At a time when we have come to expect less of our leaders, Peres, who died Wednesday in Tel Aviv at age 93, is a model and inspiration for courageous moral leadership in the face of adversity.
President Peres was a leader and a visionary in so many ways.
One of the founders of the state of Israel, he was both a Zionist and a dreamer, whose mark on history was defined by his daring. Over the course of his life, he was involved in many of the most fateful decisions that determined the course of Israel's history.
Peres was someone seized as a young man by the dream of Jewish independence. It brought him to Palestine from a Polish town that is now in Belarus at the age of 11. A protege of Israel's founder and its first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, Peres was entrusted with a key role in procuring arms for the Haganah Jewish underground during Israel's War of Independence.
In the early years of the state, as director-general of the Defense Ministry, Peres engineered an emerging defense industry that would create the conditions in which the Jewish state could thrive in a hostile environment. Out of the public eye, the young Peres daringly, and against the opposition of Israel's scientific community, shepherded into being Israel's nuclear program.
This is a man who continued to learn well into his 90s, when his interest in nano-science and neuroscience fueled his constant curiosity and his conviction in the innovation Israel had to offer the world.
Though over the course of his 70-year political career, Peres didn't shy away from the fray of politics, during his presidency he became a leader whose moral voice transcended the politics of the moment. He captured the imagination and admiration of a nation and of the world.
We have lost a great leader — a role model for all of us who wish to make a mark on the world. The life and example of Shimon Peres will forever be a model of how to live a life of public service based on moral foundations.
Jonathan A. Greenblatt is CEO of the Anti-Defamation League.