Jonathan BloomIn his new memoir, “No Room for Small Dreams,” President Shimon Peres chronicles his seven decades of public service and his life’s journey.
It has been one year since the passing of Shimon Peres. Visionary, soldier, statesman, founder of the State of Israel, prime minister, president, Nobel laureate: no title, description or accolade can fully capture the immensity of his contribution — not only to Israel but to all who aspire to a better, more peaceful, more just world.
We now have President Peres’ story in his own words. Just weeks before his death at 93, he completed the memoir, No Room for Small Dreams, not only chronicling nearly seven decades of public service but exploring the principles and values that guided him in his life’s journey. His commitment to these principles was unwavering. As Peres’s children Tsvia, Yoni and Chemi recall in a moving introduction to the book, their mother would say to them, “Your father is like the wind. You will never be able to stop him or hold him back.”
Indeed, “No Room for Small Dreams” proves that Peres’ voice and vision are not only still with us, but as forceful and relevant as ever. Much has already been said and written of Peres, and this book will, rightly, launch a thousand new conversations. There will be dissections of his policies and their impact, debates about his legacy, and wide-ranging political analyses in the context of Israel’s past, present and future.
But what I want to share is a deeply meaningful personal encounter between Peres and my son Lev. Peres’s extraordinary career brought him into contact with the world’s most powerful people, but something special shone in him while conversing with a child. His message had an undeniable purity and simplicity, as well as a quality that mattered dearly to him — hope. As Tsvia, Yoni and Chemi explain, “his greatest tool of all, always, was hope.”
Lev was eight at the time of the meeting. I had taken him to Israel for his first of what I hoped would be many visits. Wanting his experience to be an indelible one, I brought him to meet Peres on August 31, 2016, the first day of our visit. For me, the president was the very personification of Israel’s hope, strength and spirit — its dreams, ideals and tensions. He was gracious enough to meet with my son and my wife and me at the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation in Jaffa. We did not know then that it would be one of his last meetings.
At one point in the conversation, I asked Peres to share with Lev how, after 93 years of life, he stayed so young.
“Lev,” the president said, “every day I wake up and I count my achievements.” I couldn’t help interjecting, “And son, Peres has had countless extraordinary achievements.” We laughed, and then Peres continued: “And then I count the dreams I have in my head. As long as I have more dreams in my head than achievements, I am young.”
This story so much captured the essence of Shimon Peres the person – the youngest 93-year-old you ever met – that Thomas Friedman recounted it in tribute to Peres in hisNew York Times column, “Peres: 93 Years Young.”
As I said, I had wanted Lev’s first experience of Israel to be an indelible one. And as I watched them together I realized that even this hope had been exceeded. The significance in the room was palpable; something essential had been imparted.
Afterward, we stood in the lobby and Lev spoke with me about the exchange and what had most deeply resonated with him. But instead of shifting his attention to some new and exciting aspect of this strange new land, all he wanted to do was go back to our hotel. There, he sat himself at the computer and immediately began writing down as many details of the afternoon as he could remember, distilling the conversation into seven lessons.
As I read Lev’s reflections today, I can see that the president was trying to impart to him a set of insights that would become part of his core. And it’s remarkable to see a leader who knows he is speaking to a child communicate with such simultaneous simplicity and profundity. The result is a set of lessons that have irrevocably shaped Lev — by his own admission — and stayed with him in the years since that momentous encounter.
The impression was so deep that when I got together with Chemi Peres, Shimon Peres’ son and a good friend of mine, in New York last year, Lev asked to come along so that he could meet Chemi and present him with the paper he had written about his father.
I remember the way Lev watched with equal parts nervous anticipation and pride as Chemi read his father’s lessons through the young boy’s eyes, smiling to himself.
He looked up and directly at my son.
“If this were an exam on my father, I’d give you an A,” he said.
Lev beamed, his eyes bright with renewed hope and inspiration.
I, of course, experienced my own fatherly pride, witnessing the induction of the newest light-bearer of the torch of wisdom Peres had passed to each of the three of us.
In honor of President Peres and in celebration of his book, I share Lev’s lessons here — first in his own words, and then with my own elaborations and amplifications. For those who, like me, are reading them as adults, I think you’ll agree that they have universal relevance and value.
1. When it comes to other people, you can rule or help. The world doesn’t need rulers but needs those who want to help others.
For Peres, the distinction of ruling vs. helping was not just a private conviction but one that influenced his policies and decisions. As he writes, he was animated by a “moral code” that said that “Israel was not born to rule over other people, that to do so is in profound opposition to our heritage…Israel is small in territory, but it must be great in justice.”
As the world has gone from merely connected to globally interdependent, where increasingly we rise and fall together and so few can so easily affect so many so far away, the distinction between ruling and helping becomes ever more important. The only strategy for leading, governing, and thriving in an interdependent world is to forge healthy interdependencies, so we rise and do not fall together. And for that important work, we need more servant leaders than rulers.
2. He offered a formula for determining if you are young. You add up all your achievements, and then you count all of the dreams in your head. And if the number of dreams is greater then you’re young. What is amazing is that Peres is 93 with countless achievements and he still has more dreams.
Of the many extraordinary passages in Peres’ “No Room for Small Dreams,” one of my favorites is an elaboration on what he told Lev about age. Peres explains that as a child, he had a boundless curiosity and energy; he especially loved making speeches and putting on shows for his beloved parents, Sara and Yitzhak, and their friends. This earned him a reputation among adults as a precocious child, but also set him apart from his schoolmates.
What Peres says next perfectly explains the connection he, as a nonagenarian, was able to forge with my eight-year-old son. “At 93, I am still that curious boy, enamored of hard questions, eager to dream, and unbowed by the doubt of others.”
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