Relationship between Alexander Gideon and Manfred Zakheim

The relationship between Alexander A. Gideon and Manfred M. Zakheim is a long-standing alliance in which professional loyalty and personal attachment repeatedly pull against irritation and distrust. Zakheim acts as Gideon’s financial and legal adviser, but he is not a silent instrument: when Gideon directs money toward Michel Sommo, Zakheim challenges the decision, investigates its implications, and threatens to withdraw. Their exchange of terse telegrams exposes the intimacy beneath the quarrel. Gideon can rebuke Zakheim and still plead with him not to leave; Zakheim can call his friend’s judgment into question and still hurry to his aid.

A friendship built through work

Zakheim’s account of their history reaches back to Gideon’s father and the management of his estate. For roughly thirty years, the elder Gideon’s affairs made Zakheim’s work difficult; later, Zakheim spent five or six years arranging for Alexander to become sole trustee of the property. The effort mattered financially as well as professionally: Zakheim says it preserved the estate from substantial losses to taxes and other claims. He recalls receiving professional satisfaction and a good apartment in Jerusalem from the work, but also describes its personal cost. His familiarity with the family’s finances and history makes his resistance to Alexander’s later generosity more than a disagreement over one transaction: he sees himself as someone who helped secure the fortune now being given away.

That sense of investment coexists with genuine fondness. Zakheim tells Alexander that, despite contemplating resignation, he remains attached to him. His sardonic style—mocking the proposed donation and imagining further gifts to other causes—does not cancel his concern. He wants Alexander to explain what has prompted the decision and asks for evidence that his friend is thinking clearly. Beneath the sharpness is the conviction that he has both the right and the obligation to intervene.

The dispute over money and judgment

When Alexander asks Zakheim to arrange a payment, Zakheim unfreezes the citrus grove near Binyamina and says he can make about one hundred thousand U.S. dollars available at a day’s notice. He deliberately leaves the transaction unfinished, preserving Alexander’s chance to reconsider without losing money beyond Zakheim’s commission. He distinguishes this grove from the Zikhron Ya'aqov property, which he has not released. That careful separation shows how their conflict is conducted through practical control of assets: Zakheim is willing to carry out instructions, but he uses the discretion entrusted to him to slow what he considers a reckless decision.

Zakheim is especially troubled that Alexander intends to direct money to Michel Sommo, the husband of Alexander’s former wife. He calculates the proposed sum as seven or eight percent of everything Alexander owns and worries that one donation could lead to further dispersals. He also recalls the acrimony of Alexander’s divorce from Ilana Sommo, during which Zakheim fought to prevent her from receiving property. In his account, Alexander had resisted even small concessions, so his present willingness to help the family seems to represent a startling reversal. Zakheim does not know its cause. He asks whether someone is threatening Alexander and offers to deal with any such pressure himself; this remains his suspicion, not an established explanation for the payment.

His response combines investigation with persuasion. Following Alexander’s telegram, Zakheim commissions a report on Michel and gathers an assistant’s report on Boaz, alongside copies of the divorce decisions. The documents establish the contentious legal background: the Rabbinical Court ruled that Ilana had forfeited her marriage settlement and maintenance, while the Jerusalem District Court recorded disputes over the child’s paternity and maintenance, inconclusive blood-test results, and both parties’ refusal of tissue testing. Zakheim underlines passages for Alexander and stresses that the proceedings had ended years earlier. By assembling the record, he places the proposed aid beside the old legal conflict rather than treating it as an isolated act of generosity.

Zakheim also considers whether the investigation could give Alexander leverage if Michel were attempting intimidation or blackmail. He offers to send the investigator to confront him, but no such confrontation is reported. His language about possible pressure reveals the distrust shaping his advice; it does not prove that Michel has made a threat. At the same time, Zakheim recognizes Michel’s polished manner and political skill, and warns that Alexander may be underestimating the person he intends to finance.

Resignation, refusal, and dependence

The pair’s telegrams turn their disagreement into a compact drama of separation and pursuit. Alexander orders Zakheim to pay the specified amount and stop pestering him. Zakheim responds that he has paid and resigns from handling Alexander’s affairs, demanding instructions for transferring the papers. Alexander refuses to accept the resignation and tells him to calm down. Zakheim insists that his resignation stands; Alexander then asks him not to leave because he is miserable. The sequence exposes what the financial dispute cannot settle: Alexander may reject Zakheim’s advice, but he does not want to lose the adviser—or the friend—who has stood beside him for years.

Zakheim’s final telegram promises that he is leaving that evening and will arrive at Nicholson’s early the next morning, while warning Alexander not to do anything foolish in the meantime. The exchange does not establish what ultimately happens to the resignation, but it makes clear that Zakheim intends to come in person rather than end the relationship by correspondence. Their mutual dependence is unevenly expressed: Alexander’s short messages make his need explicit, while Zakheim’s concern appears through action, insistence, and the practical arrangements he continues to make.

Loyalty renewed in a later crisis

The relationship’s persistence becomes clearer when Zakheim later breaks a solemn vow to have no further dealings with Alexander. He explains that the matter has become one of life and death, perhaps involving two lives: Boaz has disappeared after leaving the family with whom he had been staying, and a brief letter says he intends to work aboard a ship. Zakheim has already arranged for searches of departing Israeli and foreign vessels, while acknowledging that Boaz may instead be somewhere on land. He asks Alexander to act urgently through his connections, emphasizing that the request is for intervention rather than money.

This appeal reverses the earlier dispute without erasing it. Zakheim had challenged Alexander for offering money to Michel’s family; now he seeks Alexander’s help because Alexander has access to circles that might assist in finding Boaz. The appeal is also moral: Zakheim says Alexander should recognize the wrong done to Boaz and his mother, and urges him to write Ilana an explanation and apology rather than assume financial help is enough. His willingness to break his oath shows that, for all his anger at Alexander’s silence and past conduct, he still believes Alexander can be called back into responsibility.

The letters and telegrams therefore portray neither uncomplicated loyalty nor a friendship broken by conflict. Zakheim monitors, advises, investigates, reproaches, and at times refuses to proceed without further instructions; Alexander resists his interference, rejects his resignation, and later receives an appeal that depends on Zakheim’s knowledge of his reach. Their bond is sustained not by agreement but by the repeated return to practical care: money is held back, papers are assembled, a departure is reversed into a promised visit, and an old vow is broken when Boaz may be in danger.