Boaz’s estrangement from the Sommo family

Boaz’s estrangement from the Sommo family is not a single break but a changing distance: separation from his mother, Ilana Sommo, becomes hostility toward her new husband, Michel-Henri Sommo, and then gradually gives way to practical dependence and tentative affection. His refusal to accept the family’s claim on him persists even when its members repeatedly help him, so that reconciliation emerges through acts of care rather than a clear declaration that the past has been settled.

Separation and the new household

After Ilana and Boaz are expelled from their former home, they take refuge with her sister and brother-in-law at their kibbutz. Ilana stays there for six months before returning to Jerusalem to work in a bookshop; Boaz remains at the kibbutz for another five years, until he is thirteen. She visits every three weeks, but the arrangement keeps mother and son apart for most of his childhood. The narrative later recalls him as a quiet, painstaking child who made model airplanes from balsa wood, a remembered contrast to the hostility and volatility that define their later encounters.

Ilana’s marriage to Michel marks a further rupture. Boaz does not visit the couple in Jerusalem, and when they tell him that their daughter, Yifat, has been born, he ends the telephone call abruptly. He calls his mother a whore, repeating an insult associated with Alexander Gideon, and directs contempt at Michel as the man who has taken a place in the household. The evidence does not reduce this rejection to a single grievance: it unfolds amid the earlier family break, Boaz’s long residence away from his mother, and continuing uncertainty about his biological father.

The distance becomes a direct confrontation when Boaz, then thirteen and a half, arrives at the Sommos’ home on a winter night. He announces that he will leave the kibbutz and demands a place at an agricultural school, threatening instead to live on the streets. Michel tells him to change, eat, wash, and wait until morning before discussing what to do. Boaz rejects Michel’s authority and asks who he is to give instructions. When Boaz turns toward the door, Ilana places herself between him and the exit. She agrees that he may attend agricultural school if that is what he genuinely wants; Michel, holding the infant Yifat after tending to her, insists that Boaz also apologize to his mother and ask properly.

The exchange exposes both the hostility and the attachment beneath it. Boaz speaks to Ilana with contempt about her marriage, then touches her hair and changes tone to compliment the baby. His response does not undo the insult or restore the relationship, but it interrupts the scene’s rejection with a small, unmistakable acknowledgment of the child. Through Michel’s brother’s influence, the family gets Boaz into Telamim Agricultural High School. At Boaz’s request, they do not visit him there. Ilana and Michel pay the fees and keep their distance, a concession that respects his demand while leaving the estrangement intact.

School crisis and Michel’s intervention

For two years Boaz sends no postcard. News reaches the household instead through the school: he has been involved in fights, has disappeared at night, and has acquired a police record and probation status. When the school moves to expel him after an altercation with a woman teacher, Ilana goes there, but Boaz refuses to see her and sends word that he wants nothing to do with her. The school initially gives her only a fortnight to make other arrangements. She later learns that the incident did not amount to the assault first reported: after Boaz made an inappropriate joke and the teacher slapped him, he struck back. The distinction changes the account of the episode, but not the danger that he will lose his placement.

Michel offers to let Boaz live with them, although he, Ilana, and Yifat occupy only one and a half rooms and are still paying their mortgage. Ilana doubts that Boaz will accept. Her letter to Alexander Gideon makes clear that the family has little practical room to maneuver: another vocational school is unlikely to take Boaz with his record and probation officer involved. She also expects Gideon to deny responsibility, citing the unresolved paternity question and the inconclusive blood test. The separation is therefore bound up not only with Boaz’s rejection of Michel but with an older dispute over whether Gideon will acknowledge any obligation toward him.

After Boaz is cautioned rather than expelled, he leaves the school and is taken into custody in Abu Kabir over possession of stolen goods. Michel uses family and police connections to help secure his release on bail. Some of the money comes from Gideon’s assistance, but Boaz is not told its source; Ilana believes he would have rejected it if he had known. At first Boaz refuses release and says he wants to be left alone. Michel goes to the police station without Ilana and speaks to him privately. Rather than demand recognition as a father, Michel makes clear that he is neither Boaz’s father nor an authority Boaz has to perform for. He gives Boaz a short time to decide whether to leave on bail and accepts that the choice is his.

