Thank you very much Lester for your kind words. 
President of the Institute, my friend, Ambassador Dennis Ross,
The Director, Avi Bar Yosef,
Distinguished guests from so many different countries,
Dear Friends,

First of all I want to apologize in advance to the press and the networks.  I'm going to be very boring tonight. 

I really thought about this talk tonight, more than I normally do on other occasions where I’m invited and honored to make a speech or an appearance, because I think this is different. We have so many opportunities to talk about the current issues, the political issues, the political controversies, the issues of the day, the issues that will become the issues of the headlines tomorrow.  On this particular occasion, I thought that when we talk about ourselves, it’s different.  And allow me therefore to share with you things as I see them from a very different personal perspective. 

If I was asked today, which, I am sometimes, how I most accurately define myself as a person, what is it that will define me more accurately, or most accurately, probably I would say – certainly I would say– first of all, I am Jewish. Had I been asked this question when I was much younger, say, at the age of 14 or 15, I would have said, right away, I’m an Israeli.  Something in me changed, to a degree that my answer is not what it was.  And this of course is not accidental; it's not something that just happened, it happened through a very long and sometimes painful process of soul searching of who I am and where I come from.  And the older I grew, perhaps with the wider responsibilities which I had to assume over the years in different positions, the broader my understanding was of where it all comes from.  And in this process, I didn’t become less Israeli, I became more Jewish. 

And the significance of my roots, of my family’s – I thought for instance about the story of my parents’ lives, which is one single individual story – there are millions like it.  They were born in Russia and in the Ukraine and they grew up in China, of all places, and they came to Israel and lived in Israel all their lives since then. And I thought of what made them move in the first place from Russia and from the Ukraine to China.  And what made them move was something that belonged to the history of the Jewish people, to the fears of the Jewish people, to the fate of the Jewish people, to the circumstances which are so unique for us and which are not identical to the history of any other people.  And this is just one single individual story. 

When I thought about the story of my wife’s family and so on and so forth, and the inevitable impact of this was something which is a lot more significant in the making of a person’s perception of himself in the world that he lives in than maybe anything else.

And yet the question still remains, what is the significance of the Israeli part of my identity?  When I’m asked, I say, “Yes, first of all I am Jewish and then, naturally I'm an Israeli”.  Now we are all Jews, but in most cases when you are asked, I guess – I believe… I want to believe – that almost every one of you when asked will say, “First I'm Jewish, then I’m American, I’m French, I am Mexican, I am Canadian”.  And I ask myself, this combination, I’m Jewish-American, I’m Jewish-Israeli – how does it impact our perception as Jews when the second part of it may be so different, or does it?  This is a question which I think ought to be at the basis of some of the discussions that will take place here because I think – and in advance I apologize to any of you who may feel offended by this observation, so I hope it will not sound as typical Israeli arrogance, which is very rare anyway, as you know – I think that there is a certain significance to the Israeli aspect in the overall perception of Jewish identity which is different and may be of exceptional importance in comparison to anything else.  Do we fully understand what it means for each and every one of us?  

I think that – and it occurred to me to give it a lot of thought when I became mayor of Jerusalem.  When I became Mayor of Jerusalem, I couldn’t escape the thought.  I know there was a certain immodesty involved, but I thought to myself, for so many generations, the most significant, the most powerful ethos in Jewish history was a four word prayer that every Jew remembered, even when he didn’t remember anything else about Jewish observance, which was “Next year in Jerusalem”.  And I thought to myself – after all these years, after all these generations that they were praying to return to Jerusalem, I was fortunate to become the Mayor of Jerusalem.  What does it mean in terms of the historical perspective for me as part of a nation?  And then, I actually convinced myself that there was one thing if I was asked.  What is the one single emotion that we as Jews can distinguish and separate from every other and say, this is perhaps the most characteristic emotion of Jewish history?  It’s not an easy question and there may be different answers. My answer is, I think, yearning all our lives.  All our history, we are looking forward for something that will happen and maybe this is our destiny, that we will look for it forever, but that something is always connected with this place. 

We are not looking forward as Jews for anything which is not part of the land of Israel, perhaps of this city.  As human beings, who are looking for, supporting and believing in moral standards, we can think of different historical events that took place in many other places in the world.  But as Jews, the one single thing that is the driving force of everything that we were praying for, and crying for and perhaps dying for all our lives, was to regain something that is sometimes very hard to define but which belongs here, and therefore when we define ourselves as Jews, there is no way that we can escape the significance of Israel in this, as broad a definition we can give of ourselves.  

And while I know that many of you are very proud and for good reason, of the other aspect that I outlined before, when you are asked who you are and you say, “We are Jews, and we are British, we are Jews and we are Canadian”.  And you have a good reason to be proud of your British side and of your American side and of your Canadian side.  We are very proud of you as Jews, we Israelis, because each and every one of you – and many others – have manifested over many years that Jewish solidarity, and being Jewish is a very essential part of everything that drives you.  And also I think what characterizes all the people sitting here, and many who are not part of this particular event, is that the Israeli part is something that can’t be ignored in whatever they do as Jews.  And I believe that the connection between the two is the focus, more than anything else, of not just who we are, but what future we have. 

I hope, I pray, I wish, that in the short time that you will be sitting and discussing the issues, you will try to offer some ideas of, even when not all the Jews are making Aliyah to Israel  which in my mind, in my heart, is the ultimate answer, even when this is not possible, how we can build up the combination of our Jewish identity into the realities, the constraints, the pains and the expectations of this place, to make it more meaningful and more promising to each and every one of us.  Thank you very much.