This past week’s parsha of Ve’etchanan opens up with the words “And Moshe — at that moment — began to plead with Hashem”
Commentators are struck by this timestamp: “at that moment.” Moshe’s heartfelt plea to enter the Land of Israel wasn’t spontaneous, but awakened by something specific, something deeply embedded in the contours of time. Early sources debate the precise moment this refers to. What stirred Moshe to begin praying again, after years of accepting the decree that he would never cross the Jordan?
The Pnei Yehoshua does the math. He works backwards from Moshe’s death, eliminating all the days on which personal requests are traditionally avoided. His conclusion is that “that moment” was none other than the 15th of Av, the holiday of Tu b’Av.
So what is it about Tu b’Av that stirs the soul, even one as weary and noble as Moshe’s?
The Gemara hails Tu b’Av as one of the happiest days of the Jewish calendar. Yet unlike other festivals, whose significance is tied to a single defining event, Tu b’Av commemorates a remarkable collection of seemingly unrelated moments spread across centuries of Jewish history.
Tu b’Av:
1) It marks the day the fallen of Beitar were finally granted burial after the crushing defeat of the Bar Kochba revolt.
2) It commemorates the lifting of the ban on intermarriage with the tribe of Binyamin following the devastating civil war sparked by the episode of Pilegesh b’Givah, allowing Binyamin to rejoin the fabric of the nation after a generation of isolation.
3) It remembers the day King Hoshea ben Elah removed the guards that had prevented the inhabitants of the Northern Kingdom from making pilgrimage to the Beit HaMikdash in Jerusalem.
4) It celebrates the completion of the annual collection of wood for the altar, ensuring that the communal offerings could continue throughout the winter months.
5) It marks the lifting of the temporary restriction requiring the tribes to marry only within their own tribal boundaries after the Land had been apportioned.
6) Most famously, it recalls the custom of the young women of Jerusalem borrowing white garments from one another and dancing in the vineyards in the hope of finding a spouse.
7) Finally, and perhaps more pertinent to Moshe, it was on Tu b’Av that the generation condemned to die in the wilderness realized that the decree had come to an end, signaling that the nation was finally ready to enter the Land of Israel.
At first glance, these commemorations seem to share little beyond a date on the calendar. They span different eras, leaders, crises and kinds of celebration. Yet the Gemara’s treatment of these episodes reveals a consistent theme, as each marks a moment when the Jewish people chose renewed solidarity over enduring division.
1) When Beitar, the final Judean stronghold, fell to the Romans, the devastation was immense. Tens of thousands were massacred, and the Romans prohibited the bodies from being buried for years. These fallen were soldiers of Bar Kochba’s, a figure as divisive as he was impressive, whose rebellion had left a nation bitterly divided. His movement had splintered loyalties and shaken faith. He was, to many, a dangerous false messiah. And yet, when burial was finally granted, the Rabbis instituted an entire new blessing into our Grace After Meals- HaTov VeHaMeitiv. Despite deep and fundamental differences, the nation had been holding its collective breath, and could not be fully at peace until it could ensure this dignity even to the politically and religiously “othered.”
2) The same pattern emerges after the episode of Pilegesh b’Givah. What began as a horrific act of violence escalated into a civil war that nearly annihilated the tribe of Binyamin. In the aftermath, the remaining tribes swore not to allow their daughters to marry members of Binyamin, effectively threatening the tribe’s future. Tu b’Av marks the day that prohibition was lifted, as the nation realized that it simply could not go on like this. Not all was forgiven. Not everything could be. Rather, it was a sober acknowledgment that the fate of our people demands a conscious choice to embrace responsibility for one another despite divisions, blame and even for those we might have once cast aside for what we thought was good reason.
3) The removal of the guards separating the Northern and Southern Kingdoms reflects the same principle, uniting competing kingdoms and rival religious centers. This didn’t unify the nation overnight, but it did reject the permanence of the divide, and a refusal to give up on a shared destiny.
4) Even the completion of the wood collection for the altar, a detail that seems to mark only a seasonal shift fits the theme. The Lubavitcher Rebbe reminds us that typically, offerings are individual responsibilities yet here, before the rainy season rendered fresh wood unsuitable, the people gathered together to secure the fuel that would sustain the service of the Beit HaMikdash for months to come. This signified collective investment in each other’s spiritual well-being. The fire on the altar would not go out, because we would commit to carrying each other’s offerings.
If Tisha b’Av is a time where we lament our divisions, Tu b’Av recognizes the moments when we realized as a nation that despite deep and justified grievances, division remains something that we cannot afford. We do not survive divided, and our salvation requires active investment in our brothers and our sisters.
