Today is Tu B'Av, an obscure Jewish holiday associated with love and romance. It's become popular in recent years to mark this day by holding singles events, as you might have noticed by looking at our Events section. But there's also something inspiring about taking a moment to celebrate amour in the middle of the season bookended on one end by Tisha B'Av (a fast mourning great losses in Jewish history) and on the other by the High Holidays, deeply serious days focused on reflection and repentence.

Amy Meltzer, who writes the Jewish parenting blog Homeshuling over at Beliefnet, had a great proposal for marking this day on the web.  She invited Jewish bloggers to share their favorite Jewish love songs in recognition of Tu B'Av.  As she put it: "What's your favorite Jewish love song? And by Jewish, I mean whatever that means to you. In my case, it's a song written by a Jewish songwriter."

With that in mind, I'm sharing two songs with you.  The first, a more traditional Israeli love song, Erev Shel Shoshanim (Evening of Roses). The lyrics and music beautifully blend to create the sense of a night filled with the scents of spices and flowers, the sound of music and a pervasive romantic mood.

The second, a more recent song, The Origin of Love from the musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch, with music and lyrics by Stephen Trask . While the song is based on a Greek conception of love straight out of Plato's Symposium, the yearning sense of being an outsider comes at least in part from Trask's Jewish identity.

Do you have a favorite Jewish love song?  Post about it in the comments!