[Forward ] Nathan Burstein - "The Blessing of a Broken Heart," first a memoir and now a play, will be performed for the first time on the East Coast later this month in New Jersey and Maryland and at the Riverdale YM-YWHA in the Bronx. Adapted from the book by Sherri Mandell, the New York-born mother of Koby Mandell, 13, who was murdered with Yosef Ishran, 14, in 2001 near Tekoa, the show offers an American take on a tragedy that is uniquely Israeli - the bludgeoning death by Palestinian terrorists of two young boys. But the story, Mandell says, is also about resilience, the process of healing she underwent in the first year after her eldest son's headline-making murder. "I hope they will take [from the show] the ability to transform pain into a kind of hope and healing," Mandell said. Seeing the book on the stage "just extends Koby. That's my goal: that people should know what happened to him, and that his spirit should be able to continue on in this world. Anything that does that is so important." All proceeds from the show benefit Camp Koby, a support program for Israeli children who've lost an immediate family member to terrorism.
2008-06-20 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive