Binyamina is presented through its agricultural land and its proximity to Zikhron Yaakov, but its importance is not merely scenic: an orange grove there becomes a potential source of money in a complicated effort to support Ilana Sommo’s household. The place also borders the setting of an earlier family encounter, linking a saleable asset to the novel’s history of inheritance, obligation, and strained loyalties.

Setting and Association

The text places an estate at the gateway between Binyamina and Zikhron Yaakov. It is there that Volodya Gudonski awaits his son and intended daughter-in-law. The estate is described as an extensive property, with cultivated fields worked by laborers from Galilee, an ornamental pool and fountain, and a rose garden. This setting associates Binyamina with a landscape of substantial private landholding, rather than presenting it as a fully developed portrait of the town itself.

Binyamina is also identified with a citrus grove. In a telegram to Manfred Zakheim, Alexander A. Gideon directs him to sell property in Zikhron Yaakov if necessary and also to consider the Binyamina orange grove, specifying that the payment should be exactly $100,000. The instruction treats the two properties as distinct assets available for liquidation, while leaving open which should be sold.

The Grove as a Financial Resource

Zakheim later reports that, following Alexander A. Gideon’s instructions, he has unfrozen the citrus grove near Binyamina. He has not unfrozen the Zikhron Yaakov property, which he regards as a separate and more consequential decision. The grove could produce about $100,000 at twenty-four hours’ notice, but Zakheim has not completed the transaction: he is waiting for final instructions and preserving the possibility that Alexander A. Gideon will change his mind.

The proposed proceeds are intended to reach Ilana Sommo’s husband, Michel Sommo. Zakheim’s letter makes clear that he is reluctant to carry out the plan without confirmation, even as he has already taken the preliminary step of making the grove available for sale. Binyamina therefore enters the plot through a tension between readiness and restraint: the land can be converted quickly into money, but its conversion remains subject to Alexander A. Gideon’s decision and Zakheim’s caution.

The contemplated sale sits alongside a larger request from Ilana Sommo and Michel Sommo. Their letter asks for funds to pay off a mortgage and add rooms, provide for their son and daughter, and contribute toward purchasing and renovating Alkalai House in Hebron. The letter gives a combined total of $180,000 for the household and children, plus a further $95,000 for the Hebron property. The proposed $100,000 from Binyamina’s grove is a separate possible source of support; the evidence does not establish that it would meet the full request.

Land, Inheritance, and Narrative Significance

Binyamina’s grove makes the political and emotional significance of land concrete in domestic terms. The property is neither only a home nor only an ideological emblem: it is also an asset that can be unfrozen, priced, and sold to provide immediate assistance. Its proximity to Zikhron Yaakov sharpens the contrast between a grove Zakheim is prepared to release and the neighboring property he leaves untouched pending further direction.

The location’s narrative function is consequently double. The estate between Binyamina and Zikhron Yaakov belongs to the remembered family landscape, while the grove near Binyamina belongs to the unsettled financial present. By making the grove’s value explicit and its sale contingent, the novel connects place to the uncertain terms on which Alexander A. Gideon’s resources may pass to others. Binyamina becomes a point where property, family responsibility, and control over the future meet.