Koby Mandell and Yosef Ishran

Tes Vav Iyar

In the spring of 2001, Koby Mandell and Yossi Ishran were neighbors and friends living in Tekoa. 
On May 8th Koby and Yossi decided to cut school to go hiking in the nearby Wadi, a beautiful canyon that borders the town of Tekoa. While hiking in the Wadi, they were met by at least three terrorists in a cave. The terrorists stabbed and stoned them, and painted the walls of the cave with their blood. 
No one worried when the boys didn’t come home. There was a demonstration that day in Jerusalem, and the boys’ friends told their parents that they had gone. At 10 p.m. they admitted that the boys had gone hiking in the Wadi. The police were called. They waited and searched all night. The boys’ bodies were found the next morning, buried under three foot piles of rocks. They were smashed to bits and were only identified by their dental records. 
Koby was buried in Kfar Etzion, and Yosef on Har Hamenuchos. They both left behind parents and three siblings. 

Sherri Mandell speaks about Koby’s murder in an interview on Chazak. 
“Koby was 13, and he was the oldest. We live in Tekoa, which is a half hour from Jerusalem. He and his friend Yosef Ishran decided that day that they would cut school, and of course they didn’t tell us. In the morning I made him his sandwiches and Yosef came to get him and I thought oh good, they’ll get to school on time, and I never saw Koby again.
"He went hiking-we live near a beautiful wilderness area, the Wadi, a canyon-it’s only a ten minute walk from our house. And he went down there, I think because we were the new people in town, we’d been in Tekoa for two years, and also Yosef, he had only been there for two years, and all the other boys knew the Wadi, they knew the canyon, and Koby and Yosef wanted to know it like the other boys knew it.
"They went hiking, and apparently were met by terrorists who murdered them with rocks, totally destroyed their bodies, pulverized them, and that’s like worse than animals.
We didn’t know that they were even gone until the evening, when they didn’t get home from school. We stayed up all night, we were waiting and looking and all night I was sure Koby was coming home. And other mothers that came to me they said, he’s a teenager, teenagers do things like this and we can’t understand them but he’ll come home-and he didn’t come home. 
"When I heard that Koby was dead, I really felt like I would never live again, and I didn’t want to live. I fell to the floor, and I said to my husband, “what are we going to do?” And he said, right away he said, “we have three other children.”  And because the terrorists destroyed Koby, we’re not gonna let them destroy our family. That was immediate. So already I knew that, we would survive. 
"Even that day, which was so horrible-you know when I talk about it I just talk about it in a regular voice, but everything involving Koby is in such a broken part of my heart that words almost can’t describe how I feel. 
"But right away I saw, when I picked out the clothes I was going to wear to the funeral, I saw, I had an awareness, that that would help. This kind of sanity, that I cared about what I was going to wear. Even at that moment, when I thought to myself, how disgusting you are, like your picking out the clothes, like you care what you are going to wear, cuz I knew I would wear it all week-but still part of me said to myself you will be okay. Because I was already springing back to life.”
Sherri was crushed by Koby’s murder. “I felt like I was gonna die every day.” On her next birthday she said, “I felt good because I was closer to dying.” 
For months she did not leave her house. By Koby’s first yahrtzeit, she and her husband Seth had already set up Camp Koby, turning their pain into power.
Camp Koby, a camp for orphans and bereaved children of terror, has been running for 16 years. Originally a camp, it now encompasses support groups, women’s retreats, and activities throughout the year. 
Sherri Mandell trained to become a pastoral counselor, and wrote a book about resilience. 

On Koby’s 10th yahrtzeit, his younger brother Daniel, now 22, read a letter he wrote to Koby.
“Who wants to write to a brother who was murdered?
It’s difficult to write to you,
It’s been years since we spoke. 
I want to tell you about recent events.
On Friday night we stood, Eliana and I, over the magnificent Wadi, lit by a moon and some hanging stars.
We mainly asked questions, 
Your physical absence has been replaced with an empty space in our lives. In another month you could have been 24. 
You could have been married with a child or two, you could have been religious or secular, you could be traveling in South America, you could have been studying at university, you could have been a computer expert, you could have been a stand-up comedian, you could have been so many things. 
I grew into a family where the parents are amazing people, who managed to continue to live, with laugher and joy, and even with healthy and pure sadness.
It took me years to understand what mom and dad gave up. What was taken from them, what a huge sacrifice they made, although they did not have to be here in Israel. How they gave up a life of comfort, of wealth, for a life of Jewish power for which they paid dearly.
How did they not give up? How did they not close the doors on the country and say: “No thanks, we had enough?” 
I remember how I would whisper to you at night, asking where you are, asking you to look out over us, to find a way to make mom and dad happy. I begged you to come back, to make everything the same as before. 
I remember how I used to think that it’s all just a big joke, or a nightmare from which I will wake up, that I’ll just get up in the morning and you’ll be there…and everything would continue as it was.
But today I know it won’t be that way. I do not whisper to you any longer. I’m not asking you to come back. Not even asking you to make mom and dad happy. 
Today I remember you differently. The pain is not only the pain of death, but also the pain of loss. Not a burning pain, but like a hand that grabs the inside of your stomach and turns it. Today I realize how small you were, how really cruel they were.”

Sherri Mandell  has a message to tell the world about losing a child. 
“There are a lot of people who look at me and they just pity me. But that a parent who loses a child-you’re not a pitiful person because you lost a child. That you also have a grandeur. And you have a greatness that other people don’t have. Not that G-d forbid you would ever want it this way, but you can find ways of tapping into that greatness. And not that you will ever minimize the loss, but that you will also have blessing, and to acknowledge and appreciate those blessings. And not to deny the pain, and not to negate the pain, but to appreciate the happiness amidst the pain because happiness and sadness can dwell together. 
"During the shivah, a woman came to me. I knew her brother had been killed by terrorists. She told me that her mother was a Holocaust survivor, and her mother had lost her entire family in Auschwitz. Her mother had three kids and one of them was killed by terrorists. And she looked at me, this is her daughter, and she says; “My mother had terrible pain in her life but she also had tremendous blessing. You will have blessing too."