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Camp Koby: Fun and "Therapy Lite" for Bereaved Children

(Jerusalem Report) Linda Gradstein - At Camp Koby, every child has lost a first-degree relative to terror, illness, or an accident. "Everywhere else, I felt people see me only as a headline, as a 'bereaved brother,'" says Noam Armoni, whose brother was killed in an army training accident last year. "Here I'm just a regular kid and that makes me feel more normal." 400 kids will attend the eight-day overnight camp this year for free, thanks to the Koby Mandell Foundation. Koby Mandell was a 13-year-old boy from Tekoa who was murdered along with his friend, Yosef Ishran, by Palestinian terrorists in 2001. "It's 'therapy lite,'" says Seth Mandell, Koby's father and a former Hillel rabbi at the University of Maryland. "Most of the real therapy happens at night, when the counselors and kids just talk to each other....Psychologists say that one of toughest parts of bereavement is the sense of isolation. Here one seven-year-old walks up to another and says, 'What happened to you?'"
2019-08-16 00:00:00
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