But we are not simply on the heels of Tisha b’Av, we also find ourselves at another threshold, that of the month of Elul, a time associated with introspection and repentance, deeply personal enterprises. Perhaps among the greatest temptation of Elul is the belief that spiritual work requires solitude. That the journey inward demands we shut others out. It is in this vein that we can understand the two remaining events commemorated on Tu b’Av – the intermarriage of the tribes, and the practice of the young women dancing in the fields. While not moments of overcoming grievance, these represent moments in time when we might have thought that the stakes were so high, we would have been absolved, even temporarily, from communal responsibility.
When the Jewish people first entered the Land of Israel, daughters who inherited land were required to marry within their own tribe so that each tribe’s inheritance would remain intact. Once the Land had been fully apportioned, that restriction was lifted, allowing the tribes to intermarry.
The tribes may have assumed that they were righteously invested in the important task of establishing roots in the right places. They certainly could not afford the distractions and complications of becoming involved with Jews who were not of their own tribe – and yet Tu b’Av demands otherwise. That even the securing of personal and family legacies does not happen in isolation. Finally, when the young women would go out to dance in the fields in search of prospective matches, the Talmud tells us they would dance only in borrowed dresses, so as not to embarrass those who had less.
We often imagine finding a spouse as one of life’s most deeply personal endeavors, perhaps even the arena in which we are most entitled to distinguish ourselves from those around us. Yet the Rabbis frame the search for marriage differently. Before anyone sought to build a home, they first ensured that no one else’s dignity would be sacrificed in the process. Even our most intimate blessings, Tu b’Av teaches, are bound up with our participation and facilitation of the blessings of others.
While Elul invites introspection and preparation, suggesting a time to retreat inward and prepare individually, Tu b’Av reminds us that spiritual renewal demands that we carry others with us on the journey. Our teshuva is collective, and the path forward is one we walk together.
And so we arrive at the final event of this holy day: According to Chazal, Tu b’Av also marks the day the generation of the wilderness realized that the decree condemning them to die in the desert had come to an end. For nearly 40 years, the nation had lived beneath the shadow of that sentence. Now, at last, a new generation stood poised to enter the Land.
It is against this backdrop that Moshe’s prayer can be understood.
Standing on the plains of Moav, Moshe looked toward a future he himself would never inhabit. No leader had sacrificed more for his people. No one had carried their burdens more faithfully. And yet he would remain outside the Land toward which every step of his life had been directed.
Why, then, did Tu b’Av move him to pray?
Perhaps because Tu b’Av revealed something profound about what it means to belong to Klal Yisrael. If every victory belongs to the nation, then no individual is ever entirely absent from its future. Moshe would not cross the Jordan, but the people he had shaped would. The Land would be entered by a nation whose very existence bore his imprint.
The responsibility of belonging to the Jewish people is immense. Our failures affect one another; our divisions weaken us all. But Tu b’Av reminds us that the opposite is equally true. Our acts of kindness, our reconciliation, our growth, and our faithfulness are never ours alone. They ripple outward, becoming part of the inheritance of generations we may never meet.
Perhaps this is why Moshe’s final recorded prayer is not simply a plea to enter a particular place, but a plea to belong to the future of his people within that place.
There is a striking halachic parallel to this idea. The Rambam rules that the blessing recited upon seeing 600,000 Jews — Baruch Chacham HaRazim — is said only in the Land of Israel. Rav Eliezer Waldenberg, the Tzitz Eliezer, describes the land of Israel as the “tziruf” of the Jewish people, the crucible which fuses us into a single nation. Perhaps because it is only in a society of Jews that we see most clearly that we will simply have to work together if we wish to see that society function. There we are bound, if not comfortably, then inevitably.
Perhaps that is what Moshe longed to see.
Not simply the hills and valleys of Eretz Yisrael, but a people learning, however imperfectly, to become one.
Just one week ago, we sat on the floor and mourned every exile, every fracture, every senseless loss. If Tisha b’Av is the cry of estrangement, Tu b’Av is the night when we realized again and again that we cannot afford to be strangers. On Tu b’Av, the full moon rises. The same people who mourned begin to dance. The same nation who splintered begins to seek one another out again in the vineyards, in the fields, in the moments of vulnerability and return. On Tu b’Av Moshe revealed what he dared to dream, not just to enter the Land, but that we, his flock, would commit to walk in it together.
Tu b’Av does not imagine a world without disagreement. Nearly every event it commemorates comes precisely because disagreement existed. What it rejects is the notion that disagreement must become estrangement. Again and again throughout our history, this day marks the moments when the Jewish people chose shared destiny over permanent fracture.
Redemption does not begin when we finally agree with one another. It begins when we decide that our covenant with one another is more enduring than the arguments that divide us.
A lesson so powerful, is perhaps what inspired Moshe to pray.
Adina Feldman is a Straus Scholar at Yeshiva University.
