Madeleine Yifat

Madeleine Yifat is the daughter of Ilana Sommo and Michel-Henri Sommo, the younger half-sister of Boaz Brandstetter, and a child whose place in the family changes as its estrangements begin to ease. She is mostly seen through the accounts of adults around her, but the specific objects and games that pass between them give her a distinct presence: she competes for attention, climbs over her returned brother, invents a remedy for a sick man, and turns ordinary objects into offerings. Her childhood also becomes part of the adults’ reckoning over money, care, and responsibility.

Family and Early Life

Yifat’s birth is first significant as news delivered to Alexander A. Gideon after Ilana Sommo has remarried. Ilana recalls that Boaz Brandstetter did not visit the family in Yerushalayim and, when told a daughter had been born, ended the telephone call abruptly. The contrast marks the distance between the two children’s early lives: Yifat arrives in a household from which Boaz is absent, while her existence becomes one more sign of the family life he has refused to join.

When Boaz later arrives at the family home, Yifat is still small enough to be carried and cared for through the night. In an earlier crisis, she wakes crying while Ilana stands between Boaz and the doorway; Michel-Henri Sommo takes the baby to the kitchen to settle her and warm milk. The scene places Yifat inside the household’s conflict without making her its cause: the adults’ attempt to negotiate with Boaz is interrupted by the practical, immediate demands of caring for her.

Her parents also make concrete provision for her future. In a letter requesting substantial financial help from Gideon, they include a sum intended to secure the future of both Yifat and Boaz, alongside requests concerning their mortgage, an extension to their home, and the purchase and renovation of Alkalai House in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Hebron. Later, Gideon’s revised will is described as providing for both Boaz and the Sommo family. He specifically hopes the provision will protect Yifat from the poverty Michel-Henri Sommo experienced, while warning that the money could be wasted on messianic investments.

Reunion with Boaz

Yifat’s relationship with Boaz develops through play rather than explanations of the family’s past. When he turns up at the Sommos’ home after a long absence, he brings sweets and jokes about eating her. She responds by climbing onto him and clinging to his limbs, while he crouches to meet her at her level. The encounter gives the reunion an immediate physical ease that contrasts with the history of anger between Boaz and the adults. It also establishes that he approaches his little sister with teasing affection, not only with the contempt he directs elsewhere.

In another family visit, Boaz and Michel-Henri Sommo compete throughout the day for Yifat’s attention, and she appears to enjoy the contest. After the Sabbath, Michel-Henri prepares a meal for the family, and they arrange for a neighbor’s son to look after her so the adults can go to the cinema. The ordinary sequence matters: Boaz’s presence now fits into a shared family routine, rather than remaining only a source of alarm or negotiation. On another occasion, Yifat tries to put Michel-Henri’s slippers on Boaz’s feet, a small domestic gesture that Ilana remembers alongside Michel-Henri climbing onto Boaz’s shoulders to change a light bulb.

These scenes show Yifat as a participant in the family’s renewed closeness, even though she is too young to direct its terms. Her attention helps draw the two men into playful competition and shared tasks. The older brother who once cut off contact is now present in the household, and the stepfather who once had to establish his authority can share the child’s affection with him.

Temperament and Relationships

Ilana describes Yifat as resembling Michel-Henri, though with comic exaggeration: she is thin, curly-haired, slightly cross-eyed, and generally obedient, with occasional tantrums. More often, Ilana says, she displays shy friendliness toward objects, animals, and people alike. This is a portrait offered by a mother writing to Gideon, not an independent account of Yifat’s inner life; its emphasis is on the generosity of her manner and the affectionate attention she inspires.

Michel-Henri addresses her as Mademoiselle Sommo, pronouncing the name as Mamzelle. Yifat answers by innocently calling him mamzer, a word meaning bastard. The exchange makes their intimacy legible through family play: his formal endearment becomes a sound she reshapes into a teasing reply. It also links her to Michel-Henri’s family identity, which her appearance is said to echo and which he makes part of their daily language.

When Boaz brings a French mathematics student to the house, Yifat is at nursery school while the adults receive the visitors. The episode does not give her a direct role in that encounter, but it places her within a household increasingly used by Boaz and his companions. In a later account, friends of Michel-Henri take him, Boaz, and Boaz’s friend on a trip around Bethlehem while Yifat is again at nursery school. These passing details establish the rhythms of her childhood: she is cared for and included in a family whose relationships and activities are expanding around her.

Encounters with Gideon and Future Significance

Yifat’s later visits to Gideon make their connection visible through exchanges of improvised gifts. While the commune is asleep, she sits on the edge of his bed and invents a medicine made from kerosene and mulberry leaves. She gives him a dead grasshopper in a plastic bag and receives three paper boats in return; the two also have a short conversation about the nature of water. The scene presents care as a child’s imaginative act, answered not with dismissal but with attention and an exchange she helps define.

In another visit to Gideon’s room, she taps her name on his Baby Hermes typewriter, brings him ants in a cup, and invites him to dance. He declines because of his illness and because he has never learned to dance. The contrast between her invitations and his limitations keeps the scene modest: Yifat offers companionship in the forms available to her, while Gideon acknowledges both the offer and his inability to accept it fully. His description of her as gentle and generous is grounded in these small encounters rather than in any adult explanation of her character.

Yifat’s significance therefore lies less in an independent plot than in what her presence makes possible between others. Her birth marks Boaz’s estrangement; her playful welcome accompanies his return; and her visits give Gideon a relationship with the younger generation at a time when he is seriously ill and revising his will. She is also a stated beneficiary of the adults’ financial arrangements, although the provision is conditional on Michel-Henri’s handling of the money. Across these moments, care appears both as practical provision and as attention to a child’s gestures: milk warmed in the night, a family meal, a paper boat, and a patient exchange about water.