Do Jews celebrate Valentine's Day?

There is nothing about the contemporary traditions of Valentine’s Day — cards, flowers, chocolate –that seems overtly religious. But the holiday’s full name of St. Valentine’s Day certainly implies that it has Christian roots.

Thus, the question of whether it’s appropriate for Jews to celebrate Valentine’s Day is reasonable. The answer would seemingly be tied to the true origins of the holiday and the history of the saint for whom it’s named.

 Rama (Rabbi Moshe Isserles, Poland, 1520-1572) ruled that there are four criteria that must be met in order to permit Jewish celebration of rituals initiated by Gentiles (Rama Y.D. 178:1 as interpreted by Rabbi Michael Broyde).

1. Does the debated activity have a secular origin or value?

2. Can one rationally explain the behavior or ritual apart from the gentile holiday or event?

3. If there are idolatrous origins, have they disappeared?

4. Are the activities actually consistent with Jewish tradition?

1. Sending cards and chocolates and giving gifts can be explained as rational expressions of love and appreciation independent of possible Christian roots. 

2. The Christian roots have been questioned by scholars, as well as the Catholic church.

3. Academic research has proven that Valentine’s Day is not derived from the pagan holiday Lupercalia. 

4. Finally, the desire to express love and to offer gifts as a symbol of those feeling is certainly in line with Jewish tradition and values. The idea of a special day set aside to encourage coupledom is also well rooted in the Jewish tradition: Tu B’Av, the 15th day of the Jewish month of Av, was an ancient day of matchmaking that has experienced something of a revival in modern times.

There's is a darker reason why Jews might not wish to celebrate Valentine's Day.

The year was 1349 and the Bubonic Plague, known as the Black Death, was sweeping across Europe, wiping out whole communities.  The terrified people cast about for someone to blame. Jews were a natural choice. As the Black Death advanced, Christians turned on the Jews in their midst, accusing them of spreading the Plague by poisoning Christian people’s wells. In 1349 in Strausburg, a mob planned to kill the Jews as retribution. Any Jew who was willing to convert to Christianity would be spared, they were told. As the terrified Jews awaited their fate, the city’s new governors were building a huge wooden platform that could hold thousands of people inside the Jewish cemetery. the morning of Valentine’s Day, a large crowd assembled to watch. A local priest named Jakob Twinger von Konigshofen recorded the grisly massacre: “they burnt the Jews on a wooden platform in their cemetery,” he wrote. “There were about two thousand of them.” Some young children were yanked away from their parents’ arms, and saved so that they could be baptized and raised as Christians. For most Jews, however, no such aid arrived. As the enormous wooden structure went up in flames, around 2,000 thousand Jews were slowly burned alive.