| Case | Ruling | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Which were the two happiest days for Israel? | Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel: The Fifteenth of Av and Yom Kippur — the daughters of Yerushalayim went out in borrowed white garments | So as not to shame those who had none |
| Did all the garments require tevilah? | Yes — borrowed and owned alike | — |
| What did the daughters say? | Three pitches — to beauty, to family, to maasim tovim | Mishlei 31:30 |
| What does the closing derashah teach? | ‘His wedding day’ = Matan Torah; ‘the day of his heart's joy’ = the building of the Beis HaMikdash | Shir HaShirim 3:11 |
Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel closes Maseches Taanis — a tractate of fast days, from drought to the Churban fasts of Shiva Asar B'Tammuz and Tisha B'Av — by turning to the two most joyous days of the year, sealing it with a tefillah for the rebuilding. There is an editorial hand in that. Rebbi (Rabi Yehuda HaNasi), who arranged the Mishnah, had a documented lean toward softening Tisha B'Av: Megillah 5b records that he bathed publicly on Shiva Asar B'Tammuz and bikesh la'akor Tisha B'Av — in a year it fell on Shabbos and was deferred, he held ho'il v'nidcheh yidacheh, once pushed off let it lapse — and the Sages did not agree. Ending the masechta of fasts on the year's happiest days fits that same hand.
The 15th of Av: the families' wood-offering drew to a close — the mishnah earlier in this perek (4:5) lists the 15th of Av as the last of the korban eitzim days, and each family's wood-day was a celebration; the shevatim were permitted to intermarry; and the deaths of the midbar generation ceased, the full moon of Av confirming the curse of the meraglim was lifted. (The Gemara, Taanis 30b–31a, gives further, distinct reasons — among them the day they stopped felling wood for the altar-pile, after which the sun weakens; Hoshea ben Elah lifting Yeravam's roadblocks against aliyah l'regel; the Beitar dead given burial.) Yom Kippur: the day Hashem forgives — the day the second luchos were given and the cheit ha'egel atoned. And it carries the Beis HaMikdash directly: the seven dedication days of the first Beis HaMikdash began on the 7th of Tishrei, so Yom Kippur fell within the dedication of the Mikdash itself (Moed Katan 9a) — the very day of the Mikdash's joy (Moed Katan 9a).
What pairs the two best days is not romance but the people's bond with the Beis HaMikdash. The clue is in what the girls wore: white is the garment of joyful confidence before Heaven — the Yerushalmi (Rosh Hashanah 1:3) has Israel, unlike the nations, don white on the day of judgment, sure of a favorable verdict — and it is the color of the Mikdash, the Kohein Gadol's Yom Kippur linen, his safe emergence from the Kodesh HaKodashim itself a Yom Tov. The mishnah then seals the point from its own text: its closing derashah on Tze'ena u're'ena reads uveyom simchas libo — zeh binyan beis hamikdash, the day of His heart's joy as the building of the Beis HaMikdash. It crowns its two days of joy by naming the Mikdash itself as the deepest simchas lev, closing on sheyibaneh bimheirah b'yameinu.
The mishnah notes that the white garments were borrowed — each woman wore clothes that were not her own, so a girl with nothing fine of her own would not stand out. The same concern shaped a takanah at the opposite pole of life. The Gemara (Moed Katan 27b; Kesubos 8b) recalls that burial had grown so costly that the expense weighed on a family harder than the loss itself, until Rabban Gamliel asked to be carried out in plain linen and the people followed him — so the poor would be buried no less honorably than the rich. Chazal leveled the dress at both ends of life, the day of greatest joy and the hour of death, so that dignity would never follow wealth.
The mishnah just before this one details the disciplines of the week in which Tisha B'Av falls. This closing mishnah answers it: six days after the ninth of Av comes Tu B'Av, and the masechta turns from the fast to the dancing in the vineyards. The series places them in sequence so the discipline of mourning is read toward the joy it points to.