Explaining his ability to stay forever young, he says: "You have to love what you're doing and be ready to learn something new."
By GREER FAY CASHMAN, APshimon peres 88 224(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski [file])
"You have to love what you're doing and you always have to be ready to learn something new," President Shimon Peres said Thursday, explaining his ability to stay forever young to Dimona youngsters during a celebration of his 85th birthday in the town.
The president made light of his age, saying that anyone who made the effort could reach 85. His birthday is actually on August 2, but its celebration was postponed to the date on the Jewish calendar, also because of his preparations for travel to Beijing and because August 2 was a Shabbat.
His choice of Dimona, the city he put on the map by helping create Israel's Nuclear Research Center there and whose growth he helped encourage during his stint as minister for the development of the Galilee and the Negev in the spirit of his mentor David Ben-Gurion, was an understandable one.
Peres was greeted with smiles, cheers, flag-waving, balloons and a birthday cake decorated with the presidential insignia. He received a musical greeting from hundreds of Black Hebrews, whom he said sounded like the "choir of history," spent time in a Beduin tent and gave TV and radio interviews to youngsters studying at the Dimona Communications Center, where Lior Peretz, 5, told him that he should remain young in spirit and continue doing for the next generation what he had done for previous ones.
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