The Blessing of a Broken Heart
by Rabbi Dr. David J. Zucker

“You learn as well . . . that love can overcome death, and that what is required of you in this is memory and devotion.”(Mark Halperin, Memoir from Antproof Case, p. 514)

Sherri Mandell’s alternating faces of grief and hope is found throughout this volume. The reader will experience them on nearly every page. A part of Mandell’s book recounts and relives the brutal, cruel and merciless murder of her thirteen-year-old son Koby and his friend Yosef one fine spring day in 2001.

Yet out of this terrible tragedy, she has found the courage to remake her life, to translate this deep and irreversible grief into a foundation that brings hope and comfort to women who, like herself, have had loved ones torn from their family fabric. Mandell now serves as the Director of the Koby Mandell Foundation Women’s Healing Retreats for Bereaved Mothers and Widows.

People react differently to the face of horror. Mandell finds answers in Orthodox Jewish thought, Hasidic teachings, and the path of mysticism. In one of the chapters, she explains that her son Koby has sent messages from the world beyond, indicating that he is well. She states her belief that she will see him again. In her words, “we’re all heading toward one destination. After death, we have a place waiting for us, nearer or further from God, depending on our actions in this world. . . Koby’s death makes me see my eventual death as a reunion with my son, a return to the unblemished purity of the jewel of my soul.”(pp. 78-79)

She writes about her beliefs, but she also acknowledges that there are times that she despairs. “The divided heart lives with contradiction.”(p. 191)
In some ways this is a painful book to read, and certainly it is a book about pain. Yet, Mandell is able to work through her pain, and find –or better, she is able to make –meaning in her life. Her way may not be someone else’s approach, but she shows the reader that there are paths past the darkness of despair. Though we will live our whole life with irreparable loss, and we will never forget, nonetheless, in time we can heal. In time, we can find “our own voice –our own way of responding to the world, our own way of coping with the mystery and pain of living.”(p. 163)

In explaining the title of her book, Mandell writes that it “is possible to build a new heart . . . many of us live with broken hearts. But when you touch broken hearts together, a new heart emerges, one that is more open and compassionate, able to touch others, a heart that seeks God. That is the blessing of a broken heart.”(p. 7)

Sherri Mandell, The Blessings of a Broken Heart (New Milford, CT: Toby Press, 2006), 235 pp.

Rabbi Dr. David J. Zucker, BCC, is a member of the Advisory Board of PlainViews. He is Director of Spiritual Care at Shalom Park, a senior continuum of care center in Aurora, CO. He served on the NAJC’s Board of Directors and Executive Committee. He Chaired (or Co-Chaired with Rabbi Bonita E Taylor) eight consecutive NAJC annual conferences, including the 2003 EPIC Cognate Chaplains’conference in Toronto where he was Chair of the Executive Planning Committee. Paulist Press recently published David’s new book, The Torah: An Introduction for Christians and Jews (2005) –reviewed in PlainViews, 2/1/2006, Vol. 3, No. 1.

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