Boaz challenges Michel’s apparent indifference by asking why he travelled from Jerusalem to arrange the bail if he does not care. Michel answers with humor, then asks whether Boaz will come with him. The question is followed by action: after leaving custody, Boaz goes with Michel to a kosher Chinese restaurant in Tel Aviv and to a film. Michel also asks what Boaz wants from life. Boaz says he wants nothing, and resists being pressed to formulate a future; Michel responds by getting up to leave rather than forcing an answer. When Boaz finally says he wants to work and earn his own money, Michel arranges a job for him with a wholesale greengrocer connected to the family. Help is offered, but in a form that recognizes Boaz’s insistence on independence.

Gradual return and unresolved claims

The practical interventions begin to alter the relationship. The friends of the Sommo family help close Boaz’s police record, and Michel gradually finds ways to draw him back into contact. Boaz eventually visits the family in Jerusalem. Ilana describes Michel, much smaller than his towering stepson, climbing onto Boaz’s shoulders to change a veranda light bulb. The image reverses their earlier contest over authority: Michel now depends physically on Boaz for a task, while the two appear close enough to share an ordinary domestic moment. Yifat, meanwhile, helps turn the reunion into a playful rivalry for her attention. After the Sabbath, the family eats together and goes to the cinema, with a neighbor’s son looking after the child.

Boaz’s departure from the country does not erase that change. In a note to Michel, he says he has received Michel’s long letter, reports that he apologized to a person named Abram despite uncertainty about who owed whom an apology, and says he left thanks for Bruno and Janin Fuks. He says that he likes Yifat, admires Michel despite occasional nagging, and feels sorry for Ilana because her life would have been better without him. The note combines affection with self-reproach and distance: he is already at sea when the letter arrives, and asks the family to forget him. His departure is therefore neither a simple reconciliation nor a return to the household.

Boaz later turns up again at the Sommo home with a young French mathematics student. He greets Michel and Ilana with an almost joking familiarity, brings sweets for Yifat, and bows to Michel in a deliberately respectful gesture. Yifat climbs over him as he crouches to play with her. These gestures coexist with his immediate purpose: Boaz has approached Zakheim about money and has been directed toward Michel to claim what he considers his share. Michel feeds the visitors, takes them to the cinema, and later explains that the money is intended for the future of Ilana, Boaz, and Yifat, while Boaz and Yifat remain minors. He will support Boaz’s education, but not a business venture involving tourists, boats, and girls. Boaz listens without arguing, his smile suggesting that the dispute over money has not extinguished his regard for Michel.

Family distance and its wider pressures

Money repeatedly gives the family a means of acting across the separation, but it also makes their obligations contested. In a formal request to Gideon, Ilana and Michel seek funds to pay their mortgage, add another room and a half, and provide for both children; they also ask for support toward buying and renovating Alkalai House in Hebron. The scale and purposes of the request place Boaz’s future alongside housing, Yifat’s security, and the family’s political project. Later, Michel treats Gideon’s money as a resource for building and land development, while insisting that Boaz’s share must serve his education and future as a person rather than an immediate scheme of his own choosing. Financial provision can keep the relationship alive, but it cannot by itself settle the question of who belongs to whom or who has the right to decide Boaz’s future.

Michel’s political commitments add another pressure to this already complicated household. Reports describe his work in organizations advocating territorial expansion and land purchases, and his later correspondence with Gideon discusses proposals to compensate Arab landowners and secure property in the West Bank. Ilana’s account of Michel’s business ambitions likewise connects the money Gideon provides to real-estate activity and the redemption of land. These projects do not explain Boaz’s hostility, but they show that family resources and political objectives increasingly occupy the same space. Against those large claims, the relationship’s most persuasive repairs remain modest: arranging a job, sharing a meal, taking a trip to the cinema, or asking Boaz to decide for himself.

The Sommo family’s estrangement from Boaz consequently remains provisional rather than resolved. He rejects Michel’s parental status, resists dependence, and leaves again; yet he accepts Michel’s help, returns to the home, shows warmth toward Yifat, and acknowledges admiration for Michel. Michel, for his part, does not require Boaz to call him father before treating him as someone worth helping. The movement from refusal to fragile connection is measured less by declarations than by repeated accommodations, and the family’s contact survives because care continues even where agreement and trust remain incomplete.