Good out of Evil
Reviewed by Aaron Leibel, The Washington Jewish Week

The Blessings of a Broken Heart by Sherri Mandell. New Milford, Conn.: The Toby Press, September 2003. 226 pp. $19.95.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 10 -- I found this book unbelievably difficult, even painful, to read. No, it is neither poorly written nor boring. Author Sherri Mandell taught writing at the University of Maryland a few years ago, and her obvious talent is on display throughout.

Rather, it is the subject that is so vexing. It touches on what may be the greatest catastrophe that can befall a parent: outliving one's child.

But Mandell's pain is much worse, for her child did not fall victim to some incurable disease or die in an accident, calamities that are, unfortunately, part of everyday life. Rather, her 13-year-old son, Koby, and his friend were viciously murdered in a cave not far from their homes in Tekoa in the West Bank, a few miles south of Jerusalem, by Palestinian terrorists.

And, naturally, the former Silver Spring resident feels guilty. ``The guilt of bringing him here, where it was unsafe -- that pain may kill me if I don't fight it," she writes.

But she knows she is not to blame and prays to God ``to give her the strength and wisdom" to understand that truth.

"I did not kill my son; terrorists did. Let me hold on to that so that I don't die from guilt each day," she concludes.

Struggling not to blame herself is one of the demons with which she tries to come to grips.

Another is reconciling the evil of her Koby's death with her faith in God. How could he let her son be killed in such a brutal manner? she asks. The answer, she determines, is that the Almighty has a plan -- one that we cannot comprehend.

But it's more than that, as the book's title, Blessings of a Broken Heart, suggests. Her message is that good can come from evil. Mandell's daughter attended a camp last year with other children who had lost siblings or parents to terrorism. The youngster says she enjoyed the experience because it was as if the children had ``touched each other's hearts," and thus ``made a new heart."

Many people live with broken hearts, the author writes. ``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."

Their son's death has brought her husband and her ``together in a kind of tenderness that we haven't felt in years, perhaps never. We are fully present for each other."

The Mandells also have created the Koby Mandell Foundation, which runs a camp and retreats for Israeli victims of terrorism, another beneficial outcome of their unspeakable loss.

But obviously, none of those positive developments can compensate her for the death of her first child, a loss that causes a numbing pain that ``crouches on our heart like a beast who is waiting to crush us, to chew us to bits until we are nothing, dust that the wind can blow away."

She sees her son's presence everywhere -- in a cricket and in a mysteriously ringing doorbell. She grieves for him at a wedding, in her synagogue, on the streets of Jerusalem.

In order not to frighten or depress her children with her sudden bursts of crying, she develops a game with them, in which she hands them her watch and says, ``Time me, give me one minute."

She thinks this game may help them and her as well. ``They see that pain is something you can enter and not be destroyed by," Mandell writes. ``It's okay to cry, to be sad. Accepting my pain means that I don't have to be afraid of it. Neither do my children or husband.''

This is an extremely moving book. The question is: Should it have been written? I always have believed that grief is a private, even an intimate, matter -- certainly not something I would, or could, share with people outside my family.

But if writing and, in the process, publicly baring her soul is cathartic for Mandell -- helping her somehow to come to grips with what no parent can ever really accept -- then publishing The Blessings of a Broken Heart was the right thing for her to do.