קרן ברג- טו' באב
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A message from Karen Berg
Tu B'Av
Welcome to Tu B'av -
the 15th day of the month of Av.
Lot's of you that maybe familiar with
the fact they call it 'the day of love'.
It's a day when
the maidens in Jerusalem
went out to find their soulmates
or arrange marriages on that day.
All of that is true, but let's look
at the beginnings of Tu B'Av.
According to the Gemarah it says
that the two holiest days of the year
are Yom Kippur and Tu B'Av.
That would be
an interesting question,
because we know that Yom Kippur
it's a day of fasting
and of concentration on
spiritual energy, etc. and so forth.
And here you have
these maidens running widely
free in Jerusalem looking for
their mates or some people
that are agents, marriage counselors
making contracts.
How do you put these two together
and how do you explain it?
Well, one of the things that we know
is that that on 9th day of Av
which is the day the spies came back
from spying the land,
and they told Moses:
"Yeah, it's a land
flowing with milk and honey.
Look at the grapes,
they are fantastic.
But you know what?
It's just too difficult.
These giants are going
to destroy us.
We will not be able
to overcome their power.
We will not be able to enter the land.
And when the people, because
there were only two others
that said otherwise,
it was Joshua and Kaleb.
They said: "No, no , no ,no,
we will go anyway.
We will go with
the word of the Creator.
But ten against two is
a hard number.
And when the people heard
what the spies had to say,
they cried and they cried.
And so when the Creator
heard upstairs,
and it's a lesson for us by the way,
wailing of the people,
he says: "You are crying for this?
Then you will have a day of crying
for every single year on this day
there will be wailing.
We have found that
the 9th day of Av
would be a day of wailing.
And as history shows us,
we have the 1st Temple,
the 2nd Temple,
the expulsion from Spain,
final redemption,
spies coming back.
We also know that in the desert,
when Moses went up
to receive the first Tablets,
and supposedly didn't come down
within a lot of time,
the people created the Golden Calf.
And he went up again on the first day
of the month of Elul
to receive the second Tablets,
because the first ones
when he came back down,
they were totally destroyed,
because the people have lost
their faith in the Creator.
But when did he come down
the second time
forty days later?
It was actually on Yom Kippur.
And knowing that he was able
to bring the Tablets down
on Yom Kippur,
he understood that that was the day
that they would be forgiven
for what they had done.
And through the history of time
as Tishah B'Av
was the day of morning,
Yom Kippur became
a day of forgiveness.
And therefore, through the history
we will find that Yom Kippur
was the day
when Jews not celebrating
in the form that we understand it,
but like angels, they did't eat,
they just were part of a union with
the holy one, with the Creator.
They were like the angels of heaven.
And so it is to be on Yom Kippur.
How do I correlate that
to Tu B'Av?
When the spies came back
and gave this evil report,
the Creator said: "When you said
that you will never be able
to inherit the land,
so be it.
I guarantee you that the generation
that will follow you
will inherit the land.
And the two people that gave
the good report,
Kaleb and Yehoshua,
they will enter the holy land.
But you, and all of you
of this generation
will die in the wilderness.
So what happened?
It's said that every year on Tu B'Av,
now if you take
600 thousand people,
divide it into 40 -
15,000 people each year died
on the 15th day of the month.
But what happens is
for 40 years,
and in the 40th year
in the wilderness
they sort of made,
they built their own graves
and lied themselves down
knowing that they would die.
And lo and behold,
they didn't die.
And the next day, and the next day,
and the next day
and they realized that
it was a miracle,
that God had finally forgiven
the generation in the wilderness.
And what day was it
that they finally realized
from the first day
which is Tishah B'Av,
the first 9th day of the month of Av,
it was on the 15th of the month,
when they saw that the moon
was full, that they realized
that they too had been forgiven
for the spies.
And so we see that Tu B'Av
is a time of forgiveness.
Also withing this period,
when this happened,
the celebration was so great,
before that the tribes
would marry only a tribe:
Benymin with Benyamin,
Shimon with Shimon,
and Dan with Dan,
as we know the tribes.
But at this time they were given
permission to intermarry
withing the tribes.
Before that they weren't
allowed to do that.
because the inheritance of
the fathers' houses was to be
withing the houses,
but now
They decided that
they would be able
to lo and behold,
intermarry into the tribes.
So therefore, there was a bigger pool
of being able to fulfill.
And so this was a time of happiness.
And from this was derived the time
of being the time of love:
the love of the Creator to his people,
the love of being able to intermingle
and marry within the tribes.
And yes, the end result of that was
that the people, the marriage makers,
the contractors,
what they did on that day
they arranged contracts - marriages
between men and women.
And for us today, of course,
we don't run the streets of Jerusalem
wearing white on the 15th
of the month,
but it is a day of love and joy.
And I hope for all of you
that have listened
that you enjoy this day,
it's a beautiful one.
Thank you!