Sherri Mandell
(Dates Unknown)
As a Long Island high school student, Sherri Lederman was a hybrid: a boy-crazy cheerleader and a member of the National Honor Society who edited the yearbook.
That combination of fun-loving and brainy followed her through four years at Cornell, a stint herding cattle on an Oregon ranch and another living with gypsies in Spain, and eventually to Israel.
Then on May 9, 2001, Sherri and her husband, Rabbi Seth Mandell, learned that their oldest son, 13-year-old Koby, and his friend Yosef Ish-Ran had been bludgeoned to death by terrorists near their village of Tekoa. "It hit me like a tidal wave," she says. "The pain and horror are unimaginable."
When the Mandells asked a rabbi who came to the shiva what they were going to do with all the suffering, he said, "You have to use it to grow." Another rabbi said that when a person dies young, all the good he would have done in the world will now go undone.
The Mandells put those two wisdoms together and used their tragedy to help others. They created the Koby Mandell Foundation (www.kobymandell.org), which sends kids affected by terror to summer and holiday camps, holds healing retreats, and creates support networks for mothers and other family members of children killed in terror attacks.
"When you’re touched by death in such a profound way, it gives you greater access to life," she says. "That’s what I want to help people open up to."
Mandell believes that God has given her incredible gifts since her son was taken. Her family experienced overwhelming kindness from people. She was lucky to have the support of friends who are professional grief counselors (they now help others through the Foundation). Her faith has been strengthened. But mostly, she feels blessed to be able to help others.
Transforming grief into action is not easy, and it doesn’t make the pain disappear. "Seth and I say we’re like model prisoners," she says. "We’ve done so much with this grief, but we’re still imprisoned by it. Every moment is work."
A poet and author, Mandell says that writing daily also helped her get through that first terrible year. "I would just write and cry and write and cry. It was my therapy and my way to connect with Koby." The result of that writing is The Blessing of a Broken Heart, which will be published by Toby Press in September.
Whereas her Judaism had been intellectual, now it comes from the heart. "It’s the water I swim in. It’s necessary, urgent." She spends time studying Jewish texts. "When you learn, you encounter your soul. And I needed to know about the soul because that’s how I connect with Koby now."
The lightheartedness and joie de vivre so evident in Mandell before her son was murdered are tempered, but she can laugh again, and she danced at her daughter’s bat mitzvah. Her smile comes easily now, but it has an added dimension.
When Mandell was in eighth grade, she wrote a sonnet whose last two lines read: "So let man strive for that triumphant day When peace and justice lead the way."
Out of unspeakable tragedy, Mandell is leading the way toward healing and inner peace for people who have suffered unimaginable loss from the terror that is shaking our world. She is realizing her own prophecy.
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