Tu B'Av (Hebrew: the fifteenth of the month Av) is a minor Jewish holiday. In modern-day Israel, it is celebrated as a holiday of love (Hebrew: Hag HaAhava), similar to Valentine's Day. It has been said to be a "great day for weddings".
Tu B'Av begins at sundown on Thu, 18 August
2016.
Outside of Israel, Tu b'Av, the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Av, is the most minor of holidays. In Israel, almost everyone has heard of the holiday of Tu B'Av because it has been warmly embraced by the secular public as a kind of Valentine's Day since the holiday is also known as "the Day of
Love."
What is this holiday of Tu B'Av? A clear reference to the day is found in the Mishna, written almost 2,000 years ago. The Mishna speaks of Tu B'Av as a festive day upon which the "daughters of Jerusalem" would go out into the vineyards with white clothes that they had borrowed
(so that no could tell who was rich or poor), and the girls would sing: "Boys, choose carefully. Don't look at appearances, but look at our families, for it is written, 'Grace is deceptive, Beauty is illusory. It is for her fear of the Lord that a woman is to be praised.'"
Here, therefore, is an original source for Tu B'Av as a Jewish "Day of Love."
Historical significance
There
is no way to know exactly how early Tu B'Av began.
The fifteenth day of Ab was a popular holiday during the second Temple. The holiday celebrated the wood-offering brought in the Temple.
The first mention of this date is in the Mishnah (compiled and edited in the end of the second century), where Rabban Shimon ben
Gamliel is quoted saying, "There were no better (i.e. happier) days for the people of Israel than the Fifteenth of Av and Yom Kippur, since on these days the daughters of Israel/Jerusalem go out dressed in white and dance in the vineyards. What were they saying: Young man, consider whom you choose (to be your wife)..."( Taanit, Chapter 4).
Unmarried girls would dress in simple white clothing (so that rich
could not be distinguished from poor) and go out to sing and dance in the vineyards surrounding Jerusalem. The Talmud states that there were no holy days as happy for the Jews as Tu B'Av and Yom Kippur.
According to the Mishna, Tu B'Av was a joyous holiday in the days of the Temple in Jerusalem, marking the beginning of the grape harvest. Yom Kippur marked the end of the grape harvest. On both dates, the unmarried girls of Jerusalem dressed in white garments, which they borrowed, and went out to dance in the vineyards (Babylonian Talmud, tractate Ta'anit 30b-31a). That same section in the Talmud states that there were no holy days as happy for the Jews as Tu B'Av and Yom Kippur. The holiday celebrated the wood-offering
brought in the Temple (see Nehemiah 10:35). Josephus refers to it as the Feast of Xylophory ("Wood-bearing").
Various reasons for celebrating on Tu B'Av are cited by the Talmud and Talmudic commentators:
While the Jews wandered in the desert for forty years, female orphans without brothers could only marry within their
tribe, to prevent their father's inherited land in the Land of Israel from passing on to other tribes. On the fifteenth of Av of the fortieth year, this ban was lifted. (See Daughters of Zelophehad.)
That same year, the last of the generation of the sin of the spies, which had been forbidden to enter the Promised Land, found that they were not destined to die. For forty years, every
Tisha B'av night, the Jews made graves for themselves in which they slept on Tisha B'Av; every year a proportion of them died. In the 40th year, the fifteen thousand who had remained from the first generation went to sleep in the graves and woke up the next day to their surprise. Thinking they made a mistake with the date, they did this until they reached Tu B'Av. Only then did they know they were allowed to live.
The Tribe of Benjamin was allowed to intermarry with the other tribes after the incident of the Concubine of Gibeah (see Judges chapters 19-21).
Cutting of the wood for the main altar in the Temple was completed for the year.
The nights, traditionally the ideal
time for Torah study, are lengthened again after the summer solstice, permitting more study.
The Roman occupiers permitted burial of the victims of the massacre at Bethar during the Bar Kochba rebellion. Miraculously, the bodies had not decomposed, despite exposure to the elements for over a year.
Tu B'Av is both an ancient and modern
holiday.
Originally a post-biblical day of joy, it served as a matchmaking day for unmarried women in the second Temple period (before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 C.E). Tu B'Av was almost unnoticed in the Jewish calendar for many centuries but it has been rejuvenated in recent decades, especially in the modern state of Israel.
