Av אב

"When Av enters, joy is diminished": through nine days the mourning deepens to its floor on Tisha beAv, when Lamentations is read by candlelight, sitting on the ground. Communities call the month "Menachem Av"—"Av the consoler": after the Sabbath of consolation comes the fifteenth of Av, when, says the Mishnah, the girls of Jerusalem went out to dance in the vineyards in borrowed white garments—"and Israel had no days more joyful".

The month names now in use are Babylonian: "the names of the months came up with us from Babylon", says the Jerusalem Talmud. In the Torah months are counted—"the first", "the seventh"—from Nisan, the month of the Exodus.