Boaz’s placement at Kiryat Arba

Boaz’s placement at Kiryat Arba is presented through a correspondence that makes the arrangement both practical and contested: he earns his living in an optical workshop, while Alexander A. Gideon praises his work and service but rebukes his studies and challenges his religious and personal choices. The letters turn a place of employment into a test of whether Boaz can be helped without being controlled, and whether the adults around him can accept the independence he demands.

Work and the terms of the placement

By July 1976, Boaz Brandstetter is living in Kiryat Arba and working in an optical workshop. In his letter, he identifies the job as an optical workshop position and says he is earning money there. Alexander A. Gideon’s assessment confirms that Boaz has made progress in the optical department and is earning his keep honorably. He also praises Boaz for taking part in rebuilding the Land and volunteering as a night guard two nights a week. These are not incidental accomplishments in Alexander’s account: they form the credit side of a relationship in which he is monitoring Boaz’s conduct and weighing his progress.

That praise is sharply qualified. Alexander says Boaz is slack in his studies, invoking the Jewish People’s relationship to books and Torah to make his disappointment a matter of religious as well as educational obligation. The same letter that recognizes the dignity of Boaz’s work therefore sets practical independence against learning and observance. Boaz, for his part, does not dispute that he is employed or earning; he rejects the premise that his choice of where to live is open to interrogation. He says Kiryat Arba is not the place for him, but refuses to explain why, calling the reason none of Alexander’s business.

Money, authority, and rebuke

The correspondence makes money one of the main points at which care becomes entangled with control. Boaz writes that he has learned Alexander gave money to Michel Sommo for him, but says Michel will not pass it on. Although Michel has helped him when he got into trouble, Boaz complains that Michel keeps the money, leaves him only a few pennies, and also tries to tell him what to do. Boaz wants no further favors from Michel and frames his request to Alexander as a demand for clarification: was the money intended for Michel, or for Boaz?

Alexander answers by separating an immediate payment from the inheritance he says he is holding in trust. He states that the money belongs in three equal parts to Boaz’s mother, Boaz, and Yifat, and that Boaz will receive his share in full at twenty-one, not earlier. He reasons that Boaz’s father could have sent the check directly to Boaz but instead entrusted it to him. At the same time, Alexander encloses a postal order for six hundred pounds, explicitly saying it will not be deducted from the inheritance. The distinction preserves a future claim for Boaz while allowing Alexander to decide when that claim can be paid; the postal order answers the immediate request without altering that arrangement.

Alexander’s rebuke moves beyond finances. He tells Boaz that, having passed his bar mitzvah, he is no longer subject to their authority and can leave Kiryat Arba if he chooses. Yet this declared freedom comes wrapped in scornful warnings: Alexander predicts that Boaz will repeat his father’s mistakes and cautions him against returning to Michel for relief. He also attacks Boaz’s spelling and writing, using insults and religious argument to convey that his harshness arises, he says, from affection. The letter thus grants Boaz formal autonomy while making clear how difficult Alexander finds it to let that autonomy stand without judgment.

Boaz’s refusal and Alexander’s alternatives

Boaz’s own letter is brief and pointed. He explains that his mother supplied Alexander’s address because Manfred Zakheim would not give it to him, and says he wants no more favors from Michel. He presents himself as already working and supporting himself, but insists that nobody should tell him what to do. His complaint is not simply that money has been withheld: he objects to being treated as though assistance entitles others to direct his life. The bluntness of the letter contrasts with Alexander’s longer, corrective reply and gives Boaz’s demand for independence its own voice.

In the response dated 23 July, Alexander says he accepts Boaz’s wish to be on his own and not be told what to do. He then offers two concrete alternatives. In the United States, Boaz could receive a ticket, accommodation, and a job, perhaps in optics, with the possibility of studying something that interested him later. Alexander acknowledges that the language would be a difficulty at first, and adds that in America nobody has cousins in the police. The offer is assistance on a larger scale, but it is presented as a choice rather than a command; repayment from Boaz’s wages is possible but neither urgent nor compulsory.

The alternative keeps Boaz in Israel while shifting him away from Kiryat Arba. Alexander offers him a large, abandoned house near Zikhron Yaakov, in poor condition, with work available restoring it. He promises a fair monthly wage and payment for building materials, notes the scope for agriculture and the proximity of the seaside, and says Boaz may invite anyone he likes to live there. The freedom is qualified only by the work of rebuilding: Boaz would have to make a start with his own capable hands. For either option, Alexander directs him to Roberto di Modena in Jerusalem, instructing him to go directly to the lawyer rather than to Manfred Zakheim. The arrangements are ready to be carried out once Boaz decides, and he need not reply to Alexander.

Significance of the exchange

The placement at Kiryat Arba is therefore not narrated as a settled solution. Boaz has employment and is earning, and Alexander recognizes his contribution, yet Boaz experiences the surrounding arrangements as another attempt to manage him. The letters expose the gap between provision and consent: money, work, housing, and even a route to America can be offered as support, but their meaning depends on whether Boaz can choose among them without surrendering ownership of his decisions.

Alexander’s final appeal asks Boaz to judge him fairly, while its practical form gives that request weight: the choices are specific, the lawyer has instructions, and Boaz is not required to answer his benefactor directly. His acceptance of Boaz’s independence does not erase the earlier scolding or resolve the dispute over Michel and the money. Instead, the exchange marks a change in method. Rather than insisting that Boaz remain where he is, Alexander lays out alternatives and leaves the next move to him. The evidence establishes the offer, not which option Boaz takes; the episode ends with choice still open.