In the end, after they buried Shimon Peres on Mount Herzl in the Jerusalem soil, we will take with us two memories from the last journey of this old-young man: the Avinu Malkenu ("Our Father, Our King") prayer, which Peres had asked be sung over his grave, and the dream he left behind. Not one of his eulogizers skipped over Peres' proud affiliation to the family of dreamers or, as Peres defined himself, "a dreamer of his people." The man who was never able to free himself of the vestiges of his Polish accent, and who strove to be an Israeli and speak universally, chose to be buried to the sounds he had remembered from his sweet and so very Jewish childhood. There was also the dream, so pervasive in Peres' life, the presence of which was so intensely felt at his funeral. His many eulogizers never ceased to talk about the final days (for better and for worse) of Peres the dreamer, of Peres the visionary, and other biases too numerous to count. President Reuven Rivlin, for example, chose to quote the lines "Rejoice, rejoice now in the dreams / I the dreamer am he who speaks" from Shaul Tchernichovsky's poem "I Believe." "So, you rejoiced now, our dear president," Rivlin said. "You were a dreamer first and foremost, and to refuse your optimism, and sometimes your innocence, was severe punishment. You who knew the heavy price of innocence, but also firmly believed there was a heavier price to pay for mediocrity and those of little faith." Peres' good friend, author Amos Oz, also describedhim as a "relentless dreamer" and even "naive." "Naivete that is not the opposite of intelligence or sophistication, an innocence that is the good earth on which sophistication rests and from which great deeds grow," Oz said. He was impressed that within Peres there existed, side by side, "awareness of reality" and an "incredible urge to change it." According to Oz, only someone endowed with these two qualities could "be a trailblazer, and almost all the trailblazers lost their way, until it turned out they were right." "Shimon, like the original dreamer, Joseph, realized most of his dreams in the end. Although he often stumbled and tripped," Oz said, things happened "because his eyes were directed at the stars." As we all know, the identification of Peres as a dreamer kept his fans and his critics busy while he was alive. Peres himself did not deny this tendency. He once said, "Allow me to remain an optimist. Allow me to be a dreamer of his people." In another instance, he was more precise: "I am one of the dreamers, but not a daydreamer." On his last journey, as in the days of his presidency, Shimon was engulfed by a great love, and he became the Israeli consensus. The man who, in his arduous days in politics was called a "loser" and a "troublemaker," in recent years earned the love and recognition he so longed for. Absurdly, the more diminished his formal influence, and the more ceremonial his role, the more the love for him grew. At the funeral Friday, almost everyone loved him. Some retroactively. Nevertheless, this collective embrace was much more genuine and moving than the one he received on his 90th birthday, three years ago. Then, too, we witnessed a similarly impressive parade of VIPs -- celebrities, presidents, princes and prime ministers -- that was at times extravagant and pompous. Many of them returned here last week. A few of them, such as former U.S. President Bill Clinton, came here three years ago for hundreds of thousands of dollars. This time, Clinton and his friends in the global nobility, of which Peres was also a member, came voluntarily. They felt a need to come and pay their last respects to the man who dreamed of a new Middle East and never relinquished the dream, even when it cracked and broke. The many accomplishments to Peres' name since his discovery by Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, include the nuclear reactor in Dimona, Israel Aerospace Industries and Israel Military Industries, massive military acquisitions in the country's first days, warm relations with France, the missile system, an end to the insane 400% inflation of the 1980s, the Entebbe operation to save the kidnapped hostages in Uganda, and the assassination of Hamas explosives expert Yahya Ayyash, known as "The Engineer," who was responsible for much terror and bloodshed. Peres, by virtue of his experience, and even when no longer a minister himself, advised and assisted prime ministers, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose relationship with Peres had its ups and downs. His last "baby" was the technological revolution and his push for scientific innovation. Obviously, Peres would have been saddened by the poor attendance of senior officials from Arab countries at his funeral and over the absence of Arab MKs who voted for him in the 2007 presidential elections, and might have even wanted to see a larger presence of the haredi leadership and public, with which he had ambivalent relations. "Mr. Peres," as we journalists used to address him, or "Shimon" as his friends knew him, often felt like a giant among dwarves. He was recognized as a giant at his funeral, or as Netanyahu described him, "phenomenal." "When the day comes," Peres promised, "I won't forget to die." When he was sworn in as president, he said, "A man ages, but faith does not grow old." Peres had a vision, and for the most part historical perspective. "I built Dimona to achieve peace," he often said, as if summarizing his path in multiple roles throughout the years, from "Mr. Security" to "Mr. Peace"; from a Ben-Gurionesque security perspective to a diplomatic perspective in the spirit of former Prime Minister Moshe Sharett. Peres continued to defend the Oslo Accords that he helped broker, and which his eulogizers elegantly skipped over, in the twilight of his life. "History will judge it differently," he would repeatedly claim. It may be that in the future, for better and for worse, the history of Peres will be written through a completely different lens, not as a "violent son" or as the person responsible for the failure of Oslo. We will wait. "What would you like written on your tombstone-" Peres was asked some years ago. According to his son Yoni, he replied, without hesitation: "Died before his time." This anecdote, which managed to evoke chuckles at the funeral, is fairly consistent with the fact that, at the end of his presidency, at the age of 90, Peres was still seriously considering challenging Netanyahu for the premiership. He was "always looking ahead," Netanyahu attested Friday, speaking openly of their rivalry, their friendship and their differences of opinion. And there was one other figure that was mentioned again and again at the funeral despite not being there: Peres' wife, Sonia Peres, who died a few years ago. "Shimon's great love," who preferred not to join him at the President's Residence at such an advanced age. Their children and the many speakers who eulogized Peres allowed themselves to unite the two and speak of their connection and extraordinary love. Peres' last journey provided just a few moments in which he was depicted "in his slippers": Peres preparing sandwiches for the children, in shorts and a tank top, organizing his bookshelf, enjoying an Israeli salad; the shy Peres, the gentleman, in love with the people and the public, who never rested for a moment, and now, just like any other flesh and blood, has finally found proper rest; the man who was once asked, as Clinton told it, what he would like his legacy to be, and replied that he was more concerned about the future.
