Why St Valentine’s Day is more Jewish than you’d think

This weekend it’s Valentine’s Day, so please make sure you buy your partner decent roses, not some wilted spray carnations from the garage at the end of the road. Even though I have been married for nearly 35 years, I will be making a series of grand gestures, beginning with serenading my wife with a medley of show tunes over breakfast, declaiming sonnets over lunch, followed by a candlelit falafel in one of Hendon’s finest restaurants.

You see, to my mind, we Jews are spectacularly romantic as a consequence of our own fragility. Indeed, our idealisation of the perfect spiritual union has never been more important, given that we are confronted daily by a world finding new ways to hate us. Perhaps that is why we have always, as a people, preserved our sanity by clinging to the emotional irrationality of falling in love.

The concept of romance itself is decidedly un-Jewish in its origins. Derived from a twelfth-century French word, it refers to the narratives declaimed by travelling troubadours concerning chivalric knights pursuing the favour of unattainable maidens locked up in faraway castles. Let’s be honest: jousting is not a very haimische pastime.

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How ironic, therefore, that hundreds of years later crooners belted out the Great American Songbook. Arguably some of the greatest love songs of all time, the overwhelming majority were penned by the sons of immigrant Jews like Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin and the Gershwin brothers. In the sixties, the Brill Building was filled with Jewish composers asking existential questions like, ‘Will you still love me tomorrow?’ Indeed, the cultural expression of contemporary romance has unquestionably been moulded by a Jewish sensibility. Hollywood was built by Jews desperately trying to assimilate into American life by creating wholesome, gentle, and gentile love stories. The great romcoms of the last thirty years have been created by a disproportionate cohort of Jewish writers.

Jewish scripture is filled with some of the greatest love stories ever written, from Adam and Eve to Ruth and Boaz. Look at Jacob’s pursuit of romantic happiness. Falling in love with Rachel until his wicked uncle tricks him, he marries the wrong sister, Leah, waits seven years, and finally marries his true love. Just imagine material like that in the hands of Nora Ephron. On Purim, we read the story of Esther, which is basically a dramatic and violent love story that does not mention God once. A few weeks later, at Pesach, we try to make sense of the enigmatic Song of Songs, decoding the analogy of our love for Hashem with the sensual and idealised romance between man and woman described by King Solomon.

The Talmud, however, does not define love as an ephemeral feeling, but as a duty. The rabbis outline a husband’s obligations to his wife: food, clothing, and physical intimacy. Sex is not optional but an intrinsic component of a relationship, with a clear set of responsibilities. ‘One who withholds intimacy is considered as causing suffering,’ we are told in Ketubot — and you may want to keep this edict up your sleeve for whenever it might come in handy.

At its core, Judaism is a religion that romanticises the quest to bring two people together. We celebrate the concept of beshert, our destiny to find a soulmate. The Talmud tells us that since the work of Creation was finished, God has been engaged in matchmaking, and that “it is as difficult to match a couple together as was the splitting of the Red Sea”.

The sanctity of relationships, and the guidance on how they should be nurtured, is a beautiful bedrock on which to build happiness in a world of turmoil. But it acts only as a partial explanation of the Jewish romantic sensibility. It is perhaps appropriate, therefore, to return to Valentine’s Day, which has its roots not in an entrepreneurial greetings-card tycoon spotting a gap in the market, but in Saint Valentine, a third-century Roman martyr. Some traditions claim he secretly married couples against imperial orders; others that he was executed for defying the emperor. In other words, romance was born out of suffering, and the world champions of unhappiness are surely the Jews.

Our recent history, fraught with unbearable persecution, has required us to celebrate the illogical optimism of falling in love. We are romantic because, quite frankly, a dancing cheek-to-cheek is much more fun than trying to escape people trying to cause physical harm. At some point in the mid-nineteenth century, according to the academic Naomi Seidman, ‘Jews fell in love with love’. Enlightenment thinking and literature began a process of more autonomous behaviour and personal choice. Think of a beautiful Chagall painting where the couple float serenely above the everyday challenges of shtetl life.

So, this Valentine’s Day, I suggest you celebrate the wonders and irrationality of relationships and the infinite possibilities they provide for happiness and joy. Don’t bother with an overpriced meal. Cuddle up to someone you love and watch a film. We Jews may be rubbish at competitive sport, but we know a thing or two about what makes a good romcom.

Adam Leigh’s third novel ‘The Pod Couple’ is out now