arts & life

b ooks

Road To

Resilience

By Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman | JNS.org

Tragedy culminates in

celebration, says an Israeli

American author who lost

her son to terror.

S

herri Mandell’s life was devas-
tated on May 8, 2001, when her
13-year-old son, Koby, was mur-
dered by terrorists on the outskirts of
the Israeli Jewish community of Tekoa.
Yet Mandell not only shares the story of
her loss, but also celebrates the lessons
she has learned from tragedy.
Indeed, “celebrate” is this Israeli
American author’s word choice. Her sec-
ond book, The Road to Resilience: From
Chaos to Celebration (Toby Press), came
out earlier this year. The lesson: In every
celebration, there is chaos.
“People think it is either/or,” Mandell
says. “Either you are stable or you are
in chaos. You are happy or sad. The real
celebration is when you can contain
both.”
Koby Mandell and his friend, Yosef

Sherri Mandell and

her husband, Seth,

a rabbi, believe the

Jewish response to

suffering is to live

a fuller and more

engaged life.

52 July 28 • 2016

Ishran, had skipped school to go hiking
in a cave near their home when terror-
ists stoned them to death in 2001. The
murders were attributed to Palestinian
terrorists, but the terrorists have never
been caught nor identified.
Sherri Mandell’s new book, a Jewish
self-help guide blended with philosophi-
cal and psychological advice, walks read-
ers through the seven steps of reclaim-
ing one’s life after a tragedy — not just
the loss of a loved one, as is the case for
Mandell, but in situations like a divorce
or another traumatic event.
• Step one is chaos, the moment when
everything you know about your place in
the world is taken from you.
“You have to reconstitute yourself,”
Mandell says. “It is really hard because
you are not who you were — you have to

become enlarged. You are not enough to
contain what has happened.”
• From there, a person transitions to
community — the recognition that he
or she cannot heal alone. Healing, says
Mandell, is receiving.
• The next step is choice.
“The first day after it happened, I had
to get dressed,” Mandell recalls. “I went
to pick out my barrette and I thought to
myself, ‘You are so disgusting to think
about the color of your barrette.’ And
then I said to myself, ‘You know, this is
going to save you.’”
• The fourth step is creativity, what
Mandell calls “the hub” — the turn-
ing point where one takes the chaos
and transfers it to something else. That
“something else” is different for every-
body. One of Mandell’s friends, for