Boaz’s Placement in Kiryat Arba

Boaz’s placement in Kiryat Arba is both a practical alternative to reform school and a contested attempt to direct his life. Michel Sommo secures the arrangement around an optics workshop where Boaz can earn his keep, but the young man objects to the settlement’s religious expectations and to Michel’s continuing authority over his money and choices. In their letters, the placement becomes a test of what help means: Michel sees work, study, and religious discipline as a path toward responsibility, while Boaz insists that assistance has become a way to manage him.

Placement as Rescue and Condition

Michel has helped Boaz avoid reform school by arranging for him to go to Kiryat Arba, where an optics workshop provides a practical occupation. Boaz acknowledges that Michel saved him, as he had done after earlier trouble, but he stresses that this rescue came with a condition: agreeing to live in Kiryat Arba. The workshop is acceptable to him; the rest of the settlement is not. He has no interest in its religious studies, and he complains that the girls are scarcely visible, only distant figures.

Michel’s account presents the arrangement in sharply different terms. In his reply, dated 13 Tammuz 5736, he praises Boaz’s progress in the optical department, his honorable earnings, and his participation in rebuilding the Land. He also notes that Boaz volunteers as a night guard two nights a week. These details matter to Michel because they show the placement working as intended: Boaz is employed, contributing, and taking on responsibility. Yet Michel pairs that praise with distress at Boaz’s neglect of religious study, making clear that he regards the workshop as only one part of the arrangement’s purpose.

Boaz’s Objections and Demand for Freedom

Boaz’s letter argues that Michel mistakes disagreement for ingratitude. He respects the favors Michel has done for him, including rescuing him from trouble, but objects to being treated as though he owes Michel continuing obedience. Boaz says he has hit people only when convinced he was entirely right, and recalls conflicts with a teacher at Telamim, Abraham Abudarham, and the police in Sharm el-Sheikh. His account presents a repeated pattern: he believes himself justified, Michel intervenes, and the intervention is followed by instructions about how he should live.

The placement sharpens this grievance. Boaz objects to some residents’ disparaging talk about Arabs and rejects the idea that belonging to a group makes a person fit to be looked down on. He extends the same objection to Michel’s influence over his life and finances, accusing him of trying to manage both Boaz and Ilana. He also disputes Michel’s moral authority by insisting that he works and earns money rather than simply living on Michel’s support. In Boaz’s view, the money Michel controls belongs to him and his family, so control of it makes the placement feel less like generosity than a means of keeping him dependent.

Boaz asks for two specific things: money and permission from the police to leave. He does not claim to have a destination in mind; instead, he wants the freedom to wander before deciding where to settle, comparing that possibility with Michel’s own travels before he chose where to live. This uncertainty is central to his request. He wants the decision to remain open, while Michel’s arrangement places him in a defined community with work, religious study, and adult supervision. Boaz’s message also includes candy wrappers for Yifat, with instructions not to crumple them, and asks Ilana not to worry about him. The small gift sits beside his demand to leave, preserving his family affection even as he resists the conditions imposed on him.

Michel’s Reply: Discipline, Money, and Affection

Michel answers with a mixture of reprimand, argument, and material support. He criticizes Boaz’s spelling, style, and judgment, and warns that Boaz seems to have learned from his troubles only how to find more. His response presents affection as the reason for his severity: Michel says he is fond of Boaz and has done more for him than he was required to do. He then challenges Boaz to leave if that is truly his decision, while warning him not to expect Michel to rescue or relieve him afterward. The dare grants Boaz a formal choice but makes the emotional and practical cost of exercising it explicit.

Money is the sharpest point of dispute. Boaz claims that the funds Michel holds belong to him and Ilana, but Michel says the inheritance is divided equally among Boaz, his mother, and Yifat. He will give Boaz his share in full at twenty-one, not before, and argues that Boaz’s father entrusted him with responsibility rather than handing Boaz the money directly. This explanation makes the placement part of a broader arrangement of guardianship and financial control: Michel is not merely finding Boaz a workplace but also claiming authority over when Boaz can access his inheritance.

Michel does not end with the threat of withdrawal. He urges Boaz to come home before Yifat’s birthday, help his mother, and make his sister happy, reminding him that she loves him. He encloses a postal order for six hundred pounds and says it will not be deducted from Boaz’s inheritance. The envelope also contains a picture of a dog drawn by Yifat, which Michel notes has six legs. He asks that Boaz’s letter be treated as though it had never been written and closes with friendship and affection. These gestures soften but do not resolve the disagreement: Michel supplies money and invites Boaz home while maintaining his authority over the inheritance and his objections to Boaz’s conduct.

Significance of the Arrangement

The exchange makes Kiryat Arba more than a change of address. The placement offers Boaz skilled work, earnings, and a way out of reform school, yet it also surrounds him with expectations he does not accept. Michel measures progress through work, contribution, study, and restraint; Boaz measures fairness through independence, earned money, and the right to leave without being treated as a debtor. Their disagreement is therefore not simply over whether the placement is beneficial. It is over who gets to define benefit and whether help entitles the helper to direct the recipient’s future.

Neither letter settles the question. Michel praises concrete signs of progress and sends money, but continues to withhold Boaz’s inheritance until adulthood. Boaz recognizes that Michel has repeatedly helped him, yet rejects the idea that those interventions make Michel right about his life. The placement remains an uneasy compromise: a livelihood and protection from reform school on one side, religious and financial supervision on the other, with Boaz still asking to leave and Michel still insisting that responsibility requires more than earning wages.