Tel Aviv is where Boaz Brandstetter’s break with school turns into a passage through police custody and, with Michel Sommo’s help, a first attempt at independent work. In the account of these events, the city is not merely a destination: its police station, wholesale market, restaurant, and Planetarium mark successive steps from flight toward a precarious form of self-reliance.

Boaz’s departure and arrest

Boaz left Telamim Agricultural High School on 19 February 1976, two days after learning that he would be cautioned rather than expelled. He went without telling his family where he was headed. A report commissioned by Manfred Zakheim records that he was arrested on 21 February at Tel Aviv’s Central Bus Station and questioned about dealing in stolen property. The report also notes two previous records for similar offences and that Boaz had been on juvenile probation since May 1975.

The family’s letter gives the arrest’s immediate aftermath from a different angle. The police told Michel that Boaz was being held in custody in Abu Kabir for possession of stolen goods. Michel used police connections, and a contact spoke with Boaz’s probation officer on the family’s behalf. After complications, Boaz was released on bail on 22 February, with Michel standing surety. Boaz initially refused release and asked to be left alone; he did not know that Alexander Gideon’s money had helped pay for the bail.

Work and self-reliance

After the release, Michel arranged work for Boaz at the Tel Aviv wholesale vegetable market. The employer was a greengrocer related to Michel, and the job was set up at Boaz’s request. The investigator’s report places the employment in the wholesale vegetable market and observes that it apparently contravened the law on employing minors: Boaz was not yet sixteen. The family’s account makes clear what mattered to him about the arrangement: he wanted to work, earn money, and avoid depending on anyone.

The money behind the bail and the family’s precarious finances complicate this effort at independence. Ilana explains that part of Alexander’s loan was used to secure Boaz’s release, although that was not the loan’s intended purpose. Michel’s salary as a nonqualified French teacher, after mortgage payments, barely covered the household’s food, with Madeleine Yifat, almost three, also to support. Boaz’s job therefore offers a measure of self-reliance, but it begins through family assistance and money whose source he does not know.

Shelter and the Planetarium

Boaz also found a place to stay at the Planetarium in Ramat Aviv, where one of the people in charge invited him to live on the premises. The investigator describes him as a volunteer night watchman and records that he was not yet sixteen, though his size and strength made him appear much older. The report found no significant social connections around him at that point, leaving the Planetarium as a practical refuge rather than evidence of an established new community.

Boaz was drawn there not by the stars but by the telescopes and optics. That distinction gives his stay a specific focus: the Planetarium offers shelter, while its instruments attract his attention. In the account of his early days in Tel Aviv, the workplace and the Planetarium are provisional footholds, made possible by other people but connected to his stated wish to earn his own living.

Michel’s intervention in the city

Michel’s assistance goes beyond arranging bail and work. After Boaz agreed to leave custody, Michel took him to a recently opened kosher Chinese restaurant in Tel Aviv, and they went to see a film together. Ilana recalls that the two could have been mistaken for father and son, with Boaz appearing to be the father. The outing briefly unsettles the usual family roles: Michel is the stepfather who insists he is not Boaz’s parent, yet he has crossed from Jerusalem to secure his release and stays with him afterward.

The report, dated 26 March 1976, consolidates Tel Aviv’s place in this short sequence: arrest at the Central Bus Station, release on Michel’s surety, employment through a relative in the vegetable market, and residence at the Planetarium in Ramat Aviv. Together, these locations trace Boaz’s movement from a school departure and police trouble toward work and temporary shelter, without suggesting that his legal or family difficulties have been resolved.