Boaz Moves to the Zikhron Property

Boaz Moves to the Zikhron Property is a turning point in which Alexander Gideon converts a desire for independence into a concrete arrangement: Boaz can move into an abandoned house near Zikhron Yaakov, restore it for wages, and decide how to live there. The offer gives him a way out of Kiryat Arba without requiring him to accept Alexander’s supervision. Its promise of freedom is practical, but the property itself sits within a wider family and political landscape where houses, inheritance, and land are rarely just private matters.

The Offer and Its Two Paths

In his letter of 23 July 1976, Alexander answers Boaz’s wish to be on his own and not be told what to do by accepting that wish rather than arguing against it. He says that he had wanted the same independence, but had lacked the strength to claim it. He proposes setting aside, for the time being, money already held by Michel Sommo and offers Boaz two alternatives, one in America and one in Israel.

The American option is deliberately specific. Alexander will provide a ticket, arrange somewhere to stay and a job, perhaps in optics, and leave open the possibility of further study in a subject Boaz chooses. Repayment from wages is permitted but neither urgent nor compulsory. Alexander also warns him that language will be a difficulty at first and points out that people in America do not have relatives in the police. The offer therefore joins material support to an acknowledgment of Boaz’s legal and personal circumstances, without making the money a debt he must immediately discharge.

The alternative is a large, empty house near Zikhron Yaakov, then in poor condition. Alexander offers to pay Boaz a fair monthly wage as he gradually starts restoring it, and to cover building materials and other expenses. Boaz may invite anyone he likes to live there; some agriculture is possible, and the property is not far from the sea. Most importantly, the arrangement is framed around Boaz’s choice: he is to do only what he wants. Rather than assigning him a finished home or a prescribed occupation, Alexander offers a neglected place whose future depends on Boaz’s own work.

Putting the Move into Effect

Alexander makes the offer actionable by directing Boaz to Roberto di Modena, a lawyer in Jerusalem who shares an office with Manfred Zakheim. He specifically tells Boaz not to approach Manfred, but to go directly to Roberto and explain which option he has chosen. Roberto already has instructions to carry out either decision at once. Boaz need not write back to Alexander, who closes by urging him to be free and strong and to judge him fairly if he can.

A message from Roberto to Alexander at Midwest University in Chicago confirms that the Israeli option has been implemented. Roberto reports that he has made the necessary arrangements for Boaz’s installation in the property, is dealing with some formal difficulties, and has given him the sum Alexander set aside for preliminary arrangements. From then on, Roberto is to pay Boaz monthly according to Alexander’s instructions. The message says that Boaz has been in Zikhron since the previous day. It also reports that Roberto’s partner is furious, a brief indication that the arrangement has met resistance within the adults’ business or legal circle, though the message does not explain its precise cause.

Family Strain and Immediate Consequences

The move takes place against a history of strained relations. A report on Michel Sommo’s family life states that Boaz has been on probation since May 1975 and that his relations with Michel and Ilana Sommo are poor. For several years, he has refused to visit them in Jerusalem. The Zikhron house thus offers not simply a change of address but an alternative to a family home in which contact has already broken down.

In a letter dated 1 August, Ilana Sommo tells her sister that Michel phoned the previous night to say that Boaz was leaving Kiryat Arba to live alone in the ruined Zikhron house, as Alexander had decreed. She had pleaded with Michel not to interfere and promised that Yoash would go to Zikhron over the weekend to see what was happening and how they could help. Her account conveys both the speed of the change and the uncertainty surrounding it: Boaz has gone, but his mother and the wider family are still trying to understand the arrangement and decide how to respond. She also sees Alexander’s renewed contact with her as a mistake, revealing that the offer to Boaz is entangled with unresolved tensions among the adults.

Land, Money, and Political Purpose

The house is offered as a place for work and self-direction, but Zikhron property also figures in a larger network of property negotiations. In correspondence with Michel, Alexander says that he has heard Michel’s organization plans to pay Arab landowners for their property and provide one-way passage for them. He questions the scale and cost of the plan, then considers the proposed exchange of the coastal plain for the mountains. In the same letter, he notes that Dr. Gideon has changed his mind about selling his Zikhron property, though he may change it again, and says that this makes it difficult to complete a proposed arrangement involving Bethlehem, Toulouse, and Zikhron.

Alexander goes on to describe information he says he has uncovered about Michel’s political and property connections. According to his account, Mr. N. financed Michel’s trip to Paris and helped secure the restoration of his French nationality; Michel had travelled to negotiate with a Christian religious order headquartered in Toulouse over land west of Bethlehem. Alexander describes a possible exchange between the order’s Bethlehem land and a substantial property inside the pre-1967 borders. These details do not establish that Boaz’s move was part of that negotiation. They do show that the same Zikhron property Alexander makes available to his son exists amid unsettled plans for land and ownership.

Michel’s political history further clarifies the ideological setting of these exchanges. He had been active in right-wing politics, helped organize the North African intellectual and student group Moledet in Jerusalem in 1964, and campaigned before the Six-Day War against the government’s wait-and-see policy. After the war he worked in the Greater Israel Movement, leaving it in 1971; in 1972 he helped found the Jewish Fellowship Movement and remained on its executive committee. The organization opposed troop disengagements after the Yom Kippur War and attempted to purchase land illegally around Bethlehem. Michel was interviewed by police twice in connection with these activities but was not charged; the report says it found no evidence that he personally took part in violent lawbreaking.

Requests for money from Alexander likewise connect family support to competing projects. The Sommos had asked for funds to pay their mortgage, build another room, provide for their son and daughter, and contribute toward purchasing and renovating Alkalai House in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Hebron. They presented the latter as an effort to repossess Jewish property seized during the 1929 Palestine riots by paying full market price rather than using violence. Later, Ilana describes Michel’s growing attention to building plots, grants, property laws, loans, and investment, and his confidence that Alexander’s money or property would eventually be available to the family. The Zikhron offer differs in its stated terms: rather than promise Boaz an inheritance or an ideological mission, it funds his labor and leaves him room to choose his own way of living.

The Meaning and Limits of Independence

The arrangement gives Boaz immediate material means to leave Kiryat Arba: a place to live, preliminary money, an income for restoration work, and permission to bring others into the house. Alexander’s instructions to use a lawyer, his insistence that Boaz choose for himself, and the absence of any requirement to reply make the offer unusually direct. At the same time, its execution depends on Alexander’s money, his instructions to Roberto, and a property whose ownership and future are not entirely settled.

That tension gives the move its particular significance. Alexander does not ask Boaz to return to the family or accept a prescribed future; he offers support while trying to let his son set the terms. Yet Ilana’s reaction and the report of poor relations with Michel and Ilana show that the change cannot be separated from existing family conflict. Nor can the house be isolated from the political uses and financial expectations attached to land elsewhere in the correspondence. Boaz’s arrival in Zikhron is therefore both a practical beginning and a fragile experiment: independence is made possible, but its material foundations remain bound to other people’s decisions and to a contested property world.