Eliana Mandell Braner ’07

Posted on September 13, 2024

“This is what we do – we do bereavement. We know bereavement.”

I’m Eliana Mandell Braner ’07, director of the Koby Mandell Foundation, which offers support to bereaved families. I live in Tekoa, a settlement in the West Bank.

Heartbreak

The Koby Mandell Foundation was started when my brother Koby and his friend Yosef Ishran were murdered in 2001 in Nachal Tekoa (Tekoa Stream), which is right outside my home.

I had hoped that my children wouldn’t have to experience the intifada that I experienced growing up; but now it feels like we’re going back 20 years to where we’re being persecuted again. We are not safe. It’s pretty insane living here right now, and it’s been like this for almost a year. The summer vacation has just ended and my four kids have just gone back to school. It was supposed to be a return to some kind of normality, but nothing is normal right now. It’s been a really heartbreaking week, finding out that the six hostages – six Jews – have been murdered in cold blood; knowing that they were alive and we didn’t save them… And it doesn’t really matter where you are in the political sphere, right or left or in the middle, wherever you are it’s heartbreaking.

Fear

During the summer my husband did another 60 days of reserve duty. Altogether he’s done 200 days of reserve duty this past year and it looks like he’ll be going again in November. As a part of his reserve duty, my husband is also a part of Tekoa’s civil defense unit. This Shabbat he was called up at 1am. There were three car-bombs in the area. Two of them were found – one in Karmei Tzur, where my sister-in-law lives, and the other in Tzomet HaGush, a major intersection 20 minutes from my home. They were afraid that the third one – which they couldn’t find – would come to Tekoa, so we were up until 3am. He was guarding and I was home alone with the kids. It brought me back to October 7th when he left and I stayed with the kids, and that feeling of being unsafe and not knowing what’s going to happen next.

Support

Since October 7th we at the Koby Mandell Foundation have been working really, really hard, trying to help victims of terror and people who were hurt by October 7th and the Iron Swords war. We felt that we were called up for duty. This is what we do – we do bereavement. We know bereavement. So of course we needed to help. But we didn’t know how, and it took us about three months of research, of talking to families, to figure out what we were doing. We started by just going to shivas. We had our previously bereaved families go to newly bereaved families and simply help out with technical matters and give support. Many of these families had been – and still are – evacuated, and were sitting shiva far from their homes.

We have since tripled our activities and our staff members, and I’m still hiring. We now have 80 Sherut Le’umi (National Service) volunteers making house calls and spending afternoons helping widows in their homes. We provide support groups and vacations for bereaved mothers, fathers, widows, couples, and both young and adult orphans and siblings. We held a summer camp for bereaved siblings and orphans, and we’re planning to hold a Hanukkah camp in Eilat, God willing, if the Houthis allow it. We’re expecting a lot more kids this time.

We also started running retreats – each time for a different community, meeting their specific needs. We always start with a discussion circle with a therapist. For the bereaved mothers, we saw that telling their story was very healing. But the widows who came to the retreats were less interested in therapy and just needed to have fun. So we started organizing regular meetings at a cafe instead of a support group. Unless it’s a ‘proper” support group, everything we do includes elements of both therapy and fun, and – most importantly – brings them together with their peers. That’s the most healing.

Bereavement

We help with both “national” bereavement – people who have lost loved ones to wars or acts of terror, and “civil” bereavement – people who have lost someone to illness, suicide, an accident, or any other kind of tragedy. When I took the position of director three years ago, we decided to start focusing a lot more on civil bereavement. We are the only organization that helps all bereaved families, and we’ve been focusing most on those families who don’t receive any help from the government or other resources.

After opening a unit specifically for October 7th and the war, we continued our work for civil bereavement as well. We debated whether to distinguish between the two groups. We saw that our civil bereaved families were feeling invisible, with no opportunity to express their grief – as if the enormity of national bereavement somehow overshadows their pain. But the war has brought it all out, all the anxiety. Just like for all of the Jewish people, only amplified a thousand times for the bereaved families. So this makes it even more complicated. We saw that these families need us now more than ever, and we wanted to ensure that we help both groups. So this separation was for both sides, to give them their place and say, “You’re allowed to feel hurt.” I feel like we made the right decision.

Perspective

It’s been a rollercoaster, both personally and professionally. It’s taken me back to 23 years ago, remembering the pain we were in, but knowing that I’m not in the same place. Meeting the newly bereaved families gives perspective.

In June we held a family day program with widows and orphans from Kfar Aza and Be’eri (two of the most-hit communities on October 7th). Running the group, I was scared: It’s very intimidating to talk to these women, trying not to say the wrong thing, and ensure it’s appropriate. So the therapist and I decided beforehand what we were going to ask. I asked everyone to tell one thing they had done for themselves during the previous week, and it went extremely well and started a whole conversation. And then at the end they said to me, “You’ve been bereaved for 23 years, what can you tell us? Give us something.”

I replied – and it’s very hard to say this to newly bereaved people – that they say that you need to move on with your life, but the lives you are going to have are not the lives you were going to have. And right now (especially during the first year, and when you’re all evacuated from your homes) your entire life is pain. I said, “When they say time heals all wounds, it’s not true. The pain doesn’t go away, but gradually life grows around it. And with time you’ll see that, although the pain will still be there, you’ll be able to live a full life.” It was very scary saying that to someone who’s newly bereaved, and I wouldn’t have done it if they hadn’t asked, but I felt like they needed that hope. After 23 years, my family is in a very different place compared to where these families are right now. I can remember it, I can really feel that pain, I know what they’re going through and that’s why it’s so painful for me. But knowing I’m no longer in the same place also gives me hope for them.

Hope

In the end, we the Jewish people are very, very resilient. We don’t have a choice. We can’t let them break us. When my brother was murdered, my mother looked at my father and said, “What are we going to do now?” And the first thing my father said was, “I am not going to let them win. I am not going to let the terrorists ruin my family.”

We made aliya when I was 5, only five years before Koby was murdered, and it was the path that led our family. On the one hand, you’re allowed to be angry, to cry, and to express all your feelings. They’re all valid and okay. But at the same time, we’re not going to let them win. So dealing with the war obviously brings up all the old traumas and I feel I’m living in fear much of the time. When my husband left I asked myself why I didn’t get a gun. I need to be able to protect my family. On the other hand, we’ve no place to go: It’s not like it’s better in LA or elsewhere… There’s anti-Semitism all over the world. And I feel that – as a Jewish nation – we’re holding the torch here in Israel so that everybody knows that they’re going to be safe wherever they are and that they can always come home. We’re living in history, and I’m lucky my job is a part of that. We’re helping people through this first year of bereavement and will be with them in 20 years too, God willing.

Strength

For us, every Diaspora Jew visiting Israel during this time and participating, every donation, all the Jews who speak up about what’s happening in the country (even if they’re not here themselves), are really empowering. I can really feel that the connection between the Jews in the Diaspora and those in Israel has greatly strengthened during these months. It’s very very meaningful to me, to  know that they feel it and care, that they come here – to a war zone – to show their support. And I really hope that this connection lasts long after the war is over, because there was a lot going on 
before the war, a disconnect. Now I feel like we’ve come back together and I pray that the Jews everywhere realize that, in the end, the fact that we have the State of Israel allows us all to live freely as Jews, both here and all around the world.