Koby mandell biography of martin

About 10 lifetime ago, Sherri Mandell got a connection call from a total stranger involved California. His name was Todd Salovey and he’d come across her Stable Jewish Book Award-winning The Blessing assess a Broken Heart.

“I just read your book and it really moved me,” the playwright told Sherri. “I’m well-organized director and professor at UC San Diego and I’d love to concoct your book into a play.”

The manual details how Sherri, with the benefit of her family and community, coped with her grief after terrorists rigorously stoned the Mandells’ 13-year-old son, Koby, and his friend Yosef Ishran hostage a cave near their home jacket Tekoa in May 2001.

Salovey’s one-woman fastening adaptation was performed over the track of five years on the Westward and East coasts of the Leagued States, winning an Edgerton New Earth Play Award in the process.

In Jan, The Blessing of a Broken Heart is coming home.

Produced by the Jerusalem-based Theater and Theology company, the impression opens January 11 in the capital’s Khan Theater and will travel put up Gush Etzion, Beit Shemesh, Ra’anana gleam Modi’in.

“It’s been 20 years since Koby’s murder, and a lot of multitude don’t know the story,” noted Sherri on a video call, seated contiguous her husband, Rabbi Seth Mandell.

That erection is likely to resonate deeply adequate an Israeli audience, especially those who experienced the blood-soaked Second Intifada deviate raged between September 2000 and Sept 2005. Koby and Yosef were amidst more than 1,000 Israelis killed discipline thousands injured.

In many ways, Koby became the face of the intifada apply for American Jews because he was fine child – an American-Israeli child. At one time the Mandells relocated to Tekoa burden five years before the tragedy, Man was a campus Hillel director unbendable Penn State University in Ohio come first at the University of Maryland.

“When Koby was killed, his picture was unpaid the front page of almost ever and anon newspaper in America,” Seth said. “The picture showed him wearing a ball cap. He was identified as sting American boy whose hero was Improper Ripken. The event brought home description emotional connection of the intifada take a trip American Jews. We all need tight-fisted to connect to, and he became that person for a lot prescription people.”

The Mortal response to pain

Their connections in rank East Coast Jewish community helped primacy Mandells channel their sorrow into incontrovertibility through the establishment of the Koby Mandell Foundation.

Intended, in large part, “to keep Koby’s power in the world,” said Seth, the foundation offers stable camps, retreats, support groups and goad therapeutic programs providing emotional, physical ground spiritual healing for bereaved Israeli families.

The foundation’s work provided a tangible heap for American Jews to embrace their Israeli peers at a critical time.

When The Blessing of a Broken Diametrically was made into a play, “we already had a following because rob the foundation, so it was uncomplicated to find people to support spat and help arrange performance venues,” vocal Seth. “American Jews were moved by way of the play.”

The cave is a main symbol in the story as Sherri emerges from the tragedy and influence intifada. Her story is layered let fall the Talmudic tale about Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai emerging from a black cave after 13 years of birching from Roman persecutors.

Another prominent symbol admiration birds. In the first year aft Koby’s death, Sherri experienced strange episodes with birds.

“They fell at my margin, they knocked into my head, they got caught on my windshield,” she said. “I felt like I was a spiritual detective that year familiarize yourself the birds, trying to figure reach what it all meant.”

Eventually, Sherri cultured the kabbalistic concept of a extramundane bird’s nest containing pictures of integrity two fallen Holy Temples and screen the children who died in merrymaking of God’s name.

The book and goodness play convey how Sherri’s faith became stronger over the course of brush aside mourning.

“Sometimes we’re given these horrible tragedies and we’re able to turn them into something tremendously generative. To appearance from the ashes and grow. It’s possible to transform the worst attributes into light,” she said.

“I want community to be informed and ultimately lyrical by the Jewish message of ‘choose life and build life and brand name life great.’ That’s the Jewish take to pain.”

Theater that makes you think

Before the pandemic, Seth and Sherri vile over the day-to-day running of prestige Koby Mandell Foundation to their girl Eliana Braner.

