Today, we mourn the death of the last of Israel’s founding fathers, Shimon Peres. Mr. Peres died Wednesday morning in Israel, after having suffered a stroke earlier this month. He was 93 years old.

Mr. Peres, who served as President of Israel from 2007 to 2014 as well as Prime Minister and almost every senior post in Israel politics over his six-decade career in public service, was a pursuer of peace, pluralism, tolerance, and democracy for the Jewish State.

Mr. Peres was instrumental in negotiating the Oslo Peace Accords, the landmark Israeli-Palestinian agreement, for which he was awarded the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize along with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat. Following Oslo, Mr. Peres became symbolic as Israel’s champion of peace.

Mr. Peres vowed to live to see a day when peace would be made real and he leaves us with his dream alive, though sadly still unrealized. As Union for Reform Judaism’s President Rabbi Rick Jacobs stated, “We can think of no better tribute to this great leader than to continue to seek justice and to pursue peace for all Israeli citizens. While Shimon Peres did not achieve his final dream to give Israel the security with peace that it so deserves, his example will live on as a testament to what can be and what must be.”

May Shimon Peres’ memory be for a blessing and may we strive together for the peace he believed was possible.

Please join us at our Shabbat service this Friday night where we will add Shimon Peres’ name to our Shloshim list of loved ones recited before Kaddish for the upcoming month in honor of his service to Israel and the Jewish people.