Alexander Gideon

Alexander Gideon, a political science professor at Midwest University in Chicago, returns to Israel near the end of his life to see his son Boaz and stay in the house where he grew up. The return does not undo the years of estrangement: his marriage to Ilana Sommo ended in a bitter divorce, and he had left the country and cut off contact. But illness, regret, and his renewed presence in the family’s life unsettle the old divisions. Through letters and remembered scenes, he appears as a formidable, often hurtful man who is also capable of dependence, tenderness, and practical efforts to provide for others.

Identity and Background

Gideon is identified in his correspondence as a professor in the Political Science Department at Midwest University. His letters connect that distant professional life in Chicago with family affairs in Israel: one is addressed to Boaz Gideon, also known as Brandstetter, care of the Schulvass family, while another is addressed to Michel Sommo in Jerusalem. The changing distance between these addresses is part of his story: for years he had removed himself from family life, but eventually he wrote, returned, and tried to intervene in the future of those he had left behind.

His recollections of the childhood home give the return a particular weight. The house is not simply a place of shelter but a record of his earlier life, its rooms and corners associated with childhood games, punishments, and grief. Among the memories that remain vivid are the death of his pet rhesus monkey, which he recalls as the last time he wept as a child, and the discovery of his mother’s old sandals beneath a loose floorboard. The house thus holds experiences he had carried across decades, even after leaving the country.

Marriage, Separation, and Estrangement

In a letter to Michel, Gideon recounts that he married Ilana in September 1959, more at her initiative than his. After she became pregnant, she chose to have Boaz; Gideon says he had told her from the start that he did not consider himself suited to fatherhood. He came to understand that their life together was causing her suffering, but delayed separating until September 1968. He describes the divorce as vicious, and acknowledges that his own conduct was shaped by hatred and vindictiveness.

After the divorce, Gideon left Israel and severed his contacts. His distance was not only geographical: the letter presents a man who had withdrawn from the people whose lives he had helped shape. Ilana’s recollection of their earlier marriage nevertheless preserves the appeal that accompanied his severity. She remembers his manner at political gatherings, where he listened while others argued, then intervened with a carefully framed question that exposed loose definitions or contradictions. The remembered intellectual poise sits uneasily beside the cruelty he later admits, making the force of his personality inseparable from the hurt it caused.

Return, Illness, and the Childhood Home

Gideon says that a request for help from Ilana, or perhaps from both Ilana and Michel, prompted him to provide assistance. As his illness developed, he began to regret parts of his past. He returned to Israel without advance notice, intending to see Boaz and stay in his childhood home. He found Ilana there and accepted her decision to remain and look after him; he says he had neither invited her nor seen reason to send her away. He also stresses that the relationship between them was no longer a conventional marriage, and offers to provide Michel’s rabbi with an affidavit affirming Ilana’s innocence.

The illness is grave and progressively limiting. Gideon reports kidney cancer, two operations, and the spread of the growth into his abdomen. Doctors in New York saw no point in another operation; he was expected to enter Hadassah Hospital for radiotherapy, though he later doubted that the hospital could help him. Back at the house, he moves with a walking stick and spends his strength on small tasks, including sorting seeds. Boaz has made him sandals from strips of tire and string. The objects of daily life register his dependence, while his return to familiar rooms gives him a way to revisit the childhood the house preserves.

As he retraces that past, Gideon identifies places where he played, hid, and endured punishment, and recalls the death of his pet monkey as the occasion of his last childhood tears. He also finds the remains of his mother’s sandals under a loose floorboard. Later, he moves his belongings into his mother’s old bedroom, hangs the sandals on a rusty nail, and sets her damp-stained photograph on a table. This act gathers his return into a small arrangement of recovered objects: the house is both the place where he began and the place where he has come to die.

Fatherhood, Money, and Responsibility

Gideon’s relationship with Boaz remains complicated by his earlier refusal of fatherhood and the long separation that followed. Yet his letters show him addressing Boaz as his son and offering concrete choices rather than demanding an immediate return. Boaz can go to America, or take up an abandoned house near Zikhron Yaakov. For the second option, Gideon offers a fair monthly wage and payment for building materials if Boaz begins restoring the poor-condition property. Boaz may invite others to live there, pursue some agriculture, and decide freely what he wants to do. Gideon directs him to consult Roberto di Modena in Jerusalem, not Manfred Zakheim, so that his chosen plan can be put into effect at once.

Gideon also intervenes when a business partner threatens to intrude on his affairs. He orders that the purchaser of a property be identified and that payments to Boaz continue. In these instructions, financial support is both practical provision and an attempt to retain influence over decisions affecting his son. His offers leave Boaz a measure of choice, but they also show Gideon continuing to manage the family’s future from a position of wealth and authority.

His proposed changes to his will make that tension explicit. In a message to Michel, he offers him one quarter of the estate, with the rest going to Boaz, on the condition that Michel agree to a legal transfer of custody to Gideon until Boaz comes of age. In a later letter, Gideon says that his revised will is intended to protect both Boaz and Michel’s family, including Michel’s daughter, provided the money is not spent on what he regards as messianic investments. He also offers Michel half his inheritance if the children are allowed to remain with him a little longer. These arrangements join care to conditions: Gideon wants to provide for the family, but his generosity repeatedly carries terms that reach into custody and family decisions.

Care, Vulnerability, and the Closing Movement

The letters show Gideon’s authority changing under the pressure of illness. A man once remembered as able to silence a room now depends on others for daily care. He describes Ilana staying until his expected hospital treatment and asks Michel not to be harsh with her when she returns. Later, Ilana moves into his room to care for him at night because he wakes in panic and mumbles confused orders. She gives him an herbal drink and pills, holds his hand until he sleeps again, and helps him through the morning routine of washing, dressing, and eating.

The shift is not presented as a simple reconciliation. Gideon’s past actions remain acknowledged, and the marriage does not resume. Instead, his return creates a provisional closeness organized around care: Ilana stays beside him, Boaz has restored the property and made the walking stick and sandals he uses, and Gideon accepts help from the family he once abandoned. He comes to favor remaining in the house rather than returning to a hospital where he believes little can be done. His final movement is therefore not a recovery but a decision about where to spend the time left to him.

Narrative Role and Significance

Gideon is revealed across letters, recollections, and scenes of illness rather than through a single uninterrupted account. The correspondence presents him both as the subject of other people’s memories and as a writer explaining himself to Michel or addressing Boaz. Those accounts do not settle into a single verdict: Gideon admits to vindictiveness, makes arrangements for the family, and returns to a home filled with painful memories. The contrasts are central to his characterization, not evidence that one side cancels the other.

His late-life return brings the novel’s family conflicts into the same physical space. The house holds his childhood memories, Boaz’s work restoring the property, and Ilana’s care for him as his strength declines. Gideon’s attempts at repair take the forms available to him—letters, money, a will, a proposed home for Boaz, and acceptance of care—but each remains marked by the history of control and estrangement. He does not erase that history. He comes back to face it, and to remain, for a time, among the people and objects it bound together.