, through the merit of our forefathers, we have children,

13:40 we have good deeds—fruits, the fruits a Jew brings into the world through the good deeds he does down here. That is the service of the beinoni. Then comes the third group: a Jew who has not yet reached the level of a beinoni. He has battles. Sometimes he rises and stands firm, and sometimes he falls. He tries to serve Hashem, but is in the category of a rasha. The Alter Rebbe says in Tanya that Hakadosh Boruch Hu awakens even the rasha to teshuvah. The rasha too has within him the innermost point that is “truly a part of G-d Above.” So he pleads with Hakadosh Boruch Hu and says: “Take what you are acquiring for the sake of Heaven.” I know I do not deserve it. I am not a tzaddik. If only I were a beinoni! I know exactly where I stand. But we ask Hakadosh Boruch Hu to take us for the sake of Heaven, because I am a Jew and I have mesirus nefesh. We know that when a special moment comes—even a Jew in the lowest state, at the furthest possible distance, when faced with a test of sanctifying Hashem’s name—is ready to give up his life for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So we ask Hakadosh Boruch Hu to take us for the sake of Heaven, to choose us. “Provided that you adorn us with gold.” In this spiritual interpretation, “adorn us with gold” means that we ask Hakadosh Boruch Hu to awaken us from Above, as we just said concerning Megillas Eichah. At the end of Megillas Eichah, which we read on Tisha B’Av, the Jew says to Hakadosh Boruch Hu: “Bring us back to You, Hashem, and we will return.” Don’t wait for us to do teshuvah. Adorn us with gold; give us strength. Give us that influence from Above, what Chassidus calls an isarusa d’le’eila, an awakening from Above. Let Hakadosh Boruch Hu give us the strength from Above, and then we will return to You. “Adorn us with gold.” And that is what “a woman is only for adornments” means. Adornments are all the gifts Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives us from Above: the higher powers, the soul’s spiritual powers, the influence of an awakening to teshuvah that comes from Above. And then the Jew, even

15:55 one in the category of a rasha, will not be left behind. As the verse in Shmuel says, may we each merit to come out and connect with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. With this, we can understand the depth of the Gemara. Its continuation of the Mishnah fits together in a most remarkable way. Let’s go back to the Mishnah for a moment. The Mishnah does not give all the details; it gives the root of the matter. It simply says that the daughters of Israel go out and dance in the vineyards. And what do they say? As we said, they say, as it were, to Hakadosh Boruch Hu: “Lift up your eyes and see what you choose.” They ask Hakadosh Boruch Hu not to look at our outward appearance, not to look at our behavior or where we stand. Rather, they ask Him: Lift up Your eyes on high; look at what is within. “Do not set your eyes on beauty; set your eyes on the family.” In the Mishnah, there are no separate groups. The Mishnah speaks about the essential point common to every Jew. A Jew says to Hakadosh Boruch Hu: Please, Creator of the world, do not look at outward beauty or appearance. Look at the family. Here, “family” means the Jewish people. We are all one family. We are all the children of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, and the daughters of Sarah, Rivkah, and Rachel. We belong to that great family. We ask Hakadosh Boruch Hu to look at a Jew not in terms of outward beauty, not in terms of behavior or how we actually conduct ourselves, but in terms of family. We belong to the holy Patriarchs, and therefore every Jew, because we are connected to our forefathers, has a natural fear of Heaven, a natural connection to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. As the well-known teaching of the Rambam says, even when a Jew sins, he does not really want to sin. It is the yetzer hara that attacks him, overpowers him, and compels him. A Jew does not want to sin. A Jew always wants to serve Hashem. And so, according to the Mishnah, the verse they would say is: “Grace is false and beauty is fleeting; a woman who fears Hashem, she shall be praised.” This is about fear of Hashem. Not grace, not beauty,

