ByTZVI JOFFRE

Some 48,056 couples were married through religious bodies in Israel in 2019, according to data released by the Central Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday ahead of Tu Be'av, the Jewish day of love.

Of those married in Israel in 2019, about 69% were Jewish.

Some 9,550 marriages done outside the country were reported to the population registry, with only-one third of the marriages having taken place in 2019. In 59% of these marriages, only one of the spouses was listed in the population registry at the time of the marriage. In 2,189 of these marriages, both spouses were not Jewish.

Some 40% of the couples who got married outside of Israel were married in Cyprus, while 25% were married in the US.Some Israeli couples choose to get married outside of Israel due to laws in Israel requiring marriages to be conducted through religious authorities, such as the Chief Rabbinate or sharia courts. Marriages outside of this framework can be conducted in other countries and then recognized afterwards by the Interior Ministry. LGBT couples and couples disqualified for other reasons, such as unrecognized conversions, are prevented from marrying within Israel and can only get married outside the state.

Since 2019, the marriage rate compared to the non-married population has decreased. Among Jews, the percentage of single males between the ages of 45 to 49 rose from 3% in 1970 to 13% in 2019. The percentage of single Jewish women in that same age range rose from 2% to 11%.

Although the marriage rate has decreased, the rate of unmarried couples living together has increased, with the percentage Jews between the ages of 18 to 34 living together rising from 2% in 2000 to 6% in 2019.

The average age of marriage for men has risen in the past four decades, rising from 25 in 1970 to 27.3 in 2019. Among women, the average age was 24.9 in 2019. The change lead to the percentage of single Jewish men between the ages of 25 to 29 rising from 28% in 1970 to 63% in 2019. Among Jewish women in the same age range, the percentage rose from 13% to 48%.

Some 47.4% of the Jewish couple who got married for the first time in 2019 had a child together by the end of 2020, according to the CBS data.

Some 5.7% of brides in 2019 were under the age of 19. Among Muslims, 13.7% of brides were under the age of 19, while 4% of Druze brides, 2.8% of Jewish brides and 0.7% of Christian brides were the same. Just 1% of grooms in 2019 were under the age of 19.
Tu Be'Av is one of the most joyous days of the Hebrew calendar, with a number of positive events occurring in Jewish history, including the end of the punishment of the Jews in the desert after the sin of the spies and the approval of the Romans to bury the bodies of those killed in the Bar-Kochba revolt long after the revolt.
 
On Tu Be'Av, according to the Talmud, the women of Jerusalem would go out and dance in the vineyards, looking for a suitor. This practice gave the day its association as a sort of Jewish day of love.