Ladies and Gentlemen,
On behalf of my wife Rhoda and my colleagues here at the Embassy, I want to welcome all of you here tonight.
Obviously, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, three Supreme Court Justices, two dozen Senators, three dozen Congressmen, and a host of other dignitaries did not come here tonight just to get a good kosher meal.
You came here to honor Israel’s President, Shimon Peres. You honor him not just because of the office he holds but also because of the leader he is -- A leader whose life represents in so many ways the life of Israel.
Like millions of Israelis, President Peres is an immigrant, making Aliyah from his native Poland in 1934.
And like the families of so many of his fellow immigrants from Europe, President Peres’s family was wiped out in the Holocaust – burned in a synagogue in 1942.
In the pre-state period, when many believed that national independence demanded that the Jewish people work their own land, Shimon Peres studied agriculture and worked as a dairy farmer and a shepherd on a kibbutz.
Little did he know it at the time, but milking cows and herding sheep prepared him well for a long career in Israeli politics.
In the early years and decades of Israel’s existence, when the security and survival of the fledgling Jewish state was in constant jeopardy, Ben Gurion chose President Peres to ensure that Israel would have the capability to defend itself.
Ben-Gurion chose wisely -- because President Peres’s contribution to securing Israel’s future was decisive in so many areas, including some of the most sensitive and strategic ones.
And after Israel repeatedly repelled aggression on the battlefield, President Peres turned his prodigious talents and boundless energy to the pursuit of peace.
Through good times and bad, when hopes in Israel were high and when pessimism was winning the day, President Peres remained laser focused on helping Israel achieve a lasting peace with all its neighbors.
But this is only part of the story of a man whose 67 years of service to Israel is hard to fathom:
Consider this:
In addition to being the only Israeli President to have served as Prime Minister, President Peres is the only Prime Minister who also held all three of Israel’s senior cabinet positions – Finance Minister, Foreign Minister, and Defense Minister.
How rare is that? Well, I checked whether there has ever been an American President who has held the top 4 posts.
Turns out only Six Presidents have held two posts.
Five of them - Jefferson, Madison, John Quincy Adams, Buchanan and Van Buren were both Presidents and Secretaries of State.
One of them, Taft, was both Secretary of War and President.
No Secretary of the Treasury has gone on to be President – Sorry Jack. If it’s any consolation, Hoover was also Secretary of Commerce.
In fact, only one President has been both a Secretary of State and Secretary of War.
Anyone want to guess who that was? President Monroe, who formulated a Presidential doctrine before Presidents had to have doctrines.
But the scope and scale of President Peres's contribution extends well beyond Israel's borders - and the Congressional Gold Medal he will receive tomorrow is further testament to the respect and admiration he has won over so many decades.
President Peres is only the 7th non-American to have received both the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Of those seven, only four have also won the Nobel Peace Prize - Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela, Aun San Suu Kyi and President Peres.
So President Peres is in fact the only person to win all three who has neither spent time in prison nor is up for sainthood.
Then again, given how popular he now is in the Holy Land and his budding friendship with Pope Francis, you never know.
I could go on and on because our President is truly one of a kind but I wanted to end with two things that for me capture his uniqueness.
First, great figures in public life tend to be either dreamers or doers. They are either people of vision who inspire or they are people of action who get things done.
President Peres is that rare leader who is both a dreamer and a doer - talking about the future one day and then making it happen the next.
Second, it's a complement to say that someone looks young. And despite what Saturday Night Live's Fernando used to say, feeling young is even more important than looking young.
But I suppose the highest compliment one can pay to someone is that they think young.
Well, President Peres couples the vast experience and wisdom that comes with age with the curiosity and creativity of youth.
At 20, he was herding sheep on a kibbutz. At nearly 91, he was speaking to the tenth President of the United States that he has met about the past, present and future.
So join me in raising a toast to Israel’s remarkable President, Shimon Peres - a dreamer and doer who after nine decades is thinking younger than ever.