Joy Comes in the Morning
An interview with Sherri Mandell
By Penina Taylor
No parent should ever have to bury their 13-year-old child. Such a tragedy is enough to fell even the strongest of us. But when a grieving parent takes all of the anger and sadness and channels it into doing good for others, that’s the ultimate expression of what it means to be human.
Meet Sherri Mandell. Mother of four, author of more than 10 books, teacher, public speaker and founder of the Koby Mandell Foundation.
Her story begins similarly to that of many ba’alei teshuvah – growing up in New York in a culturally connected but religiously devoid Jewish family as part of the post-Holocaust generation that associated Judaism with suffering, and not much else. On a visit to Israel she discovered a side of Judaism she had never known, stayed to learn and met the man she would end up marrying. But that is where the similarities end.
Coming to Israel wasn’t something she had ever planned on doing. It wasn’t until she went to pursue her master’s degree in creative writing that things changed. She was teaching freshman composition, and she recalls that they were reading a story that mentioned Chanukah. She knew she was the only Jewish person in the room, and she was the instructor, but she found herself unable to explain what Chanukah was to the class.
So, when she finished her post-graduate work and was preparing to do some traveling, she made a point to spend some time in Israel visiting a friend who lived there. Once she came to Israel, she realized that Jewish life here was very different from the Jewish life she had experienced in the US. She joined a program called Livnot, and while in that program she started studying Judaism, and learning about Shabbat.
In spite of the difficulties that can arise from differences in culture, Sherri found something in Israel that was deep and significant – and that she wanted. So she stayed and married. Seth and Sherri initially lived in Israel for five years, during which time her first two sons were born. Then the family went back to the US where they got jobs. But a few years later they came back on sabbatical and they’ve been here ever since (26 years).
A couple of years after returning to Israel they moved to a brand new community (at that time) which gave them the opportunity to be pioneers and experience being a part of building Israel. At the time Tekoa was very small – about 200 families – both religious and non-religious. But, Sherri mentions, the religious people in the community were very spiritual and that appealed to them. The people of the community embraced them and they felt needed.
Sherri was a little concerned about the security situation in the community as it is in a remote area that is surrounded by Arab villages that are not necessarily friendly. But all the other aspects of the community caused Sherri to put those concerns aside.
In 2001, the family had been living in Tekoa for a few years and their oldest son, Yaakov (Koby) who was 13, decided to go hiking with his friend Yosef. Tekoa borders a beautiful wadi and a canyon that has many fascinating caves – some of which were built by monks in the 5th and 6th centuries. It’s an incredible place to explore, especially for two teenage boys. Unfortunately, Koby and Yosef were found bludgeoned to death with stones by terrorists. It was the beginning of the period of time in Israeli history known as the first intifada.
Sherri explains that after her son’s murder, she was plunged into a whole other world. She describes a time of despair and unceasing mourning. The world, that she had always felt was beautiful, was no longer beautiful to her. She says she became somebody else. And yet, even through that heavy veil of grief the Mandells knew that they needed to do something to honor the memory of their son.
After Koby’s death, the Mandells received a tremendous amount of support from their community. Friends gave them emotional support, made food for them, cleaned their house, and took care of the kids. As a result of all the support they got, they felt that they had a lot to give. But even though they felt so supported, they noticed that things were still very difficult for their children. Sherri explains that in situations like this, often the children don’t want to cause their parents any more pain or hurt. They become afraid to cry in front of their parents because they don’t want to add to their parents’ grief. It’s a very difficult thing for a child to bear – feeling that they need to take care of their parents.
Sherri and her husband decided that the perfect way to honor Koby’s memory was to create a place where children like theirs could come and share their stories without the pressure of the family dynamics – especially since some of them had lost one or both parents. So a year after Koby was murdered, in 2002 – at the height of the intifada – they started “Camp Koby”, the first project of the Koby Mandell foundation. The following year they had 600 kids at the camp – a sleepover camp, and it was all kids who had lost a parent or sibling to terror. They have been running this camp continuously since 2002.
Today the camp is not only for children who have lost a parent or sibling to terror or war, it’s for children who have lost a parent or sibling under any tragic circumstances. Thankfully, Israel has actually experienced fewer terror attacks in recent years than during the first and second intifadas – the second intifada officially ended in 2005. They expanded their demographic because they realized that the methods of healing utilized in the camp are effective for all children who are dealing with grief.
Now the foundation has created groups for adults as well – because although their experience is that the adults usually get a lot of help, the children often haven’t gotten help and these children grow up, never having processed their grief in a healthy way.
In order to be able to adequately serve the population, Sherri not only hired appropriate professionals such as therapists, but she personally got training as a pastoral counselor. Pastoral Counseling is a unique form of psychotherapy which uses spiritual resources as well as psychological understanding for healing and growth. Sherri describes it as someone who can be with a person who is suffering and help them find meaning in the pain. They find ways a person can find healing either through spiritual paths, creative paths or sometimes just talking. She says that a pastoral counselor is there to be present and to hold the pain with the person. It’s actually about being silent instead of giving advice.