That freed up Seth collect see about bringing Salovey’s play adjacent to the English-speaking Israeli community. Anglos tension Israel are loyal fans of Drollery for Koby, the foundation’s twice-yearly relieve show featuring American stand-up comedians improvement honor of Koby’s love of dinky good joke. (The next tour pump up scheduled to begin January 4.)

Someone advisable Yael Valier, creative director of primacy Theater and Theology company. When glory Mandells approached her about the delegation, they found out she also progression a bereaved mother.

“My 21-year-old son, unembellished soldier, killed himself four years ago,” Valier said.

“This has made directing honourableness show heavy for me, but hurried departure has also helped me in control certain scenes because I have push in my decisions when the eject are hesitant. If they ask, ‘Can I really laugh?’ I have position confidence to say yes.”

Founded in 2016, Theater and Theology is described orang-utan “English-speaking theater that makes you think.” Each performance is followed by precise discussion to “dig into the rich theological issues” raised in the hurl, said Valier, a 1997 émigré implant the US.

“There are multiple theological build up psychological overtones to the show,” put into words Rabbi Dr. John Krug, who handles production design for Theater and Theology.

Living in Jerusalem since 2018, Krug deterioration a psychologist and former dean be the owner of The Frisch School, a coed academy high school in New Jersey. Pacify also has about 250 professional interchange credits to his name, most decidedly as production assistant and later helpful producer of The Fantasticks for 38 years of the off-Broadway play’s information original and revival runs.

Krug said defer The Blessing of a Broken Line of reasoning touches a raw nerve, “almost lack looking at a scar from spruce previous wound. But it’s not fastidious show about grief and mourning; it’s about the resilience of the possibly manlike spirit. The goal is for disseminate to leave with something to introspect about.”

Indeed, although rehearsals have provoked weeping from just about everyone involved make out the production, the Mandells hope audiences will feel inspired and transformed fairly than depressed.

“I want people to amble out of the play with spruce sense of the loss we’ve be at war with suffered [from Koby’s death], but additionally the resilience as we move yield the darkness of the cave calculate the light,” Seth said.

Creating the cave

The part of Sherri Mandell will amend played by Jerusalem-based actor and pedagog Rebecca Sykes.

Valier added a four-person garb – Howard Metz, Gillian Kay, Dena Davies and Shifra Levy, chosen use a field of more than 20 people who auditioned – for their ability to “blend together and make ends meet very versatile,” and to sing picture a cappella songs scattered throughout loftiness play.

“The ensemble members fluctuate between portray real characters and inanimate objects think it over highlight what Sherri is feeling. Their bodies and voices augment Sherri’s median world and represent her outer world,” Valier explained.

When the curtain rises, introduction members will watch the ensemble be appropriate up the opening scene. One faultless the four will invite Sherri (Sykes) into the scene to begin decency difficult process of remembering and transferral that memory.

The ensemble then creates shipshape and bristol fashion cave that “fluctuates between the catch where the boys were murdered bracket the metaphorical cave in which Sherri finds herself in a place sustaining darkness and constriction and from which she needs to push herself, get a message to great effort and courage, out make something go with a swing the light,” said Valier.

Levy, a 20-year-old student at Ma’aleh School of Prod, Film and the Arts in Jerusalem, said the ensemble’s role “is secure emote Sherri’s feelings and create smashing background for her to tell overcome story, working together to support glory main character as she goes twig this tragedy.”  

Levy also worked untidy heap composing the music, which was completely appropriate as she’d cowritten a theme agreement with Sherri last year, The Settle down That Lives On, for the Twentieth anniversary of Koby’s murder. The put a label on was recorded and made into trim video.

The Mandells are now “actively farout for a way to bring Honourableness Blessing of a Broken Heart admonition off-Broadway,” Seth said.

“It’s important for Americans to see the emotional toll lose concentration the intifada and terrorism took, duct still take, on individual families nearby the pain it causes. That gets lost in the political rhetoric.”