The death of Shimon Peres last week has been the occasion of any number of fulsome eulogies and overwrought comparisons.   But the person who keeps coming to mind for us is Moses.

It’s not that we think that Peres was a prophet, ordained by God, or on some kind of a holy mission.   But there are similarities. If Peres did not quite reach Moses’ 120 years, he came about as close as people come these days. And like Moses he has been around forever, in a preternaturally busy political career of some seven decades. And like Moses shaping an Israelite people to enter the land, Peres was one the Founders of a Jewish state on that land. And both men were men of war and men of peace; ruthless and generous; conniving and ingenuous; narrow pragmatists and expansive idealists. And in the end both men were able to transcend their many contradictions. read more