Love is in the air, the hot, muggy air. This year, the August heat, the full moon, and the Perseids meteor shower will coincide to create love \u2013 or something close to it \u2013 on Tu B’Av eve.<\/p>\n
Tu B’Av – for those unfamiliar with this minor Jewish holiday with clearly pagan roots – falls on the eve of the 15th<\/sup> of the Hebrew month of Av, when the moon is full. During the Second Temple period, the date marked the beginning of the grape harvest. According to tradition, on that date, unmarried young women would go dance in the vineyards, dressed in white, to eventually be joined by the young men – hopefully in the bonds of matrimony.<\/p>\n The early kibbutz movement revived Tu B’Av as a day for celebrating the grape harvest, and a day for weddings. The modern State of Israel brought Tu B’Av back to what it probably always was \u2013 a good excuse to party all midsummer night long. However, given its history, Tu B’Av deserves a proper romantic playlist featuring 10 favorites. And where better to start if not with the Songs of Songs?<\/p>\n Search the National Library of Israel’s music collection using the category “love songs”<\/a> and you’ll get a long and detailed list of sub-categories, like “suffering” and “unrequited” (the most common of this genre in any language, place, or time), but there are also “courtship”, “dreams”, “hope” \u2013 and the “fifteenth of Av”.<\/p>\n Most prominent under the sub-category “fifteenth of Av”<\/a> is a recording of Kol Dodi <\/em>(“The voice of my beloved”), as performed by its composer, Israel Prize laureate Sara Levi-Tanai<\/a>, choreographer and founder of the Inbal Dance Theater. The Library’s recording<\/a> is from the 1950s but the most famous version by far of this love song, which takes its lyrics from the Song of Songs, was performed by Shoshana Damari<\/a>, whose archive is housed at the National Library of Israel.<\/p>\n1.<\/h2>\n