- Education:
- Shimon gave credit to his grandfather, Chaim Volozhin, whom he said taught him Talmud.
- He attended Balfour Elementary and High School and Geula Gymnasium (High School for Commerce) in Tel Aviv.
- At the age of 15, he attended the Ben Shemen Youth Village and Agricultural Boarding School in Central Israel.
- He further studied English, Economics, and Philosophy at the New School and New York University.
- At Harvard University he studied Advanced Management.
- Early Career:
- Due to training in Agriculture, he worked as a farmer and a shepherd when he returned to Alumot in 1944.
- He was secretary for a labor Zionist Youth Movement called the HaNoar HaOved VeHaLomed. He took over the movement a couple years later and won the majority. It was then that David Ben Gurion became his political mentor.
- In 1952 he became Deputy Director General in the Ministry of Defense and in 1953 he moved up to the rank of Director General at age 29, which made him the youngest to hold such a position.
- In the 1959 election, Shimon Peres, who was a member of the Mapai political party, was elected to the Knesset. He occupied the position of Deputy Defense Minister from that year until 1965 when he left to form the Rafi party with David Ben Gurion.
- He had several appointments between 1969 and 1974, such as Minister of Immigration, helping with occupied territories. He was also appointed Minister of Defense in the Yitzhak Rabin Government. During this time, Peres challenged Rabin for the chairmanship but lost in the 1977 elections.
- In the said year, 1977, Yitzhak Rabin removed himself from office because his wife was involved in a foreign currency scandal. Rabin could not legally resign as Prime Minister, so he still held the official post, while Shimon Peres held the unofficial post of Prime Minister.
- In 1984, Peres formed an alliance with Yitzhak Shamir, and he served as Prime Minister for two years.
- From 1992 Peres served as Rabin’s Foreign Minister and within two years he achieved his two greatest diplomatic successes, which were the Oslo Accords and the Jordan Peace Treaty.
- For his hard work in achieving the Oslo Accords, he shared a Noble Peace Prize with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, who was head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).
- In 1995 Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated and Shimon Peres took over the position of Prime Minister.
- In 1996 he lost the re-election and resigned in 1997 to form the labor party.
- In 2003 he chaired the labor once again and lost in 2005.
- Shimon Peres surprised everyone when he gave the head of the Kadima Party, Ariel Sharon, his full support.
- Finally, in 2007, at age 84, Peres was elected as President of Israel and completed his presidency in 2014.
- Shimon Peres was married to Sonya Gelman in May 1945. She died at the age of 87 from heart failure.
- The couple had three children.
- He was poetry and songwriter.
- He was an avid user of social media.
- “You're as young as your dreams, not as old as your calendar.”
- “You can kill a thousand; you can bring an end to life; you cannot kill an idea.”
- “If a problem has no solution, it may not be a problem, but a fact - not to be solved, but to be coped with over time.”