Sherri Mandell

Sherri Mandell is an author, a mother and an activist. She is perhaps best known as the mother of Koby Mandell, a thirteen year old American boy who was murdered near their home in Israel in May 2001. His body was found in a cave alongside that of his best friend. Both boys had been bludgeoned to death with large rocks the size of bowling balls.

Sherri Mandell and her husband, Rabbi Seth Mandell, responded to this tragedy by founding The Koby Mandell Foundation. She also wrote a book, entitled The Blessing of a Broken Heart, in which she details the events of that day, and talks about how she was able to cope with the trauma and grow as a person.

Education and Professional History

Sherri Mandell was born in New York and graduated from Cornell University in 1977. She received an M.A. in Creative Writing from Colorado State University and taught writing at the University of Maryland and at Penn State University. She is the author of Writers of the Holocaust and has written for numerous magazines and journals, including The Washington Post, The Denver Post and The Jerusalem Post, as well as Hadassah Magazine. Sherri and her husband Seth currently write a blog at JPost.com.Heart Earned Wisdom

Family

In 1996, with her husband and their four children, Sherri moved to a settlement in the West Bank, where she still lives today. Sherri and Seth, a rabbi and Israel activist, spent several years in Chinuch, Jewish education, prior to moving to Israel. Seth Mandell was the executive director of the University of Maryland Hillel in College Park, Maryland, from ?? until 1996. Before that he was the director of the Penn State University Hillel. The time they spent as a Hillel family, particularly when they were living in Silver Spring, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC, developed within Sherri and Seth a sense of activism, which carried them through the terrible, personal tragedy that they would have to face several years later.

In moving to Israel, Sherri and Seth hoped to fulfill the Zionist dream of settling the Land of Israel, and to raise their children as Israelis, growing up with a love of Judaism and the land. In fact, they had lived there previously, briefly, and that is where Sherri gave birth to their first child, Yaakov (Koby) Mandell.

Tragedy and Worldwide News

On May 8, 2001, Koby and a friend, Yosef Ish-Ran, played hooky from school to hike in a canyon close to their home in Tekoa, an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank. Koby and Yosef were found bludgeoned to death with stones, an act attributed to Palestinian terrorists, although the murderers were never found. News of the brutal murders swept across the world. The boys were held up as martyrs, symbols for the age-old hatred between two sets of people.

Despite the despair that engulfed her in the first days after Koby's death, Sherri's strong bond with her husband, and her deep religious faith, grieve, cope with the pain and the guilt she felt about raising her family in an unsafe place, and find meaning and purpose in her drastically changed life.

Determined to turn this act of hate into love, the Mandells established the Koby Mandell Foundation in their son's memory.

The Koby Mandell Foundation

The Koby Mandell Foundation, established in 2002, runs healing programs for families that have been directly affected by terror in Israel, having lost an immediate family member to a terrorist attack or an act of war. The Foundation sponsors Camp Koby, its flagship program, for children that have lost a parent or a sibling in an act of terror; Mothers' Healing Retreats for women bereaved by terrorist violence, and similar retreats for widows who have lost a husband to terror or war. Sherri currently directs the Mothers' Healing Retreats, an innovative healing program of The Koby Mandell Foundation that she hopes brings love, support and healing to mothers and widows bereaved by terrorism.

The Blessing of a Broken Heart

Her most recent book is hailed as an uplifting, sometimes heartbreaking exploration of her own experience losing her son. The Blessing of a Broken Heart (Toby Press, 2003) won the 2004 National Jewish Book Award in the Contemporary Jewish Life category. In it, Sherri presents her unique perspective on the hidden power of tragedy based on her own harrowing experience. The book describes Sherri’s loss, her struggle with the first stages of mourning, her journey to find peace, and her growing faith as she endeavors to understand her pain in the context of 3,000 years of Jewish history and tradition. The book has also been made into a stage play.

Summary

Mandell was born in New York. She is a graduate of Cornell University and has a Master's degree in creative writng from Colorado State University. Sherri Mandell was a professor at the University of Maryland, College Park and at Penn State University.

Sherri Mandell immigrated to Israel in 1996 where she continued her writings and is director of The Koby Mandell Foundation Women's Healing Retreat for Bereaved Mothers and Widows.

Mandell is featured as an expert speaker on the documentary Relentless: The Struggle for Peace in Israel