Sometimes, during the course of a driver’s life, they will bond with a car. They will fall in love with the metal contraption on wheels. They will cherish its performance, its acceleration, its ability to handle curves at high speeds, its stability during inclement weather, its durability and reliability.
But then tragedy hits. There is a catastrophic accident. In some instances, the driver perishes with their car, but in other cases, the driver survives, while the car is destroyed and often beyond repair.
The grief and mourning are real, and not dissimilar to the mourning for a loved person.
One beloved car from popular culture was in the classic movie “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” which was actually inspired by a series of real race cars from the 1920s built by millionaire Louis Zborowski. The largest of the series, the Chitty IV, later renamed Babs, was driven by famous British racer, J.G. Parry-Thomas. In 1927, while attempting to break the World Land Speed Record at Pendine Sands in Wales, the car flipped out of control, destroying the beloved car and killing Parry-Thomas. The devasted crew buried the car right there in the sand dunes.
While on a completely different order of magnitude, though still on the theme of mourning and grief, the Temple of Jerusalem was burned down and destroyed around 2,000 years ago by the Roman empire. It was a tragedy of historic proportions that transformed the Jewish reality in ways that still reverberate and impact to this very day. It completely changed Jewish practice which was centralized around the Temple. We pray for its rebuilding three times a day. We mourn and fast on the anniversary of its destruction, on the fast of the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av (Tisha B’Av), which this year is commemorated from the night of Wednesday, July 22nd, until the following night.
We don’t eat, we don’t drink, we don’t wear leather shoes, we don’t bath, we don’t indulge in any festivities, celebrations or anything that will distract us from focusing for one day a year on what we have lost, what the loss represents, trying to grasp what is missing in our lives as Jews. To imagine that we have lost a central place where the presence of God was felt more keenly. To yearn for the day when it will be rebuilt, together with the ingathering of our exiles of the last two millennia (that part is well underway!!).
We read from the Book of Lamentations (Eichah) at night. We recite Kinot (mournful liturgical poems) during the day. We sit on the ground or on low seats until noon. It is such a painful day, that we are prohibited from even learning Torah – a source of joy. It is not unlike the practices of Shiva, of mourning for a close family relative.
But there is more. The 9th of Av is a dark, dark day. It is a focal day for tragedy and has been so for thousands of years. Not only was it the day of the destruction of the Temple 2,000 years ago (the Second Temple), but perhaps not coincidentally, the First Temple, the Temple of Solomon was likewise destroyed on that day by the Babylonians (around 2,500 years ago) and led to the 70-year Babylonian exile.
3,300 years ago, a few months after the Jewish people’s Exodus from the slavery of Egypt, as they were on the threshold of entering the Promised Land, the notorious spies gave an evil report about the land, leading to the despair of the people and the resulting punishment of wandering for 40 years in the desert until the generation of the Exodus died out and only their children would be the ones to inherit the land. The night of the despair and punishment was the 9th of Av.
After the destruction of the Second Temple and the Jewish revolt against the Romans, the final Jewish stronghold of Betar, with all its inhabitants, under the leadership of Bar Kochba, were destroyed. For good measure, the Romans plowed over Jerusalem and the Temple area. That was on the 9th of Av.
In the year 1290, King Edward I of England, issued the Edict of Expulsion, banishing all Jews from England.
In 1492, the Jews are expelled from Spain.
In 1914, Germany declares war on Russia, launching what we would later refer to as World War I.
In 1942, mass deportations of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the death camp of Treblinka start.
All of these events occur on the 9th of Av.
But even within the darkest day there is a spark of light. There is a tradition that Moshiach (the Messiah) will be born on the 9th of Av and that he will be responsible for the rebuilding of the Third Temple and an era of peace.
As a postscript, in 1969, an engineer named Owen Wyn Thomas got permission to dig up the wreck of the Babs, the Chitty IV. He found a heavily rusted, crushed mess of metal. Over the course of 15 years, he lovingly rebuilt the frame and was able to find or fabricate period-correct parts. Today, Babs is completely operational and driven at historic events. Most recently, it was driven by Owen’s son, Geraint Owen, on April 27th, 2026, the 100th anniversary of J.G. Parry-Thomas breaking the land speed record and on the very beach where Babs had died and from where it was rebuilt.
