Rabbi Bouskila

Rabbi Bouskila is a religious authority who enters the story through other characters’ letters and reports of his counsel. His influence is practical as well as spiritual: Michel Sommo turns to him over Ilana Sommo’s marital status and Yifat’s return, while Alexander Gideon’s illness prompts Michel to seek his guidance and blessing. The novel gives no extended direct portrait of the rabbi; instead, his authority is revealed through the decisions and appeals that others associate with him.

Religious Counsel and Marital Status

In a letter demanding the return of his daughter, Michel reports that Rabbi Bouskila had explained the uncertainty surrounding Ilana’s status. She might, Michel writes, be subject to a religious rule that would bar her from both her husband and her former partner. The possibility makes her position seem more precarious than a private disagreement between spouses: it is also a question of religious classification, with consequences for her place within the family.

The uncertainty does not prevent Michel from making a firm demand about Yifat. He insists that Alexander has no rights or claims over the child and sets a deadline for her return. Rabbi Bouskila is thus present in the letter as an adviser on the religious issue surrounding Ilana, while Michel draws a sharp distinction between that unresolved matter and his claim to his daughter. The letter shows how religious counsel becomes part of a family conflict conducted through deadlines, legal assertions, and appeals to authority.

A later report gives the rabbi a more explicit role in setting conditions. While grieving the prospect of losing Yifat, Michel says he will allow Ilana the benefit of the doubt, but only under conditions and in accordance with Rabbi Bouskila’s legal decision. The rabbi’s ruling therefore provides a framework within which Michel is willing to act; it does not erase his suspicion or grief. His authority can delimit a possible course of action, but the emotional conflict remains unresolved.

Guidance in Grief

Michel also recalls Rabbi Bouskila advising him to accept suffering with love. In a moment of despair, Michel goes to the woods at Talpiyyot and looks to the hills for an answer to questions about justice and the suffering of the innocent. He says the rabbi reminded him that such questions had remained unanswered even when asked by greater men thousands of years earlier. The counsel does not supply a solution or explain Michel’s misfortune. It places his questions within a longer religious history and urges endurance where certainty is unavailable.

That advice briefly changes the scale of Michel’s distress. He describes coming to see himself and his sorrow as small beside the limits of human understanding, and says that he regretted his most destructive thoughts and quieted himself. The narrative presents this as a moment of submission after agitation, not as proof that the injustice has been repaired. Rabbi Bouskila’s counsel offers Michel a way to contain his anger without resolving the circumstances that produced it.

Mediation, Illness, and Blessing

When Alexander returns to Israel seriously ill, Michel’s attitude changes. After apologizing for the insults in an earlier letter, he proposes that Ilana and Yifat return home and invites Alexander to stay with the family and receive treatment at Hadassah Hospital. He also says he will explain the affair to Rabbi Bouskila and ask him to meet Alexander. Michel expects the rabbi to understand the situation and hopes he will give a blessing, which Michel believes has helped seriously ill people before.

The appeal joins practical arrangements with religious hope. Michel has separately contacted a relative connected with the hospital’s oncology department to seek special treatment; the rabbi’s meeting and blessing are additional requests, not substitutes for medical care. Michel also says he will pray for Alexander at the Western Wall and ask for his recovery. In this changed setting, the religious authority once invoked amid marital suspicion becomes part of Michel’s attempt to reconcile with a gravely ill former rival.

Role in the Family Conflict

Rabbi Bouskila’s authority reaches the family partly through intermediaries. Michel later says that, through the rabbi, he informed Ilana that divorce proceedings had begun and that she had been designated a rebellious wife. The account presents religious status alongside the practical steps of divorce and Michel’s efforts to recover Yifat; it does not describe a hearing or establish the full legal process behind the designation. The rabbi’s reported involvement nevertheless shows how religious terminology enters the family’s negotiations and affects the terms on which its members understand their obligations.

Across these episodes, Rabbi Bouskila serves different needs without becoming a simple instrument of any one character. Michel invokes his counsel to define a wife’s uncertain status, to set conditions while deciding whether to tolerate that uncertainty, and to seek spiritual support for Alexander. His reported advice can temper Michel’s despair and make room for a possible act of care, but it does not settle the family’s disputes by itself. The rabbi’s narrative significance lies in this limited but consequential presence: religious guidance offers a vocabulary and a procedure for facing conflicts that remain emotionally and practically unsettled.