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SHERRI MANDELL:
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Koby’s death

Koby’s death is a Biblical death. It is a murder that is shocking in its raw pain, its unmediated cruelty. Two Jewish boys, my son, Koby Mandell, and his friend, Yosef Ish-Ran, were attacked in a cave by Arab terrorists, and bludgeoned to death with stones the size of bowling balls. I can’t think about a murderer pummeling my child to death with rocks. I don’t know how to cope with the pain and the evil. I imagine my son afraid, crying out, dying alone, in horror and agony. A thirteen-year-old boy.

Anachronistic, primitive in its horror, the murder hearkens back to the first murder in the world. In his jealousy, Cain slew his brother Abel with stones, and the Bible tells us that "his blood cried out from the ground." The boys’ blood was wiped all over the cave. The murderers have not been caught.

On the High Holy days, Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur, in the prayer Unetaneh Tokef, we recite that God decides on this day: "who shall live and who shall die; who by fire, and who by water, who by sword, and who by wild beast; who by famine, and who by thirst, who by strangling, and who by stoning.‘ David Wolpe in Making Loss Matter says in regard to the prayer that ’the words are specific and tied to the medieval age in which they were written." He says that the modern day equivalent is death by AIDS and cancer, or by car accidents.

But my son died in a barbaric murder, and blatant, overpowering hate was the agent of his death. How could God decide to kill the boys in such a cruel way? How can we live with such a gruesome death?

Since Koby’s murder, I am unable to read the paper or listen to the news because what I hear is pain. The television broadcast on NBC, CNN, the articles in the Jerusalem Report, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsday. none of them got it right. They wanted sound bites, fast information. They wanted to sell newspapers with our tragedy.

The story was reported around the world in every major newspaper. Each article had a mistake or two — and they said nothing about what was important to us: the way that you had left the house that morning, laughing and happy; the fear when we waited for your return; the way my friend Shira told me that you were dead, intercepting the police, she told me later, so that she could tell me with love.

When I watch the attack on the World Trade Center, all I think about are the mothers. I feel like a voyeur and can no longer listen. Because I know that behind the news are families that are suffering. And I know that suffering is a knife that keeps digging into the most tender areas, and then pierces even deeper.

At 7:00 a.m. on May 8, 2001, I listened to the radio as I made Koby two salami sandwiches. I went up to get dressed and came downstairs. Yosef came to pick him up at 7:20 a.m. and I thought good, maybe Koby will get to school on time today. I didn’t kiss him goodbye because Yosef was there so I just went upstairs to finish getting ready. That was the last time I saw my son.

At 8:00 a.m., I left to go swimming about twenty minutes away with a friend.

Then I hitched about thirty minutes into Jerusalem for three meetings. I got to town a little early so I sat and drank coffee and edited a manuscript for my friend, Aryih — a murder mystery. I had edited up to page 25, but had grabbed the wrong pages that morning and had taken pages 106-126 by mistake.

I began to edit them, when suddenly I was in the murder scene. A star basketball player gets murdered, pummeled in the head with a baseball bat.

As I edited, I thought: What does Aryih know about murder? What do I know about murder? How can I edit a murder scene? Later I had a meeting with the editor of Hadassah magazine, where we discussed article assignments for the coming year. Mine was to write an article on miracles.

My husband, Seth, then a freelance business writer, was in Tekoa, working at home, so I didn’t worry much about the kids. I called at three o’clock and got no answer. I called again at four o’clock and spoke to my husband, who told me that all the kids were out. In Tekoa, it’s common for the kids to be out all day.

They come home from school, throw down their bags, and go right back out, to the basketball court, or to friends, or to afternoon activities. So I wasn’t worried.

I got home a little before 6:00 p.m. and asked my husband: "Where’s Koby?" My middle son, Daniel, then eleven years old, wasn’t home either but on an overnight school trip. We heard the six o’clock news, which reported that a child had been killed on a school trip, hit by a falling branch near the Jordan River. My husband immediately got on the Internet to check the news and make sure that Daniel was safe.

Then, at about 8:30 p.m., my ten-year-old daughter, Eliana, returned from youth group activities. I hoped that she had seen Koby but she told me that she hadn’t seen him. I put the two smaller children to sleep and then I began to really worry.

I call Koby’s friends and Yosef’s mother, Rena. She says that she thinks they might have gone to the demonstration in Jerusalem calling for more protection for our roads and settlements. Another mother tells me that the road from Jerusalem to Tekoa is closed. It’s often closed because of shootings from Beit Jalla. So I think to myself: it will take him a while to get home, but he’ll get home. Then at ten o’clock at night I begin to dial madly. I call Koby’s friends in Efrat and Jerusalem. I call Rena four times, who assures me that they’re at the demonstration. Rena’s husband is an Israeli policeman so I take comfort in the thought that she would know if they were in danger. She says they’re on their way home, not to worry. Then, suddenly, it’s eleven o’clock and Koby isn’t home. I call the police. They check the hitchhiking posts.

My neighbor, Orly, who is a sabra, a native Israeli, comes over and calls Koby’s teacher and is told: he hasn’t been in school. Neither has Yosef. I still don’t panic. I think: he’s with Yosef. Something must have happened but they’ll be home soon. Then Shlomo, Koby’s friend, comes over and tells us that Koby and Yosef had said they were going to the wadi — a dry riverbed that cuts through a magnificent rugged canyon nearby. They must have gotten lost, I think. The Haritun Cave in Tekoa (named after Haritun, a fifth century monk who established both a monastery and study cells in the wadi) is among the largest in the Middle East, with sixty chambers that extend two miles. He’s stuck somewhere in there: it’s happened to other kids before.

