Wanted: A modest president

Many are analyzing the mandate of the president of Israel and his role. In my opinion, the president's main role is to create harmony. The president's every act must bring the residents of Israel together and bring Israel closer to other nations of the world.

Israel's first president, Chaim Weizmann, set an excellent example. He was a prominent scientist, a statesman with the support of the people, and one of the most important Zionist leaders after the death of Theodor Herzl and before the founding of the state.

Speaking at the Provisional Council of the State of Israel, Weizmann said he was "honored to open the Provisional Council of the State of Israel, the first Israeli Knesset of our time in the eternal city of Jerusalem."

A few days later, on Feb. 17, 1949, he was sworn in as the first president of Israel. After the ceremony, he said, he would endeavor "with all my soul" to fulfill the lofty mission for "the good of our people in Israel" and the state. He said that he had been entrusted with a big job and admitted that as "flesh and blood, I might -- God forbid -- fail in my endeavors."

The Basic Law: The President of the State was not passed until 1964. Weizmann's mandate was unclear, but he tended to joke about it, saying the only thing he could stick his nose into was a handkerchief. The man who was active in so many different areas understood that his main job was a formality and that he had to forgo his own ego in the name of bringing people closer.

Recent Israeli presidents have more than once failed to live up to the example of our first president. Some of the candidates currently vying for the job are also far from conducting themselves as he did. So the atmosphere surrounding the election of the 10th president comes as no wonder. It's also easy to understand the questions about the essence of the presidency, and even whether it is necessary.

In Ashkenazi Jewish communities, it is traditional for the cantor to recite a special prayer before the High Holiday ceremonies of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in which he asks for forgiveness in the name of the congregation. Weizmann would quote the first words of that prayer, which say: "Poor in worthy deeds, I am horribly frightened in thy presence / I have come to plead before thee on behalf of thy people of Israel, who have made me a messenger."

This is how a president should conduct himself in Israel's parliamentary system.

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