Yifat

Yifat is the young daughter of Ilana Sommo and Michel Sommo, and the little sister whose birthday gives her family a reason to ask Boaz Brandstetter to come home. She is presented chiefly through other people’s letters and acts of care rather than through her own speech. In those accounts, a child’s drawing, a proposed visit, and an evening spent nursing a fever make her an intimate presence in a family divided by estrangement and marital conflict.

Identity and Presence

The clearest early glimpse of Yifat is domestic and affectionate. In a letter urging Boaz to return before his sister’s birthday, the writer says that Yifat loves him and asks him to help their mother and make the little girl happy. The same letter mentions a picture of a dog drawn by Yifat; it has come out with six legs. The detail is small but distinctive: Yifat enters the correspondence not as an explanation of the family’s troubles, but as a child making something, loved by her brother and remembered through her imperfect drawing.

The letter places her birthday amid an appeal to repair a strained family connection. Boaz is asked to come home the day before the party, while the writer encloses money for him and reassures him that it will not be taken from his inheritance. Yifat is not responsible for the adults’ negotiations, but her celebration becomes a concrete occasion around which they try to draw Boaz back into the household. Her place in the family is thus conveyed through both tenderness and the practical effort to bring her brother home.

A Proposed Stay at Kibbutz Beit Avraham

A later letter from Rahel Morag proposes that Ilana bring Yifat to Kibbutz Beit Avraham for a week or two of rest. The offer describes an organized, communal routine for the child and her mother: Ilana could work four hours a day in the storerooms, spend mornings at the pool, or help Yoash in the garden. After lunch, the children could walk to the fish ponds or pine woods, and Yifat could be placed in the crèche. Evenings might be spent drinking coffee with neighbors on the lawn.

The proposal makes Yifat’s care part of a broader attempt to relieve Ilana’s isolation and distress. Rahel also says that Michel is welcome on weekends and suggests that she and Yoash take over contact with Boaz for the time being. The plan therefore links ordinary arrangements for Yifat—childcare, walks, and family visits—to the more difficult work of keeping the family connected. It remains a proposal in the evidence, not an account of a stay that actually takes place.

Illness and Michel’s Care

Yifat’s illness supplies the fullest account of her immediate life. When Michel notices that she has a fever as he is preparing to take her to the nursery, he cancels a meeting with the deputy minister of defense that he had waited nearly two months to attend. He takes her to a clinic, waits an hour and a half for an examination, and hears that she has a slight ear infection. He then buys antibiotics and ear drops, prepares chicken soup and mashed potatoes, and persuades her to drink warm milk and honey.

When her temperature rises at midday, Michel calls a private doctor, who confirms the diagnosis and charges ninety pounds. Michel stays with Yifat through the evening, telling her stories, coaxing her to eat chicken and rice, and singing to her. After she falls asleep, he sits beside her in the dark, watches her breathing with a stopwatch, and sings hymns. He brings a mattress to the foot of her bed so that he can respond if she coughs or her bedclothes fall away, and eventually falls asleep there himself. These precise acts make his care visible as sustained attention, not a passing gesture; the canceled appointment and the night beside her bed show what he gives up to remain with her.

Family Strain and Narrative Significance

When Ilana returns from Haifa and finds Michel asleep at the foot of Yifat’s bed, she initially responds with anger rather than gratitude. She resents what she reads as a performance that might make her feel guilty for leaving, and objects to the expectation that she report where she has been. The account also reveals that Michel has not actually asked her for such an explanation. He listens without interrupting, makes her a salad, pours her a Coke, and prepares the bed; when he turns back to Yifat to touch her forehead, Ilana breaks into tears. The child’s illness has thus brought Michel and Ilana into the same room and exposed the distance between his practical care and her defensive interpretation of it.

In a later letter to Boaz, Ilana says that she cannot come with Yifat without hurting Michel, and that she has nothing to contribute to what Boaz is doing at his grandfather’s house. She longs, instead, for the chance to darn Boaz’s clothes and wash his underwear, and admits that even a woman who has failed can love. Yifat appears here as part of the choice Ilana feels unable to make: bringing her along would injure Michel, while staying away leaves Ilana feeling unable to help Boaz. Across these episodes, Yifat has little independent action in the record, but her relationships are sharply defined by what others do around her. Her birthday invites a brother home; her care reveals Michel’s devotion; and her presence shapes the limits of Ilana’s attempted reunion with Boaz.