Manfred M. Zakheim

Manfred M. Zakheim is Alexander A. Gideon’s lawyer and business associate, and the principal intermediary through whom Gideon’s troubled dealings with the Sommo family are organized. In the 1976 correspondence, Zakheim is at once financial manager, investigator, adviser, and messenger: he tries to restrain Gideon’s sudden acts of generosity, but carries them out when ordered. His dry humor sharpens rather than conceals the seriousness of the matters he handles, which include Michel-Henri Sommo’s appeal for money, Boaz’s disappearance, and the unresolved question of Boaz’s paternity.

Identity and Working Relationship

Zakheim’s professional address is given as Zakheim & di Modena, Lawyers, at 36 King George Street. His correspondence with Gideon reflects a relationship extending beyond routine legal representation: they share an interest in property, and Zakheim is entrusted with sensitive instructions and decisions affecting Gideon’s family and finances. The citrus grove near Binyamina is described as theirs, while Zakheim treats the Zikhron Yaakov property as an asset he can still protect from an imprudent sale. His role depends on both access and candor. He can question Gideon’s judgment sharply, but he remains the person expected to put Gideon’s decisions into effect.

That mixture of loyalty and resistance appears in Zakheim’s letter of 28 March 1976. He makes clear that Gideon can dismiss him with a brief instruction, while joking that he has no wish to accompany him into a psychiatric ward. Beneath the sarcasm is a practical boundary: Zakheim will assist, but does not want to be drawn uncritically into what he sees as Gideon’s erratic scheme. His humor gives their exchanges an intimate, argumentative register rather than the distance of ordinary client correspondence.

Managing Gideon’s Financial Decisions

When Gideon directs him to release funds, Zakheim unfreezes their citrus grove near Binyamina and calculates that it can produce about one hundred thousand U.S. dollars within twenty-four hours. He distinguishes this grove from the Zikhron Yaakov property, which he declines to put at risk. He is prepared to pass the money to Michel-Henri Sommo, the husband of Gideon’s former wife, but deliberately leaves the transaction incomplete until Gideon confirms the instruction. This pause preserves Gideon’s chance to reconsider while limiting any loss to Zakheim’s commission.

The decision is not merely about raising money. Zakheim reconstructs a meeting in which Michel-Henri Sommo presents the proposed donation as a way to repair wrongs between people and between humanity and God. Sommo connects the Hebrew word for blood with money, turning the payment into a religious as well as financial act. Zakheim reports this appeal to Gideon and urges him to abandon the plan, framing it as an extravagant gesture that might be better withdrawn. At the same time, he suspects the demand may conceal blackmail: someone may have learned an embarrassing fact and be using the threat of exposure to obtain money and the ruins of Hebron. He offers to intervene if Gideon signals approval.

Gideon rejects Zakheim’s attempt to control the transaction and orders him to pay the exact hundred thousand immediately and stop pestering him. The exchange establishes the limits of Zakheim’s influence: he can delay, warn, and advise, but Gideon retains final authority. Zakheim’s caution nevertheless shapes how the money moves. Later, he warns Sommo that Gideon has authorized him to block further transfers obtained through emotional or other pressure. The warning also makes clear that Zakheim believes he holds information that could help manage future disputes. He thus serves not only as a conduit for Gideon’s money but as a gatekeeper over access to it.

Investigation and the Family’s Legal Record

Zakheim responds to his suspicion of blackmail by hiring S. Zand Private Investigations Ltd. to investigate Michel-Henri Sommo. He sends Gideon the resulting report and points out that the material may give them leverage if Sommo is attempting intimidation. His proposed countermeasure is deliberately framed as reciprocal pressure: the other side need not assume it alone can use compromising information. The episode shows Zakheim treating private investigation as an extension of legal and financial strategy, while leaving Gideon to decide whether to authorize direct confrontation.

The material he marks for Gideon includes excerpts from two 1968 rulings. The Rabbinical Court decision in the divorce case records that Gideon’s wife admitted adultery and consequently forfeited her ketubah and maintenance. The Jerusalem District Court decision concerns her claim for maintenance for herself and her young child. It notes Gideon’s insistence that he was not the child’s father, inconclusive blood-test results, and the court’s advice that both parties undergo tissue testing. The wife declined, Gideon also declined, and she withdrew the claim; the court then recorded that neither party would make further demands of the other. By underlining these passages, Zakheim directs attention to the legal history surrounding the family’s disputed obligations and Boaz’s uncertain biological paternity. The record gives concrete form to the old conflict that now informs Gideon’s financial and personal decisions.

Boaz, Search Instructions, and Testing

When Boaz disappears from the family with whom he has been staying, Michel-Henri Sommo breaks an oath against further dealings with Gideon and asks him to help locate the boy. Sommo describes Boaz’s earlier troubles, a short message saying he intends to work aboard a ship, and the possibility that he may instead be somewhere on land. Zakheim becomes the point through which Gideon’s response is organized. Gideon instructs him to arrange a search for the boy and to send a letter to Ilana as requested, then offers another fifty thousand dollars if Sommo will arrange tissue testing for Boaz, with Gideon agreeing to undergo a parallel test in London.

This assignment ties Zakheim’s administrative work to the central uncertainty in the family’s history. He is not presented as deciding Boaz’s paternity or the family’s claims; rather, he carries instructions between people who have long avoided direct trust. His involvement makes the proposed test a negotiated condition attached to financial assistance, while the search for the missing boy remains an urgent and separate task. The earlier court record, the fresh offer of testing, and the search instructions converge in his correspondence without resolving the underlying question.

Presence in the Sommo Household’s Correspondence

Zakheim’s work also places him in Ilana Sommo’s private account of her marriage to Michel-Henri Sommo and her renewed contact with Gideon. At Gideon’s instruction, she meets Zakheim at Café Savyon to pass him a letter, in a rendezvous Michel knows about. Her description presents him as polished and self-assured, cultivating an atmosphere of personal attention through compliments, suggestive remarks, refreshments, and eventually a single carnation. The episode adds a more socially ambiguous dimension to his role: he is not simply a disembodied legal channel but a recurring presence in the household’s delicate arrangements.

The letters ultimately make Zakheim’s defining function clear. He translates Gideon’s remorse and sudden generosity into transactions, searches, warnings, and legal procedures, while repeatedly trying to prevent those actions from becoming uncontrolled. He protects assets even as he releases them, investigates the recipient even as he facilitates payment, and challenges Gideon even while carrying out his commands. His wit offers a counterweight to the emotional and religious urgency surrounding the Sommo family, but it cannot settle the questions at the heart of the correspondence: what Gideon owes, whether Boaz is his son, and whether money can repair what the earlier marriage and divorce left unresolved.