It is gradually becoming a Hebrew-Jewish Day of Love, slightly resembling Valentine's Day .
It should be noted that Tu B'Av, like several Jewish holidays (Passover, Sukkot, Tu Bishvat) begins on the night between the 14th and 15th day of the Hebrew month, since this is the night of a full moon in
our lunar calendar.
Linking the night of a full moon with romance, love, and fertility is not uncommon in ancient cultures.
For almost 19 centuries--between the destruction of Jerusalem and the re-establishment of Jewish independence in the state of Israel in 1948--the only commemoration of Tu B'Av was that the morning prayer service did not include the penitence prayer (Tahanun).
In recent decades Israeli civil culture promotes festivals of singing and dancing on the night
of Tu B'Av. The entertainment and beauty industries work overtime on this date. It has no formal legal status as a holiday-- it is a regular workday--nor has the Israeli rabbinate initiated any addition to the liturgy or called for the introduction of any ancient religious practices.
The cultural gap between Israeli secular society and the Orthodox rabbinate makes it unlikely that these two will find a common denominator in the celebration of this ancient/modern holiday in the foreseeable
future. The way that modern Israel celebrates this holiday, however, is a littledifferent from the way it was celebrated in the days of old.
On Tu B'Av in Israel, restaurants as well as music, dance, and theater festivals all try to capitalize on this romantic holiday by promoting events for lovers.
We've gathered a massive list of quotes for jewelry engraving. You can use them on the rings, on the bracelets or on pendants. Some are short, some are long, but they're all from the heart (even if a few are a bit silly). Below, you'll find a comprehensive list of engraveable phrases and quotes. You can choose directly from the list, change them to suit your needs and personality or
simply use them as inspiration to come up with your own unique engraving. With engraving, the possibilities are endless.
As the Tu be Av is here we start with the Love quotes and engraving ideas.
On the next Newsletter we will
continue with friendshio quotes, Quotes for Mom and Dad, Quotes for Success and much more...
Jewelry Engraving by Category: Love
While Love Engravings are traditionally set aside for engagements, weddings and anniversaries, engraved jewelry is perfect for any occasion or no occasion at all. Engraving gives you a way to impart some of your personality on a beautiful jewel. And an engraving will make sure
that he or she never forgets that moment. Engraving from the heart will make any gifting opportunity memorable.
Short Love Engravings - one or two words These short little phrases are great for rings or small pendants. You don't need a lot of
text to get your message across. These engraving ideas are short, sweet and to the point.
These quotes are better for getting out a bit more our of your message. Either way, these engravings are perfect for almost all types of jewelry - just consult us
These quotes are the longest, so choose your surfaces wisely. Most of these would be difficult to fit onto a ring or even a locket - so they're best reserved for bracelets or keepsake items. Even though they're a bit more difficult to place, the fact that they say so much gives on the incentive to find that perfect engraveable object just to use them.
Filigree (formerly written filigrann or filigrane) is a jewel work of a delicate kind made with twisted threads usually of gold and silver or stitching of the same curvy motif.
It oftens suggests lace, and is most popular in French fashion decoration from 1660 to the present.
Filigree involves threads being soldered together to form an object and ajoure involves holes being
punched, drilled, or cut through an existing piece of metal.
The word, which is usually derived from the Latin filum, thread, and granum, grain, is not found in Ducange, and is indeed of modern origin.
According to Prof. Skeat it is derived from the Spanish filigrana, from "filar", to spin, and grano, the grain or principal fibre of the material.
Though filigree has become a special branch of jewel work in modern times, it was anciently part of the ordinary work of the
jeweler.
Ancient work
The Egyptian jewelers employed wire, both to lay down on a background and to plait or otherwise arrange d jour. But, with the exception of chains, it cannot be said that filigree work was much practiced by them.
Their strength lay ra ther in their cloisonné work and their molded ornaments.
In ornaments derived from Phoenician sites, such as Cyprus and Sardinia, patterns
of gold wire are laid down with great delicacy on a gold ground, but the art was advanced to its highest perfection in the Greek and Etruscan filigree of the 6th to the 3rd centuries BC.
A number of earrings and other personal ornaments found in central Italy are preserved in the Louvre and in the British Museum.
