According to a Ladat.net report, President Shimon Peres is expected to make an official visit to Bnei Brak in about two weeks, adding Mr. Peres has expressed his desire to visit the city of Torah and chassidus.
The president is expected to visit talmedei torah, schools, and meet with yeshiva students. He is also expected to meet with a number of rabbonim.
The report quoted members of the president’s staff, who stated the president greatly admires the torah city and the “the yeshiva students and the chareidi community. There is no doubt he will visit the students.”
(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)
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6 Responses
wow what a turn around for peres. what happened to him that made him so pro charaidy ?
Hey, maybe he plans to be a chozer b’teshuva too.
I don’t know Peres’ personal history, but it’s “worth it” to keep in mind some historical perspective on the “old guard” of Israeli politics (Peres, Rabin, Begin). A lot of these men were raised in European shtetls, where, unlike in today’s world, there were no divisions of Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, etc. To be sure there were maskilim, but few espoused an official “party line” that rejected the mesorah. Individuals observed what they did, and personal beliefs or disbeliefs were not cannonized – one person’s doubt or disbelief was something to be shared over coffee, perhaps, but not in a public sermon to the masses.
So the likelihood is that for Peres, a European-born Jewish man, whatever he sees in Bnei Brak will not be unfamiliar, and may well resonate in synch with the music of his youth. The sounds of the beis medresh – I don’t know whether he was immersed in them as a boy, or not, but I doubt that the sound of bochurim learning Torah would be foriegn to him, or not touch his heart.
This is a good lesson, we should always keep the lines of conversation open, one never knows when someone might call.
as is known, peres’s father was travelling through radin when peres was three years old. the father (not a talmid chachom, to put it mildly) got off the train, and he and his son — shimon, got a bracha from the chofetz chaim, that he will be saved from death. of course, peres was never in any physical danger in his life; he never served in the haganah, never served in zahal, nothing. till he was “saved” from the events in kikar malchei israel a little over ten years ago!
Nezem Zahav baf chazir. He has fought Yiddishkeit for 60 years. On such a person it says assur lihistakal bdimus adom rasha (YWN should BTW, take his picture down.) It is no mitzvah to meet with such a person. A do not know the reason for his turn around lately, by after 60 years, it’ll still be a while before I’m convinced of his sincerity.
Maybe its as president of the state of Israel he would like to visit with as many different communities as possible, secular, haradi etc? I’m guessing here but I expect that he thinks that there is not enough respect between various parts of the the Jewish people in Israel so he will try to improve things by showing respect and trying to set and example so that others will follow.