He’ll come home and I’ll yell at him, and we’ll go on. I truly think I’ll suffer nothing more than lost sleep.

All night there are neighbors in my house. They say: "Welcome to the teen years. He’s your oldest. We’ve all been through this." I believe them. I can’t accept that Koby isn’t safe. I can’t allow myself to think that something has happened to him.

But Koby has never done anything like this before. No matter what, he doesn’t worry me. Because if there is one thing I am sure of, it is his love. He would worry me a little, but not like this.

The other mothers sit in my house, reassuring me. He’s the oldest, this is your initiation, they do foolish things. They worry us. One’s fourteen-year-old daughter had been missing until three o’clock one morning.

One’s eight-year-old son had been lost in the cave. Two ten-year-olds had taken the bus to Kiryat Shmona, a four hour trip, without telling anybody.

"We think they’re like us, but they’re not. They have their own logic, their own way. They don’t think like we do," Orly tells me.

Then the policemen march in, rifles slung over their shoulders, with beautiful sad young faces, asking questions, filling out their papers. ’Go find them,’ I want to shout, ’just go find them.’ But I answer their questions.

I ask Orly for a glass of wine. I think: he’s on his way home. Just be calm.

It’s all going to be okay.

Search crews from the area scour the wadi. They will find them, I think.

They are lost, stuck, waiting. Pini Birnbaum, a twenty-three-year-old with American parents, who grew up here and knows the caves inside out, returns after three hours. He’s been calling and shouting, but there has been no answer. "Since the caves are so big, there’s still a chance they’re in there," he tells us. That is the hope I cling to. I imagine them, stuck on some ledge in the cave, unable to go up or down, to rise or fall. Or they are on a bus to Eilat — on a whim — they aren’t in the wadi at all, they’ve decided to get away from the madness here. It’s a foolish act, but it makes sense: they are living in a war zone. They’ve been through eight months of the Intifada — of drive-by shootings every day. People could crack and just run away. Could do things that weren’t like them. They could.

Shoshana sits knitting in my living room. She has three boys in the army.

She says: "Go see if you can feel him somewhere, feel his being." It’s already four o’clocl in the morning. Seth and I go out looking for him.

We walk to the entrance of the wadi, less than five minutes away. I don’t feel him. We see a van with two security men inside. They say they’ve searched all over. A crew of searchers will continue when the sun comes up.

My legs begin to buckle, but I’m sure he’ll come home. But when the sun rises and they’re still not home, it hits me. They need to come home now. I remember something about missing children — if they aren’t found the first day, chances are they won’t be found alive. I plead with God and with Koby: Come back now! Come back now! I remember giving birth and how the midwife, worried after listening to Koby’s heartbeat, said: push this baby out! push this baby out! I say: Come home now! come home now! with the same kind of urgency. I can will him to come home. I pace in front of the house. At 6:00 a.m., my husband walks to the synagogue, hoping that the strength of his prayers will bring the boys home.

In the house, my friends sit around me. I say: "He’s okay, right, he’s okay?" My friend Shira walks into the house and I see the fire of fear in her eyes and I know that there’s pain there, more pain than I am willing to admit, to let enter my heart. Now I know that I am being too optimistic.

I say: "I’m going in the backyard.‘ I think I can protect myself, as if bad news can only come to the front door. Then Shira comes out to me a short while later. She looks at me, takes my hand in hers, and says: ’They found them. They’re dead.‘ I say: ’No he’s not. Koby is not dead. He’s not dead. He’s not dead." There is one thing I know: I do not want to live in a world where Koby is dead. Even worse, where Koby is murdered.

Friends tell me I fainted. I remember lying on the dirt in my backyard. Just lying there. I remember holding my husband, holding him and crying. I remember people talking to us about telling the other kids. Seth went up to tell them.

The two little ones were asleep. Seth woke Eliana, ten, and told her. She said: "Stop joking Daddy." Gavi, six, just listened. And then they both curled up and went back to sleep.

They told Daniel on the school trip. The kids had heard on the radio that two boys from Tekoa were missing. Daniel had a feeling it was Koby, because Koby had been talking to him about wanting to go to the wadi. Then later, the person in charge of the trip took Daniel off the bus and told him that his brother was dead. The whole class got back on the bus and drove home.

Daniel sobbed all three hours and then my whole village could hear him crying as he returned from the trip and ran to the house. I held him and held him and his crying was raspy and it was hard for him to breathe. He cried as if he was crying for all the pain in the world that was, and would ever be.

Now I am like the canary in the mine. I have been sent out to the land of death to see, can one live there? Can one breathe after death has taken one’s beloved? How do you cope with overwhelming evil and pain?

People ask me: How are you? The question is one from my former world. Now it is one that I cannot answer. I have lost the ability to be in a world where I answer okay. There is no okay. Nothing will ever again be okay. I answer: I’m breathing. I’m alive. But I will never feel relieved, relaxed. Because something will always be missing. I can never again take anything for granted — that the sun will rise, that my husband will return from work. I carry the weight of my son’s death everywhere I go, even into my dreams.

Suffering has thrust me into a world where there is no okay. Each moment is a miracle and an agony. A miracle that the world exists in all its glory. An agony that this world is one of suffering and pain. Jewish tradition says that each person is a world. I have lost a whole world.

— Excerpt from "The Blessing of a Broken Heart," by Sherri Mandell, The Toby Press, 2003