The blessings of a broken heart

‘We did not want to fall into the trap of being victims,’ says Kevin Kenigsberg, whose son Steven was killed 10 years ago.

By MIRIAM SHAVIV
Kevin Kenigsberg and Eileen Karpel 521 (photo credit: Courtesy)
Kevin Kenigsberg and Eileen Karpel 521
(photo credit: Courtesy)
‘I look at our family and think we have been blessed. It’s raining blessings on us.”
It is a strange sentiment coming from Eileen Karpel, a 52-year-old South African immigrant to Israel. Exactly 10 years ago this week, according to the Hebrew date, her stepson, Steven Kenigsberg, was killed in a Palestinian attack in the Gaza Strip.
It would have been easy for his family to spend the next decade immersed in mourning. But instead, they say, they have experienced “post-traumatic growth,” actually changing in a positive way.
It was a conscious decision.
“We did not want to fall into the trap of being victims,” says Steven’s father, Kevin, 56.
At the time of his death, Steven was a 19-year-old soldier in the Givati infantry brigade. He had made aliya from Johannesburg with his father in June 1999, leaving behind two brothers and his mother, from whom Kevin had long been separated (she is now deceased).
They met Eileen and her two daughters in a Ra’anana absorption center, and the two families soon moved in together in the nearby town of Hod Hasharon.
Aliya, says Kevin, was the making of Steven. As a teenager in South Africa he had been “protected and insular” and lacked direction. But in Israel, he got a job as a dishwasher, earning a small salary. He quickly picked up Hebrew and made close friends, enjoying a freedom of movement that was unimaginable in South Africa.
Eager to fit in, Steven generally shied away from other immigrants. When he enlisted in the IDF, he was keen to join a combat unit. His integration was so complete that he was accepted into an officers’ training course.
But he was killed before he could begin, at the start of a guard duty shift at the Kissufim crossing in the Gaza Strip. A Palestinian who had infiltrated the area during the night shot him at close range.
Over the following months, the family says they were well supported by the army, which directed them to its support groups for relatives of fallen soldiers. But they soon found the experience uncomfortable.
Many of the other families, they felt, were competing over who had the most perfect child or who could do the most to memorialize them.
“There is almost a subculture in Israeli society of bereaved families,” says Kevin. “We didn’t want to join it.”
Meanwhile, friends no longer knew how to behave around them.
“Everyone was looking at us as ‘poor’ people,” says Kevin. “At work, people would accidentally call me Steven and rush to apologize. I would have to reassure them that I understood. There was dead silence when people heard we were bereaved… I’d always tell them it didn’t matter, let’s go on to the next subject.”
Soon, says Eileen, she realized that “When tragedy strikes a family, if you don’t pull together you will be lost as a family and be in a perpetual state of mourning.”
It became imperative to make something positive out of the negative – as another bereaved parent, Sherri Mandell, once wrote, to recognize the blessings of a broken heart.
For Kevin, this meant acting on his long-standing political ideals by getting elected to the Likud’s central committee and telling visiting groups about Steven’s story.
As a couple, Kevin and Eileen became active in the Friends of the Reserves, which provides equipment to army reservists. And they both believe that the tragedy has made them more approachable parents to their remaining children and particularly appreciative of the new members of their family – four sons- and daughters-in-law and a granddaughter.
Meanwhile, Steven’s death helped motivate Steven’s brothers, Marc and Joel, to make aliya. Joel is currently studying to become a rabbi.
“I am not sure he would have reached that point without Steven’s death,” says Kevin.
Other bereaved parents do not necessarily understand the Kenigsbergs’ coping mechanism.
“Some say we are lucky that we are able to do this. Others say their whole lives stopped on that day,” says Eileen.
“A lot of people feel guilt, as if you can’t be happy again after you have buried a child. It takes tremendous courage to say you need to go on with living. The more you do it, the more it comes to you naturally.”
Not, they emphasize, that Steven has been in any way forgotten. He is thought of daily and is referred to naturally in conversation. And painful moments come often.
“When our last daughter, Danielle, got married, I stood under the huppa and was very happy for her, but I knew there were no more children to stand with under the huppa,” says Kevin. “Whenever Steven used to come home from the army, he would bring bougainvilleas for Danielle. She insisted on that flower decorating her huppa.”
Despite everything, the family has no regrets about making aliya. Their resilience, says Kevin, comes partially from Steven himself.
“Steven wanted to be in the army, to fight for Israel, to be a Zionist and to live a life. When he was killed, our world fell apart, but we held on to the fact that Steven did what he wanted to do, and we became determined to carry on living his values,” he says.
“On his gravestone it says that Steven is forever missed, forever a hero, forever young. It’s how I still look at it,” he says.