Finding Your Bashert

 

When is your bashert selected for you?  According to the Babylonian Talmud (Tractate Sotah 2a), forty days before a Jewish child is born, G-d chooses that child’s future spouse.  This person is called a bashert.  A bashert is one’s soul mate.  In the Jewish tradition, if you have not yet been united with your bashert, you have a very auspicious day to look for that person.  That day is Tu B’Av.

 

Tu B’Av, the fifteenth day of the month of Av, was the holiday of the grape harvest during the times of the Temple in Jerusalem (957 BCE — 70 CE).  On this day, marking the beginning of the grape harvest, there was a grape festival called Hag Hakeramim, the holiday of the vineyards.  Unmarried young women would wear white dresses and dance in the vineyards, hoping to attract a husband (Babylonian Talmud, tractate Ta’anit 30b-31a).  This holiday has been revived in modern Israel as Hag HaAhava, the holiday of love.