Shimon Peres, zichrono livracha

Rabbi Hannah Dresner's speech on October 27, 2016

It is sorrowful to see the passing of the last of the giants who created the State of Israel.

Shimon Peres will be remembered for doing two opposite things.

On the one hand, in the early days of the state, he was the head of the Defense Department, and he was the one whom Ben Gurion sent to France to negotiate for the sale, not only of war planes, and not only of ships, but for the sale of uranium and for help in building a nuclear facility at Dimona.

He made Israel a country that the Arab nations knew they could not destroy except at the cost of their own existence.

But at the same time, Shimon Peres must be remembered for an opposite goal—a goal that he did not achieve in his lifetime---He dreamed that peace with the Palestinians was somehow possible.

He was made fun of and called a dreamer. But the welfare of the world ultimately depends on those who dream big and who then spend their lives trying to make their dreams come true.

Shimon Peres never succeeded in persuading even his own party, much less the rest of the country, that peace with the Arabs was possible, or that it was worth the risks and the sacrifices that it would require. But if you think about it, the prophets of Israel were also failures---magnificent failures, but failures just the same.

When Isaiah predicted that nations would someday beat their swords into plowshares, the cynics of his time must have laughed. And yet, civilized people to this day hold on to his words and share in the hope that the dream may someday come true.

The dreams of Shimon Peres were not naïve, and either the world will take them seriously---or else there may not be a world.

My teacher and friend Rabbi Jack Riemer shared with me three signs of hope he saw at the funeral of Shimon Peres, and I would like to share them with you. 

The first was the presence of President Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority. Hamas may soon defeat him at the polls and for him to come to pay honor to Shimon Peres was an act of courage in defiance of Hamas. Kol Hakavod to him for crossing the border, in many senses of that word.

The second moment in the funeral that might move us to hope was when Moshe Rivlin finished his tribute to the man who had been his predecessor as President of Israel. Moshe Rivlin is a member of the Likud, which means that for many years, and in many ways, he and Peres had been bitter rivals, on opposite sides of many issues. And yet, Moshe Rivlin finished his eulogy with the four words that traditional Jews have said at the graves of their opponents down through the centuries. He said very simply, and with no theatrics: “ani mivakesh selichah mimcha”---I ask you to forgive me.

Each of these men had drifted far from tradition in their lives, but in that moment they were the descendants of the noble Jewish dynasties from which they derive, one that goes back to the Gaon of Vilna and one that goes back to his disciple, Reb Chaim of Volizhin. Those four simple words coming from the lips of the president of the State of Israel at the grave of his arch rival remind us that the tradition still lives and still serves us well.

The third moment inspiring hope was during Peres’s daughter recitation the Mourners’ Kaddish. When she came to the end, she added one phrase. She said: “Oseh shalom bimromav, hu ya-aseh shalom aleynu, v’al kol Yisrael---V’AL KOL HA-OLAM”—May the One who makes peace in the high places, make peace over us, over Israel, and OVER ALL HUMANKIND. She had absorbed the Universalist dream that there can be peace between the nations on this earth.

She said these three extra words at the end of the Kaddish in tribute to her father who lived by that faith.

As the news camera focused on Mr. Abbas we were witness to an act of courage. When the microphone was on President Rivlin, and he asked for forgiveness, and for the moment when the attention of the world was on Mr. Peres’s daughter and she said Kaddish and added “v’al kol ha-olam,” we had an opportunity to see that both the Jewish past and the Jewish future were united at that grave.

Let us be grateful for hope in courage, hope in the aliveness of Jewish tradition, and hope in an Israeli vision of universal peace.

Let us enter the new year with these three moments in our hearts. And may they give us a measure of pride and a measure of comfort.

May the memory of Shimon Peres be a source of blessing and may what could be seen at his funeral be a source of guidance to us all.

Amen.