Life

Come On Baby Knish Me, It’s Tu B’Av

By Dan Friedman July 31, 2009

August 5 is the Jewish day of love. Kinda. Sorta.

Even Edmon Rodman (who wrote this piece for us last month), while explaining it for JTA, doesn’t quite believe it. Moving on from one of the more memorable leads in Tu B’Av history — “When the moon hits your eye like a knish in the sky, that’s Tu B’Av.” — he calls the historical festival a “kind of an ancient Jewish Sadie Hawkins Day.”

In an endearingly old-fashioned move, Rodman goes on to call for a Jewish couples Hall of Fame and asks for more nominees. Clearly he hasn’t heard that the new word for “love” is “sexuality” which is exactly what is revealed by our two Tu B’Av pieces in the new Forward online now.

Superman knew only chaste love? Not according to his co-creator Joe Shuster, as Paul Buhle points out. But, while exploring his own sexuality and his Krypto-Jewish identity at the same time, Clark Kent should be reading the new book about Torah and sexuality edited by Danya Ruttenberg but reviewed by Rachel Barenblat.

To go back to Rodman though, he claims that in Temple times “Jewish maidens would put on white garments and go out into the fields in search of husbands.” Obviously in our age of gender equality, men too should head for the fields dressed in white to search for wives — or husbands. Sounds like a party — if I weren’t married I’d go get a nice new white outfit, myself. (But careful not to spill any knish on it.)

Dan Friedman is the former executive editor and whisky correspondent of the Forward, and is the author of a book about Tears for Fears, the ’80s emo rock band.

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