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.)
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
