Michel Sommo

Michel Sommo is Ilana Sommo’s husband and a father figure to Boaz B., but the novel presents him less through a single, stable portrait than through letters and other people’s accounts of his changing conduct. He can rebuke Boaz B. for neglecting Torah study while praising his honest work, offer money and call him as dear as a son, and later confront the collapse of his marriage and the loss of daily life with his daughter. His story turns on the strain between religious and familial authority and the care that survives their breakdown.

Identity and Family Role

A document associated with Michel bears the address of Isaac’s Tent Religious State High School in Jerusalem. The evidence establishes the institutional connection but does not specify his position there. His correspondence with Boaz B. shows a relationship in which authority and affection coexist uneasily. Michel addresses the young man with scolding familiarity, judges his conduct against religious standards, and insists that his own support has exceeded what was required of him. Yet he also makes clear that his rebukes arise from fondness, and later tells Boaz B. that he is as dear to him as a son.

Michel’s practical involvement reaches beyond admonition. In a letter, he praises Boaz B.’s work in an optical department, his honorable earnings, his participation in rebuilding the Land, and his volunteering as a night guard two nights a week. He treats these as real accomplishments, even as he condemns Boaz B.’s slackness in his studies and poor writing. The contrast shows the terms on which Michel measures progress: labor and contribution count, but they do not replace Torah learning in his view.

Discipline, Money, and Changing Public Life

Michel’s sternness becomes especially sharp when Boaz B. considers leaving Kiryat Arba. He challenges the idea that he has held the young man against his will, reminds him that he has passed his bar mitzvah and is no longer subject to Michel’s authority, and warns him not to return asking for relief. In the same letter, however, Michel says that the money Boaz B. raised belongs to his mother, Boaz B., and Yifat. His refusal of further assistance is therefore not simply a claim that the family has no resources; it is a rebuke about entitlement and the terms on which support should be given.

An account by Ilana Sommo records a different shift in Michel’s domestic and public life. He sells their flat, including its unfinished extension, to a cousin and signs a contract for a new home in the restored Jewish Quarter of the Old City. He rejoins the National Religious Party and takes out a subscription to Haarets. Each morning he leaves for a new business whose nature Ilana does not understand, returning late in the evening. His new pale-blue summer suit replaces his familiar sports clothes, while their former Saturday evenings on the veranda and pillow fights with Yifat disappear. Religious land dealers now visit after the Sabbath, and Michel confers with them at length. The changes register not only a new business routine but a reordering of family time and social company.

Marriage Under Strain and the Fight for Yifat

The accounts of Michel and Ilana’s separation come from different correspondents and should be read as situated claims, not as a single neutral report. One letter to Janine describes Michel returning from Paris to find that Ilana has taken Yifat to stay with Boaz B. in an abandoned building between Zikhron Yaakov and Binyamina. It says that Alexander A. Gideon, Ilana’s first husband, had also arrived there shortly beforehand. Michel is described as shocked and humiliated; after he and several companions go to speak with Ilana and she refuses to see them, the family discusses making a formal complaint over Yifat’s removal from home.

In another letter, Michel writes from the position of a father grieving for his daughter. Relatives and acquaintances visit him with condolences, and he compares the house to one where a corpse lies. He insists that Yifat be returned by Sunday morning, invokes the legal decision of Rabbi Bouskila, and warns that he may take desperate steps if she is not brought back. At the same time, the letter reveals how much his demand is bound up with humiliation and uncertainty: he describes himself as a mourner, yet says he cannot rend his garments for Ilana because he still leaves room for doubt. His insistence on the child’s return is urgent, but it is also entangled with the marital injury he believes has been done to him.

Alexander A. Gideon’s reply challenges Michel’s suspicions. He says Ilana has chosen to stay with him temporarily and care for him before his radiotherapy, and urges Michel to treat her kindly when she returns. The explanation reframes the apparent triangle: Alexander A. Gideon is seriously ill, and Ilana’s presence is presented as caregiving rather than proof of an affair. The correspondence thus places Michel’s distress beside information he does not yet have, without erasing the real separation or his fear of losing Yifat.

Apology, Reconciliation, and Renewed Separation

Michel’s response to learning the extent of Alexander A. Gideon’s illness is a marked reversal. He apologizes for the harsh insults in his earlier letter, explaining that he wrote in profound grief and did not know Alexander A. Gideon was gravely ill and near death. As the Days of Awe approach, Michel proposes that Ilana Sommo and Yifat return home, invites Alexander A. Gideon to stay with the family, and says Boaz B. should come too to care for his father. He urges Alexander A. Gideon to receive treatment at Hadassah Hospital, Jerusalem, and arranges for special attention through a relative connected with its oncology department. The man who had demanded the child’s return and threatened desperate measures now offers his home and mobilizes practical help for the very person he had accused.

That reconciliation does not settle the marriage. Ilana later recalls that, on the eve of the New Year, Michel sent his brother-in-law Armand in a Peugeot truck to take Yifat to him. Through Rabbi Bouskila, he informed Ilana that he had begun divorce proceedings and that she had been designated a rebellious wife. He was also raising loans to repay what he called her tainted money. Rahel and Yoash urged Ilana to hire a lawyer and assert her right to know what had happened to Yifat and to see her; Rahel even volunteered to approach Michel about reconciliation. These later developments show the return of separation and legal conflict after Michel’s earlier invitation. In the same account, Alexander A. Gideon asks Manfred Zakheim to transfer another twenty thousand dollars to Michel; Ilana says Michel accepted the check despite his objection to the money’s source.

Character and Narrative Significance

Michel’s characterization is built through shifts in voice and circumstance. His letter to Boaz B. makes care sound conditional upon discipline, religious learning, and self-reliance; his later letter makes care a practical obligation, expressed through a place to stay and arrangements for cancer treatment. His response to Ilana’s departure likewise moves between wounded authority and an attempt to restore the family under one roof. These positions do not resolve into a simple conversion: even after offering Alexander A. Gideon hospitality, Michel proceeds toward divorce and demands repayment of money he considers tainted.

The letter-based presentation gives these contradictions their force. Michel is seen through his own admonitions and apologies, Ilana’s account of domestic change, and reports that reach other correspondents. Each document has a limited vantage point, so his motives and the family’s disputes emerge in fragments rather than through an all-knowing account. What remains consistent is the gravity he attaches to family obligations. That conviction can become coercive, as in his demand for Yifat and his control over financial support; it can also become generous, as in his apology and offer of refuge. Michel’s arc is therefore not a clean reconciliation but a repeated struggle over what care, authority, and family membership require.