Based on a shuir from Harav Yussie Zakutinsky
B’Av may seem like a “minor” holiday, but according to the the gemara in Taanis, the greatest two yomim tovim for the Jewish people are Tu B’Av and Yom Kippur! What is the pnimius of the significance of Tu B’Av?
The gemara says that on Tu B’Av, in the times of the Beis Hamikdash, the unmarried girls would go out and dance in a circle in the vineyards, and would call out to the young men who were there seeking a wife. Then the gemara then mentions another ‘dance in a circle’ that will happen in the future:
In the future (era of Moshiach) , the Holy One, Blessed be He, will arrange a circle dance of the righteous, and He will be sitting among them in Gan Eden, and each and every one of the righteous will point to Hashem with his finger…
In addition, Tu B’Av, which is on the 15th day of the month, has a connection to the 15th letter of the aleph beis, which is the letter “ס” – samach, which is shaped like a circle.
Somehow Tu B’Av has a connection to a circle (and dancing in a circle) and the coming of Moshiach. What’s going on here? Hold on – we are going to get pretty deep here, before we understand the practical and incredibly empowering message of Tu B’Av!
We experience the passage of time as a seamless movement from one moment to the next. Not much changes as the clock ticks and the minutes pass. However, a lot more is packed into the concept of ‘time’ than meets the eye. Earlier moments in time are considered to be broad and general – in Hebrew called כלל / klal / general – in relation to later moments in time, which are called פרט / prat / specific or limited. We can explore this spiritual lens of time by looking at the first mention of the passage of time in the Torah – the 6 days of the creation of the world. The 6 days of creation were not merely the first cycle of a week that is then repeated thousands of times as the centuries go by. Rather, within the first day of creation was the klal of the first thousand years of time. As the first thousand years from creation went on, that single first day was then “unpacked”, and expanded into the specific days that were contained within it. The second day of creation held within itself the second thousand years of time, and so on. As time passes, the world unfolds in more detail, and our lives take place in the expansion of earlier moments of time into thousands of specific days. We are currently living in the prat of the last few minutes of the sixth day of creation, as we are only a few hundred years from the year 6000, after which it will be “Shabbos.”
In the world of Kabbalah, a circle represents klal. The best shape to represent a sense of expansiveness and openness, broadness, inclusiveness, and infinity, would be a circle. A circle can portray a day packed with a thousand years. The opposite of this expansiveness is the constriction of the future, which would be represented by a straight line, which has a clear beginning and end. As we progress through time, we move from a circle to a line. A circle-like moment is when you feel infinite. Spirituality is circle-like, and to be spiritual is to be infinite and everywhere. The more physical you are, the more you are constricted and contained.
This is the essence of yeridas hadoros, the spiritual decline of the generations. As time passes, we go farther from the infinite circle, into the narrowness of the progression of time, and so we relate more to the “line.” We experience that as a ‘bad’ thing, which brings us a sense of spiritual decline as the generations go on. Our neshamos may tend to resist this passage of time by subconsciously resisting “moving on in life,” or by wondering why we have to live in an era of such impurity and temptation, with so many obstacles to serving Hashem?!
So what’s the solution?
The Zohar says about the month of Av “tuvei ganuz b’gavei – something good is hidden within it.” The goodness which emanated from the creation of the world, the Infinite Light of Hashem, is hidden here. Where is it hidden? In the last moment of the very last “line!” Although it looks like time is descending into more constriction, and it appears as though we are headed to the abyss as the generations seem to get less and less spiritual, Tu B’Av teaches us what to expect when we reach the end of the line: the original circle! When Moshaich comes, the world will be full of light and knowledge of Hashem, and we will experience life as an infinite circle, just as it was at the beginning of creation.
he ‘circle’ message of Tu B’Av is that we came from a circle, we are heading to a circle, and we live in a circle, even though it may feel like a line. The Jewish girls who danced in a circle were teaching the young men – don’t be afraid of getting married and progressing further into the future. The circular samach teaches us to embrace the era we live in: we aren’t headed to the end of the line and into the abyss, we are moving forward to the circle of geula. We are heading to the era of dancing around Hashem in a circle.
The goodness hidden within the month of Av is the knowledge that our service of Hashem, which may seem limited and constricted, is really circular and infinite! Tu B’av comforts us by teaching us that we are almost home.
This article was found in Nekuda Tova Issue 2.
