Atalia Abravanel–Gershom Wald relationship

Atalia Abravanel and Gershom Wald are bound together by Mija Wald’s death: she is Mija’s widow, and Wald his bereaved father. For years the two remain in the same house with Shaltiel Abravanel, joined by grief, domestic dependence, and a silence that neither fully breaks. Wald’s recollections disclose a relationship of endurance more than consolation: Atalia takes on essential work during the siege, while he later speaks of her as a woman who, like himself, has been left with almost no one.

Family Ties and the Shared Household

A few weeks after Mija and Atalia’s wedding in 1946, Shaltiel Abravanel invited Wald to live in the family home. Wald was then a history teacher at Rehavia High School, nearing retirement, and Mija and Atalia were living in the attic. He brought only the novels from his bedroom; the library belonged to Shaltiel. The arrangement made Wald part of the household before tragedy turned it into a place of shared bereavement.

Mija was Wald’s only son and Atalia’s husband. His death in the fighting at Bab al-Wad on April 2, 1948, left Wald without his child and Atalia widowed after barely a year or a year and a half of marriage. A visitor, Sara de Toledo, later describes Atalia as the daughter of Shaltiel and the wife of Wald’s son, emphasizing how few family ties remain around the two: Mija is dead, and Atalia has no one else left either.

Bereavement and Silence

In Wald’s account, Mija’s death changes the household’s relations as decisively as it changes its occupants. Shaltiel and Wald had opposed one another in argument, but after the loss they never argued again. Their disagreements fell silent; grief left them unable to resume the old exchanges. Atalia, Wald, and Shaltiel lived together for about two years, isolated in the house like people in a submarine. Wald, who needs conversation, suffered in the silence, while Shaltiel was at ease within it.

The death also remains an active wound for Wald, not a past event he has absorbed. He says he has gone more than ten years without sleeping through the nights, reliving Mija’s killing among the rocks on the pine-covered slope. He describes the three of them as having shut themselves inside a coffin, a figure for the enclosure that followed the loss. In this account, Atalia and Wald are not presented as grieving in identical ways, but their lives are organized around the same absence.

Atalia’s Care During the Siege

During the Jordanian siege of Jerusalem, the house’s thick stone walls protected its occupants from bullets and shells. Atalia was the only one who went out from time to time. She queued at the kerosene and ice carts and stood in the long food-distribution lines with the ration coupons for the household. Her work was practical and necessary: while the others remained inside, she secured basic supplies for them.

This care gives the relationship a concrete form without suggesting that the two become openly affectionate. Wald’s recollections center on the household’s confinement and Atalia’s repeated errands, rather than on spoken comfort between them. Her actions nevertheless make her the person who connects the sheltered interior to the necessities of life beyond its walls, sustaining Wald and Shaltiel as well as herself.

After the War: A Life of Departures

After the war, Shaltiel withdrew further, cut off contact with the outside world, stopped answering letters, and refused to approach the telephone. Wald and Atalia remained with him in a house that had become a retreat from the new state and the world beyond it. When Shaltiel eventually died, Wald recalled finding him alone in the kitchen, slumped over his coffee and newspaper. The death left Wald and Atalia together after the loss of the older man as well as Mija.

Wald’s later remarks to Shmuel Ash show how he understands Atalia’s continuing life: she has lost her husband and her father, and she repeatedly draws eccentric young men into her orbit, sometimes allowing them to stay and sometimes sending them away. He cannot tell whether she is searching for something, moving from one brief encounter to another, or remaining in mourning even when she takes a partner for a night or two. The uncertainty matters: Wald recognizes her solitude but cannot claim to know its meaning. He imagines that Shmuel, too, will soon leave, and that he himself will remain with Atalia, living between one farewell and the next.

A Bond Without Easy Consolation

The relationship between Atalia and Wald rests on kinship, shared loss, and the long routine of living together after Mija’s death. Atalia’s wartime errands enact care; Wald’s memories keep the dead son present in the house. Yet the narrative does not turn their shared grief into uncomplicated closeness. The silences after Mija’s death, the years of confinement, and Wald’s uncertainty about Atalia’s private desires all mark the limits of what one bereaved person can know or repair in another.

Wald’s image of himself living between farewells gives their bond its lasting shape. He expects Atalia to remain beside him for now, but also expects people, including Shmuel, to depart. Their companionship is therefore real and consequential, yet exposed to the same loneliness that has already taken Mija and Shaltiel from their household.