Star-Struck
Michiganians

Arthur Horwitz

‘Enthusiasm
And Optimism’

The late Emery Klein and Jane Sherman
are behind Shimon Peres during the
first Michigan Miracle Mission in 1993.

Dr. Conrad Giles and Peres

Peres with Joel Jacob of West Bloomfield and
Doreen Hermelin of Bingham Farms at a 2003
Seeds of Peace event

Jennifer Lovy | Contributing Writer

O

ver the last 30 years, Joel E. Jacob,
a community activist from West
Bloomfield, had the opportunity to meet
with Shimon Peres about a dozen times.
The first of those meetings was in the mid-
1980s. Jacob was a regional chair for what was
then called the United Jewish Appeal. Peres was
Israel’s prime minister. The topic of their meeting
was Israel’s efforts to relocate Jews from the former
Soviet Union. Jacob remembers being impressed
with Peres’ tireless work to get as many Soviet Jews
out of the area as possible.
Their last encounter was during the final weeks
of Peres’ presidency in 2014. They met at the presi-
dent’s residence to discuss the conflict between
Israel and Hamas. Jacob, who had gone to Israel
as a “private citizen involved in advocacy,” sub-
sequently briefed members of Congress on that
discussion.
After reflecting on all their meetings over the
last three decades, Jacob says listening to Peres
talk with such enthusiasm and optimism regarding
the possibilities for Israel and all of mankind was
most inspirational.
“He had the same hope and optimism you
would expect to hear from someone in his 20s and
not from a man in his 90s,” Jacob says.
Jacob says his best memories of this Israeli lead-
er involve Peres’ interactions with Seeds of Peace,
an organization headquartered in New York that
brings young people and educators from areas of
conflict to a summer camp in the United States for
peacebuilding and leadership development. Peres
and Jacob have been involved with Seeds of Peace
since its inception in 1993.
When Peres was among the signers of the Oslo
Accords, some of the Seeds of Peace campers were
among those invited by former President Clinton
to witness the historic signing on the White House
Lawn.

*

Peres’ Dream
Now Ours
To Fulfill

S

itting on my office desk, I have
two notable pictures — one
taken with my wife, Lynda, and
Elie Weisel in 1995 at a United Jewish
Appeal fundraiser and the other with
Shimon Peres in 2013 in the president’s
home in Jerusalem where I had the
honor of interviewing him during a
JCPA [Jewish Council for Public Affairs]
mission,” says Dr. Conrad Giles of

Bloomfield Hills. “Now both of these
great men are gone.
“The hour spent with Peres is forever
seared in my memory bank. His grace,
intelligence and sensitivity, his ability to
express his part in the history of Israel
and his optimistic dream for Israel’s
future left us all with a sense of hope
that peace and stability for the state
could be more than a dream but a dis-
tinct possibility.
His energy, intelligence and leader-
ship have been lost. His dream, how-
ever, remains for us all to help to fulfill.
That dream is one of his great legacies.
It was a great honor for Lynda and me
to have spent this time with him.”

*

*

‘His Mind Was Forever Young’

I

n a world where “one of a kind” is
an overused phrase, Shimon Peres
was precisely that,” says David
Victor of West Bloomfield. “I had the
great privilege of being in his presence
a number of times from 2001 until
2014, including one unforgettable,
hour-long meeting in his private office
in the Beit HaNassi (the residence of
the president) in the company of only
two others.
“First, the obvious — to be in the
presence of Shimon Peres was to feel
you were in the presence of living his-
tory, because of course you were. As
my encounters with him were from
his late 70s to age 90, I never knew the
young Shimon Peres. Yet I never felt I
was meeting an old Shimon Peres. His
mind was forever young. Powerful yet
nuanced, visionary, optimistic and
even poetic, yet also practical, and
all of it seasoned with a humor-filled
twinkle in his eye.
“The Shimon Peres I was honored
to meet was one past action forced
by political imperative but rather had

F

or the almost 1,300 Michigan
Miracle Mission participants,
their first official act was to each
plant a tree in Mod’in,” says Arthur
Horwitz, JN publisher/executive editor.
“Shimon Peres attended and, follow-
ing some introductory comments from
a makeshift stage, pulled on a Michigan
Miracle Mission kibbutznik’s hat and
waded into the crowd.
“He spent several minutes mingling
with star-struck Michiganians. Could it
get any better than this? Believe it or not,
it did, with a concluding dinner in an
airport hangar with Yitzhak Rabin.”

Pearls Of
Wisdom

T

David Victor and Peres

earned the luxury of and passion for
acting at a higher level. Peacemaker,
intellectual, high-tech evangelist,
revered international statesman,
a founding father of the modern
Jewish state and chief architect of its
defensive capabilities — including its
nuclear program — President Peres’
journey through this world was almost
otherworldly, and you could somehow
feel that, too.
“I am convinced Israel owes a
real chunk of its current identity to
Shimon Peres and that the world is a
better place for his life in it.”

*

ova Dorfman, a former Detroiter
living in Israel who does con-
sulting work for the Jewish
Federation of Metropolitan Detroit,
heard Shimon Peres speak this spring.
“Forbes held its Under 30 Summit
in Tel Aviv,” she says. “Shimon Peres
addressed the 600 young adults from
throughout the world,
and I was fortunate to
have been present. His
remarks were always
pearls of wisdom and
I jotted them down:
“And, finally, make
your life a story worth
telling. You only get
Tova Dorfman
one shot at this exis-
tence, and one day
when you’re gone, the
most important thing you’ll leave behind
is the legacy of the life you lived. Make
sure you make it a story you’re proud to
have others tell.”

*

continued on page 32

October 6 • 2016

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