Readers of The New York Times’ international edition awoke the morning of May 10, 2001 to read a story that — even in this era of widespread violence — was especially chilling.
Two Israeli schoolboys, Koby Mandell and Yosef Ish-Ran, who had cut school to go hiking, were found dead in a cave. They were brutally murdered by Palestinian terrorists; “battered to death with rocks,” according to a police spokesman.
“Their heads were crushed,” the Times reported.
“The Blessings of a Broken Heart” is Sherri Mandell’s book about her murdered son, Koby. It is an emotional and heart-touching book, but not a literary performance.
It is a prayer, a hymn, an entreaty, a eulogy and finally, a hope.
The loss Mandell, her husband and three remaining children experienced cannot be measured or calibrated. Mandell’s full-throated song of mourning and agony over Koby’s murder connects her pain to those who have also lost loved ones to terrorism in Israel, or on Sept. 11, 2001 in the United States, or elsewhere. Mandell’s insistence that life, even in death, has meaning, affirms traditional Jewish faith in the sanctity of all life and the linkages between the living and the dead. She makes Koby live again for the reader and for his family and friends.
There is a difference between religious literature attempting to understand suffering and a confessional literature that exploits suffering.
Mandell did not seek suffering, though she was a seeker. In her youth, as she describes herself, she was Jewish only in an ethnic sense. She had not enough knowledge, even of Chanukah, to tell the story of the Maccabees to her non-Jewish friends. Like many other modern Jewish women of her generation, she was bright, talented, an international traveler and had non-Jewish boyfriends. She was successful as a published writer, but her life was incomplete, she writes, until she found in Israel, in her late 20s, Judaism, Jewish identity and love.
Though this is a mystical book, it is based upon concrete realities for Mandell: her marriage to a man she loves and trusts, the practice of traditional Judaism, the founding of a family and the centrality of Koby, her oldest child.
Koby was both Israeli and American. He loved Israel and learned to speak Hebrew fluently, yet his heroes were Cal Ripken and Michael Jordan. He and his family celebrated Chanukah, as well as Thanksgiving. He was an excellent athlete who went out of his way to coach players below his ability level. He was an avid reader and talented writer, a big brother to three younger siblings. He was a sweet and good-hearted 13-year-old whose life was brutally extinguished.
Sadly, Mandell reports that not one Palestinian expressed to her family, publicly or privately, grief or sorrow over the boys’ murder.
Immersed in pain over Koby’s death, Mandell was comforted by a caring community. Her immediate friends, and the Israeli community as a whole, came together to help the family.
Every loss is precious and immeasurable, and Mandell’s friends, some of whom had also lost loved ones to terror attacks, did not minimize her grief. No one spoke politically correct clichés about death and loss, but instead stood by Mandell all day and every day.
The family, in response and in memory of Koby and Yosef, has established “Camp Koby” — where supportive, healing retreats are offered for women, family and young adults who have lost loved ones to terrorism. One honors the dead by not grieving alone. One honors God by reaching out to others.
In summarizing her long journey from darkness toward light, Mandell writes: “It is when our hearts are broken that God sculpts our souls, prodding open the narrow entrances of our being. Whatever God takes from you, he has to give something back. God has given me the blessing of a broken heart…. We sense our love for each other, for Koby, for God. It is from this place we most vibrantly sing….”
“The Blessing of a Broken Heart,” by Sherri Mandell (233 pages, Toby Press, $19.95).