A Hierarchy of Suffering

Our son, Koby, was murdered in 2001 by Palestinian terrorists when he was 13. He and his friend Yosef Ish Ran cut school to hike in the wadi near our home in Tekoa. They were beaten to death with rocks the size of bowling balls.

According to the Talmud, there are 903 ways to die. The way that Koby died may be the worst way. There are probably 902 easier ways to die. In fact, the Talmud has a discussion of which is the harder death: stoning or fire, and most sages agree that stoning is the most difficult death. In the hierarchy of pain, I am a winner.

Abraham brought his son to be sacrificed, but in the end, Isaac was spared. A Midrash tells us that Sarah died when she heard that Isaac had almost been killed. Her keening is the origin of the wailing sound of the ram’s horn, the shofar, that is blown on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, the sound that is supposed to awaken us to repentance.

I also serve that function. I feel that people look at me and love their kids more. When I’m in the supermarket in Efrat, I see how people look at me. I know that now when I walk around, many people look at me and think: thank God I’m not her, thank God I still have my kids, my family intact. Thank God I still have my wholeness.

And they’re right. Koby’s murder is a robbery, an amputation, and a rape. I stand naked, battered. Yet I also stand with my angels, my belief, my openness to life.

Still, the other mothers console themselves by comparing the deaths of their children to Koby’s death, which seems more brutal to them. A mother whose daughter was killed in a drive-by shooting near Jerusalem said to me: “I suffer, but not like you. I know my daughter died instantly.”

Another mother, whose daughter died of cancer, says: “I suffer, but not like you. I know my daughter died peacefully. I was with her when she died. But you?”

Koby Mandell (Photo: Nancy Lederman)

In fact, my friends tell me I’m famous for my pain, famous because of Koby. Few have had a son killed as cruelly as I.

And yet I believe that the minute that Koby saw the hate on his murderers’ faces, he went into shock and his soul left him. He went into a safe, protected place in his soul. He watched his death, but he was already with God. He was already being comforted, sheltered.

Rabbi Yitzhak Breitowitz told me that dying because you are Jewish means that you die sanctifying God’s name. As a result, your soul goes straight up to God. Usually, according to Jewish sources, the soul undergoes a waiting period, a period of purification before ascending to God.

But Koby was pure. In fact, Rabbi Breitowitz told me, the usual procedure of cleansing the body of a dead person was not necessary for Koby and Yosef, since they died as pure souls.

There are different opinions but our tradition tells us that the soul hovers around the body for a year, because the soul misses the body. But not Koby. He was free of his body the moment he died. He was already one of God’s beloved, sitting on God’s lap. That’s why I didn’t feel him at his grave the day of his funeral.

And now I am the woman whom people don’t know how to address. I fill people with the dread of death. I remind them that death is around us.

But by being the person nobody wants to be, I can console others because I am not separate from anybody’s pain. I can’t distance myself. I don’t have that luxury. I can be there for others because my suffering includes so many of the permutations of pain.

Excerpted from The Blessing of a Broken Heart