Where is that promised land

Where is that promised land? gathers the book’s tension between the dream of a perfect elsewhere and the demands of life in the present. The phrase first sharpens a critique of redemption pursued as an absolute; later, voiced amid memories of pioneer songs and a troubled sense of belonging, it becomes a plea whose force is redirected from prayer toward practical care.

Redemption as a dangerous elsewhere

In the narrator’s reflection, the promised land is a mirage held out as superior to life itself. The argument reverses a familiar account of human destruction: it is not simply selfishness or cruelty that leads people toward annihilation, but higher longings and an obsessive need to be saved. The narrator names this impulse a theological disease and sets it against the basic talent for life, which even a cat possesses. The question therefore challenges the promise that destruction can be justified by a future state of redemption.

The reflection makes that danger concrete through examples of religious violence. It recalls two monks in fourteenth-century Uppsala who killed ninety-eight orphans and then themselves after interpreting a blue fox at their window as a sign from the Virgin. It also turns to local language that treats bloodshed as a path to concealed glory. Addressing Michel Sommo, the narrator rejects that promised glory and points instead to Michel’s daughter as what is precious and present. The question asks what an ideal land can mean if its pursuit endangers the living people supposedly being redeemed.

Memory, belonging, and loss

Later, the question arises from a different voice and emotional register. Recalling a childhood as the daughter of immigrants, the speaker remembers being captivated by old pioneer songs despite the accent and unfamiliar manners that marked her as an outsider. The songs still stir her; they seem to promise that a land exists while reminding her that it has not been found. The question now carries longing not only for a destination, but for a sense of loyalty and belonging that has been obscured by destruction and estrangement.

This appeal is bound to particular relationships. The speaker asks Michel Sommo to remember her in his prayers and names those for whom mercy is sought: herself, him, his son and father, Yifat, and her sister. Loneliness, desire, and longing are presented as burdens people cannot bear indefinitely, yet also as part of what keeps them from being extinguished. The search for the promised land is thus at once historical and intimate: it concerns a damaged sense of home and the possibility that those who have gone astray might still find a way out.

From prayer to ordinary care

The speaker then withdraws the request for prayer. In its place comes a detailed appeal for everyday acts with Yifat: building David’s Tower from toy bricks, taking her to the zoo or cinema, making her fried eggs, buying flannel pajamas and new shoes, and not handing her over to an aunt. These instructions do not answer the question with a new doctrine or destination. They shift attention toward the responsibilities and affections available in ordinary life.

The final reminders extend that practical tenderness to Michel himself: consider Boaz carrying his father, notice how evenings are spent after travel, buy a warm scarf, and take care not to fall ill. The movement from a plea about the promised land to these small acts reframes redemption as care for particular people rather than sacrifice for an abstract future. The question remains unanswered, but its final turn suggests that the search cannot be separated from how the living treat one another now.