Almost all of them are made of filigree work. Some earrings are in the form of flowers of geometric design, bordered by one or more rims each made up of minute volutes of
gold wire, and this kind of ornament is varied by slight differences in the way of disposing the number or arrangement of the volutes.
But the feathers and petals of modern Italian filigree are not seen in these ancient designs. Instances occur, but only rarely, in which filigree devices in wire are self-supporting and not applied to metal plates.
It is probable that in India and various parts of central Asia filigree has been worked from the most remote period without any change
in the designs.
Whether the Asiatic jewellers were influenced by the Greeks who settled on that continent, or merely trained under traditions held in common with them, it is certain that the Indian filigree workers retain the same patterns as those of the ancient Greeks and work them in the same way, down to the present day.
Wandering workmen are given so much gold, coined or rough, which is weighed, heated in a pan of charcoal, beaten into wire, and then worked in the courtyard or
verandah of the employer's house according to the designs of the artist, who weighs the complete work on restoring it and is paid at a specified rate for his labour.
Very fine grains or beads and spines of gold, scarcely thicker than coarse hair, projecting from plates of gold are methods of ornamentation still used.
Calcutta is a famous place for filigri work, traditionally known as Calcutti Work. Cuttack in the eastern India state of Orissa, is also famous for its filigree work.
Due to lack of patronage and modern design ideas this is a dying art. Most filigree work revolve around images of Gods and Goddesses.
Medieval Europe
Passing to later times we may notice in many collections of medieval jewel work (such as that in the Victoria and Albert Museum) reliquaries, covers for the gospels, etc., made either in Constantinople from the 6th to the 12th centuries, or in monasteries in
Europe, in which Byzantine goldsmiths' work was studied and imitated.
These objects, besides being enriched with precious stones, polished, but not cut into facets, and with enamel, are often decorated with filigree. Large surfaces of gold are sometimes covered with scrolls of filigree soldered on; and corner pieces of the borders of book covers, or the panels of reliquaries, are frequently made up of complicated pieces of plaited work alternating with spaces encrusted with
enamel.
Byzantine filigree work occasionally has small stones set amongst the curves or knots.
Examples of such decoration can be seen in the Victoria and Albert, and British Museums.
In the north of Europe the Saxons, Britons and Celts were from an early period skillful in several kinds of goldsmiths' work.
Admirable examples of filigree patterns laid down in wire on gold, from Anglo-Saxon tombs, may be seen in the British Museum notably a brooch from Dover, and a
sword-hilt from Cumberland. The Staffordshire Hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver (estimated 700 CE) discovered in a field in Staffordshire, England, on 5 July 2009 contains numerous examples of very fine filigree described by Archaeologist Dr Kevin Leahy as "incredible".
Much of the medieval jewel work all over Europe down to the 15th century, on reliquaries, crosses, croziers and other ecclesiastical goldsmiths' work, is set off with bosses and borders of filigree.
Filigree work
in silver was practised by the Moors of Spain during the Middle Ages with great skill, and was introduced by them and established all over the Peninsula, whence it was carried to the Spanish colonies in America. The Spanish filigree work of the 17th and 18th centuries is of extraordinary complexity , and silver filigree jewelry of delicate and artistic design is still made in considerable quantities throughout the country.
The manufacture spread over the Balearic Islands, and among the
populations that border the Mediterranean. It is still made all over Italy, and in Portugal, Malta, Macedonia, Albania, the Ionian Islands and many other parts of Greece. That of the Greeks is sometimes on a large scale, with several thicknesses of wires alternating with larger and smaller bosses and beads, sometimes set with turquoises, etc, and mounted on convex plates, making rich ornamental headpieces, belts and breast ornaments. Silver filigree brooches and buttons are also made in Denmark,
Norway and Sweden. Little chains and pendants are added to much of this northern work.
Uses
The art may be said to consist in curling, twisting and plaiting fine pliable threads of metal, and uniting them at their points of contact with each other, and with the ground, by means of gold or silver solder and borax, by the help of the blowpipe. Small grains or beads of the same metals are often set in the
eyes of volutes, on the junctions, or at intervals at which they will set off the wire-work effectively.
The more delicate work is generally protected by framework of stouter wire.
Brooches, crosses, earrings and other personal ornaments of modern filigree are generally surrounded and subdivided by bands of square or flat metal, giving consistency to the filling up, which would not otherwise keep its proper shape.
