By Jamie Spock
As American students, none of us on the Nachshon project can say that we met a founding father of our country or any country for that matter. So you can imagine how excited we were, as a cohort, when we found out that we would be meeting with former President and Prime Minister of Israel, Shimon Peres. This is someone who has seen Israel through all of its history and all of its ups and downs up until the present day. It’s hard not to feel humbled when you learn you’re going to be in the presence of such a person. The reason that we are on the Nachshon Project is to hone our leadership skills and to be able to utilize them in serving the North American Jewish community. What better person could we possibly visit to teach us about leadership?
Peres is in his mid-nineties now and doesn’t have the energy that he once did but he hasn’t let his age stand in the way of continuing his work for Israel in the form of his non-profit, non-political, non-religious organization Peres Peace House. The headquarters of his organization is in Jaffa and that’s where we went for our meeting. The building itself is exceptional. From the outside it doesn’t look like much, a regular concrete building, but the inside tells a different story. The concrete theme continues inside, signifying the heaviness of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There is also glass interwoven throughout the cement layers of the building representing the hope that exists for peace and conflict resolution. The front of the building faces the Mediterranean, a symbol that all are welcome to the center and that everyone has a voice in the peace process. The room where we met with Peres was essentially a small library with very high ceilings but it still felt quite intimate.
I was definitely nervous to meet Shimon Peres. In the library, while we were waiting for him to arrive, my hands definitely started to shake a little bit. When he walked into the room I was awestruck to say the least. He shook all of our hands and greeted all of us with “shalom” or “boker tov” and even joked around with Rabbi Zeff’s and Rabbi Cohen’s kids that had gotten the amazing opportunity to come to the meeting with us. When he sat down he got right to the questions that had been pre-selected from twenty-two questions we had all sent in before the meeting. His answers were long and thoughtful; we only got through four questions! In his answers he wove together biblical texts and present-day challenges to demonstrate to us what makes a good leader in his mind. For us to be good Jewish leaders, we need to be Jewishly literate but that also doesn’t mean we have to be religious necessarily.
For Peres, the most important part of Judaism is the moral code. If we don’t live and work by the Jewish moral code than we will be, in his opinion, ineffective leaders. A number of us on the program, including myself, have been struggling with the concept of being in the North American Jewish community while our hearts are fiercely aligned with Israel but Peres made it clear that one does not have to choose. He made a good point about how we all have two passports: a political one and a spiritual one. The political one could be Israeli or American but the spiritual one is Jewish and for Peres, and I think for myself as well, the spiritual passport is more important than the political one. According to Peres, as long as you do good work advocating for Israel then it shouldn’t matter which political passport you have because you are a member of the Jewish nation all the same.
For a man who has accomplished so much, Peres is one of the most soft spoken and humble people I have met. He is a busy man so he didn’t talk to us for long but he certainly made an impression. The last major thought he left us with was this, "When people ask me what is my biggest accomplishment, I say, the things I will accomplish tomorrow. The things I have done until now barely matter. When people ask me what was my biggest mistake, I say, that I didn't dream big enough." Peres has won the Nobel Peace Prize so it would be easy for him to talk about how proud he is of his accomplishments but he didn’t. He made it clear that there is always work to be done and dreams to dream up. I walked out of the meeting feeling so inspired and so honored to have had the opportunity to meet him. The other words that will stick with me as I figure out my path to a fulfilling career in the Jewish community were “dream hard but work even harder” and I certainly plan to do both of those things.
