Boaz’s Zikhron Settlement

Boaz’s Zikhron Settlement is both a practical rebuilding project and Boaz’s attempt to shape a different kind of community: one held together by work and mutual consideration rather than religious conformity or political conquest. The settlement takes form through repairs, a garden, livestock, and shared facilities, but its significance is clearest in whom Boaz invites to live there. He offers Ilana and Yifat a place to rest and work without requiring them to adopt Michel’s beliefs, while insisting that the settlement’s residents respect one another and do their share.

From neglected property to working settlement

When Ilana visits, the property is still being reclaimed from overgrowth. Two young women are clearing weeds near the steps, and Boaz appears leading a goat. The house has no electricity and, until the previous day, no water. Boaz has found a pipeline running to a national park among the thistles and fitted a tap to it. The episode presents the settlement not as a finished ideal but as a place made habitable through improvised labor and repair.

Boaz describes an everyday routine that combines work, food, looking after the property, and repairing what is broken. He is caring for the house in return for monthly wages, and expects the ongoing work to reduce the number of ruined buildings in the country. A vegetable garden is about to begin; he anticipates building a shed for goats and offers Ilana work in cooking or tending them. His proposal to her is deliberately practical: there is work and food, and she can stay without being in his way. The settlement’s welcome is made credible by the labor it needs and the resources it can offer, not by a promise that hardship has disappeared.

A communal life with room for difference

Boaz’s account of the settlement places shared work alongside personal freedom. In a letter to Michel, he describes arranging a clean room for Ilana and Yifat and says that he has six people helping to put things in order. He lists water and electricity permits obtained through Manfred Zakheim, as well as sprinklers, plants, tools, and chickens bought with money from America. A telescope is nearly finished on the roof. These details show the project acquiring infrastructure and shared equipment, not merely existing as Boaz’s aspiration.

The letter also sets out the settlement’s informal terms of coexistence: people may live as they choose so long as they work hard, treat others decently, avoid making themselves a nuisance, and do not preach. Boaz is willing to provide a kosher section of the kitchen if Ilana wants one. That accommodation matters because it distinguishes a shared home from a community organized to make every resident conform. For Yifat, he has made swings, a slide, and a sandbox; for Ilana, he can provide work. His invitation joins family care to the commune’s daily needs without insisting that either be absorbed into Michel’s religious household.

Ilana’s visit and Boaz’s invitation

Ilana’s visit makes the settlement’s offer concrete. She arrives hoping to slip away unnoticed, but Boaz sees her and identifies her to the two women helping at the property. He has them bring her water, acknowledges that it is tepid, and asks about Yifat. Ilana says Yifat is at nursery school and that Michel will collect her, while also claiming that she had been on her way to see Rahel. Her arrival is therefore marked by hesitation and concealment, in contrast to Boaz’s matter-of-fact welcome.

Boaz asks Ilana to stay, bring Yifat, and take whatever work she wants. He presents the settlement as an alternative to the exhausting pattern of killing and dying that he sees around them: people can make things grow rather than make trouble. He imagines the work expanding into a commune for people he regards as outsiders, where they might contribute food instead of being treated as a problem. His offer does not require Ilana to share his plans; he says she can do as she wishes and that he will not interfere.

Boaz also tries to persuade Ilana that she needs a life beyond waiting at home. His invitation is generous, but it is not a declaration that she must accept his judgment or become part of his household. He offers a place to work, food, and the company of the others, while making room for her daughter and her own choices. The settlement thus becomes a possible refuge from the strains of Jerusalem and Michel’s authority, rather than simply a rural extension of the family home.

Political disagreement and practical dependence

The commune’s language of freedom is sharpened by Boaz’s disagreement with Michel. Boaz reminds Michel that Kiryat Arba, where Michel had sent him, did not suit someone who was neither religious nor committed to taking Arab land. He argues that Arabs should be left alone and that both sides should leave one another alone. His settlement’s stated ethic of noninterference therefore carries a political contrast with Michel’s territorial commitments and with the land-redemption projects in which Michel is involved.

That contrast does not make Boaz’s project independent of outside structures. The settlement relies on money from America, local permits, and Zakheim’s help in securing water and electricity. Its residents work on a property whose repair is part of a wider story of inheritance, finance, and political argument. Boaz’s communal ideal is consequently both a rejection of imposed uniformity and a material undertaking that requires resources and cooperation beyond its residents.

Michel’s earlier confidence that Gideon’s money would become available for land development offers another point of contrast. Michel speaks of plots, loans, investment, and the redemption of the Land as a pious mission; Boaz, in his letter, emphasizes the room, garden, tools, chickens, and ordinary work needed to make the place function. The disagreement concerns not only belief but the use of money and land: development and political purpose on one side, practical repair and a less prescriptive communal life on the other.

Growth and narrative significance

The settlement continues to develop after Ilana’s visit. Rahel later reports that Yoash has visited Zikhron, helped repair the chicken-run fencing, and given agricultural advice. He comes away with the impression that Boaz is doing well in the commune he is establishing. Rahel suggests that Ilana, Michel, and Yifat should visit Boaz, indicating that the place can serve as a point of contact rather than merely as a site of separation from the family.

Boaz’s account to Michel likewise shows the project moving from makeshift beginnings toward a more organized communal home: permits are in hand, equipment and plants have been acquired, people are working on the house, and facilities for Yifat are ready. Yet the settlement remains defined by a rule of conduct more than by a completed plan. Its residents may differ, and religious practice may be accommodated, but work and decent treatment are expected. In a novel where land can signify both political possession and personal inheritance, Boaz’s project gives land a nearer, daily purpose: repairing a house, growing food, and making space for people to live together without demanding that they become alike.