The Koby Mandell foundation not only runs a summer camp, but they run programs throughout the year – whenever the kids have time off of school. They also have a big sister/big brother program, as well as “Comedy for Koby”.
Comedy for Koby is a comedy tour of Israel featuring some of America’s top stand-up comedians. Avi Lieberman, who was born in Israel but grew up in Texas and is himself a stand-up comedian, created the project which was originally called Stand Up for Israel. During the second intifada, he saw that the way that Israel was being portrayed in the media was very unjust. He wanted comedians to see the real Israel and be able to report back what they had experienced. So he started bringing three American comedians to Israel at a time to tour the country, putting on shows and fundraising. Eventually he contacted the Mandells and theirs became the charity that the comedians support. So twice or sometimes three times a year comedians come and perform all over the country, raising funds for the foundation. Avi picks the comics and spends the week with them. It’s all in English and it’s not only a great opportunity for Anglos in Israel to have fun for a good cause, but the comedians go back to the US with a new perspective on Israel. Often, they talk about what it was like in their own performances. In fact, one time one of the comedians who came on the tour was a writer for Conan O’Brien. Later, Conan O’Brien did a segment on Israel and Sherri believes that it was because Conan’s head writer had been on the tour.
The comics are usually astonished that their experience is so different from the image formed in their minds from what they see in the media.
During the COVID pandemic, when everything in the country was shut down, including all the foundation’s programming, Sherri and Seth contemplated closing the foundation. They thought that since they had accomplished what they had set out to do, maybe it was a good time to stop. But their daughter Eliana – who had been a camper, counselor and head counselor and knew the camp from the inside out told her parents that she refused to let them close these programs, “‘They are way too important for the people of Israel. They change lives and rescue kids and save lives,’ she said,” so now Eliana sees to the day-to-day running of the foundation. Since Eliana is a native Israeli, she is also better able to create awareness programs in Israel, something her parents hadn’t done, as they were focusing mainly on fundraising in the US.
Everyone has broken places and sometimes those broken places can become the source of blossoming because it’s like a seed – a seed has to grow in darkness and the shell of the seed has to disintegrate before there’s growth.
– Sherri Mandell
When asked for advice for Jewish mothers who may be grieving the loss of a child, Sherri says it’s of utmost importance to get support. It really helps to find a group to join where you will get that support. It’s ok to be in pain, you don’t have to pretend that things are alright. When Sherri was going through her grieving period, her friend Shira told her that it’s ok to cry in front of the children, but give yourself time to cry, and then stop. When you give yourself a time limit, she says, it allows you to let yourself cry knowing that it’s not going to take over your life. She said it’s ok for your kids to see you in pain, as long as they also get to experience joy in the home.
It’s also important to remember that being happy is not a betrayal of the one you’ve lost. Sherri says that a lot of the kids who come to the camp are afraid to be happy, they feel that somehow they are doing something wrong. But it’s important for the kids to see that you can be both happy and sad. Both are good and both are legitimate.
But that’s one of the great things about the camp. These kids who are still figuring things out see the other kids there who are having fun and it gives them permission to be happy too.
For adults, Sherri says, it’s important to create a team for yourself. It’s not just about grieving, but you need to make sure you also take care of yourself. Get a counselor, yes, but also go to a massage therapist, get together with other grieving parents.
In addition to founding the Koby Mandell Foundation, Sherri is a writer and a speaker. Her degrees are in Writing. Her first book was about writers who had lived through the Holocaust. After Koby was killed, Sherri wrote a book called The Blessing of a Broken Heart, which has recently been turned into a play. This book is about the first year after her son was murdered. Now, including books that are currently in the works, she has written 10 books as well as two children’s books. These can be found on Amazon.com and The Book Depository.
Koby was murdered 21 years ago, and in the early years the Mandells were invited all over the world to speak, but like many speakers, during COVID that came to a halt, so Sherri did a lot of speaking on Zoom. Now that the borders are back open, she has begun traveling again.
But now her focus is less about her own personal story and more about resilience and happiness. She has a book coming out soon on writing and the sefirot, called The Kabbalah of Writing, and she is hoping that her speaking focus will be more on that and less on her as a grieving mother. Because while on the one hand the largest drama in her life has been the murder of her son – and that will never go away, it’s such a big part of her – and yet, there is so much more to who Sherri Mandell is.
One aspect of The Kabbalah of Writing is the value of story and how by writing our stories and revising our stories, we can change how we look at our lives. It can also give us the means to find different endings to our story than the one that we received. And by writing we create a new reality that can give us momentum to move forward.
Last words of wisdom from Sherri: Everyone has broken places and sometimes those broken places can become the source of blossoming because it’s like a seed – a seed has to grow in darkness and the shell of the seed has to disintegrate before there’s growth. God created a world in which we can have happiness, and of course we can grow from that happiness, but somehow there’s a special kind of growth that comes from shattering. But that shattering can leave you so weak that you are devastated and that’s where the importance of community or having a team comes in. Even plants sometimes need a trellis – a support.
Hashem created the world with a lot of suffering but there’s also a lot of beauty. And it’s important to let the beauty dominate – even when you are shattered. That’s where faith comes in – to train yourself to see through the suffering to the beauty that’s in the world.