18:06 Not externals, not virtues. We should not look at the virtues we have, whether we have this quality or that one, but at the very fact that we are a G-d-fearing woman. We inherited that, and that is what “family” means. That is the Mishnah. But the Gemara, which always goes into more detail, says: No, there are actually three groups. In other words, after we have connected on a general level and come to recognize that our bond with Hakadosh Boruch Hu is an essential bond—that this is what it means to be a G-d-fearing woman, that every Jew has a part of G-d above, and that every Jew inherited this from our ancestors, from our family—after that, we also need to bring it into the details of serving Hashem. Then there really are tzaddikim, beinonim, and resha’im. In other words, the general connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, which is what the Mishnah speaks about, is not enough. Afterward, we also need to bring it into the different groups, the different kinds of Jews. Every Jew finds his own special connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu—through beauty, through lineage, or through gold coins, the jewelry we mentioned. There are three groups, each connecting with Hakadosh Boruch Hu in its own way. This is also what it says in the verse we read in the haftarah from Yirmiyahu on the morning of Tisha B’Av. The haftarah read on Tisha B’Av ends with the words: “Thus says Hashem: Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, let not the rich man glory in his wealth, let not, let not the mighty man glory in his strength. But let him who glories glory in this: understanding and knowing Me, for I am Hashem, who practices kindness and justice on earth, for in these I delight, says Hashem.” That is the conclusion of the haftarah of Tisha B’Av. So let’s consider its words. This is exactly what the Mishnah and Gemara are telling us. On the one hand, “Let not ... glory”: a person should not pride himself on the particulars—the wise man on his wisdom, the mighty man on his strength, and the rich man on his wealth. A person should not praise

20:12 himself for those particulars. Those praises are not what matters. “But let him who glories glory in this: understanding and knowing Me.” According to this explanation, it means that when a Jew has that inner point, when he knows the inner truth—that the main thing is “understanding and knowing Me,” the connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, “for I am Hashem, who practices kindness and justice on earth”—then his qualities take on meaning too. If you are preoccupied only with your own qualities and measure yourself against someone else—“I’m a tzaddik, you’re a beinoni,” or “a beinoni or a rasha”—and you are caught up in those differences, you are not connected to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. But once that inner connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu is there, of course you then need to bring it into beauty, wisdom, and strength as well. You need to use all your abilities, all your praiseworthy traits and distinctive qualities, to serve Hashem—not disconnect from them. That is what completes the picture, and it is also what the Gemara adds to the Mishnah here. The Mishnah says that the point is the general connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. It grasps the inner point. We say to Hakadosh Boruch Hu: “Do not set Your eyes on beauty; set Your eyes on family.” The Gemara adds that afterward we also need to bring this into the details. There are tzaddikim, beinonim, and resha’im, and all of them connect with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, each in his own way. Then the Gemara in Tractate Taanis concludes—these are its final words, the conclusion of the tractate. The Gemara says: “In the future, Hakadosh Boruch Hu will make a circle dance for the righteous in Gan Eden, and He will sit among them in Gan Eden.” When Moshiach comes, Hakadosh Boruch Hu will, so to speak, sit in the middle with all the Jewish people around Him, and each one will point with his finger and say: “Behold, this is our G-d; we have hoped for Him. This is Hashem; we have hoped for Him. Let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation.” When each and every one of us makes use of

22:17 these great days, now that we have come through Tisha B’Av and are entering the fifteenth of Av, we prepare for this great day, a day of which it was said that there were no Yom Tov days like it for the Jewish people. The inner love between Hakadosh Boruch Hu and the Jewish people is revealed—the wedding in which Hakadosh Boruch Hu returns and takes us to Him. “Bring us back to You, Hashem, and we will return; renew our days as of old.” May we merit to see with our own eyes the fulfillment of the Gemara’s words: “In the future, Hakadosh Boruch Hu will make a circle dance for the righteous, and He will sit among them in Gan Eden.” And may we merit to see the fulfillment of the verse: “Behold, this is our G-d; we have hoped for Him. This is Hashem; we have hoped for Him. Let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation.”