San Diego (special) -- Although Israel's former prime minister, Shimon Peres, was in San Diego to forge an alliance between his Tel Aviv-based peace center and San Diego State University in the cause of Middle East peace, he was asked repeatedly to help solve what may be as thorny a problem: Establishing religious peace between Orthodox Jews in Israel and non-Orthodox Jews in the United States.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner said that to further both goals--peace with the Arabs, and peace among the Jews--he favors making a third peace: an agreement between his opposition Labor party and Israel's ruling Likud party to form a broad-based government coalition that would eliminate Likud's need to depend on the religious parties to obtain parliamentary majorities.

"I do not think the most important thing in life is to replace someone else in government," Peres told United Jewish Federation leaders at a small dinner following a day filled with ceremony at San Diego State University. "For me, changing the policy is more important than changing the government."

As if to direct his words past his immediate audience to the man who succeeded him as chairman of the Labor party -- Ehud Barak -- Peres added, "Nobody remembers how many days you were in power: many people will remember how many right decisions you made."

In at least three forums--a meeting with news media, a joint reception for members of the San Diego State Foundation and SDSU's Lipinsky Institute for Judaic Studies, and at the UJF dinner--Peres responded to questions about the religious rift between Diaspora Jews and Israel.

Told by HERITAGE that San Diego Rabbi Moshe Levin of Congregation Beth El was among the Conservative Jews whom police herded from the vicinity of the Western Wall when the Conservatives tried to have a service with men and women praying together last Tisha B'Av, Peres criticized the intolerance shown in Israel for non-Orthodox forms of Judaism.

"According to Jewish tradition there are 70 faces to the Torah and none of us has the right to decide that his face or that his approach is the superior one," Peres said. 

"We do not have a pope, cardinals and all this sort of things; we have one Lord and every person is directly connected with Him, and every person was born in His image," he added. "So I cannot see anybody trying to oppose His version. I am sure that nobody has the right to divide Jewish life."

On that grounds, he said, he opposes a plan put forward by the religious parties to change Israel's law of conversion so that only those performed in Israel by Orthodox rabbis will be recognized as entitling a Jew by choice to automatic Israeli citizenship.

"I think it is a mistake," Peres said. "It is a scandal. It is unnecessary. I hope it won't come true, and we should fight against it."

The former prime minister said "what you have to do is really separate religion from the (political) parties. The Lord in heaven doesn't need a party. He was already elected. He doesn't seek reelections. He doesn't need a budget. He doesn't need to participate in any coalition. He doesn't need new laws; whatever it is that He has to say, He said already on Mount Sinai. Who needs all this? The parties to justify their activities in the eyes of their followers."

Peres said the multi-party system of Israel needs to be changed so that "instead of having 14 and 15 parties, each of them becoming a pressure group ...we have to have two or three parties like any normal democracy and have religious people in all parties, instead of having religious parties. That in my judgment is the crux of the matter."

At the Federation dinner, Peres responded to a question by UJF President Rod Stone about pluralism by saying the rift among Jews "is not your problem; it is our problem as well. If the law of conversion is passed, it will be a catastrophe....I think we are on the same side. It is not a problem for American Jews or Israeli Jews; it is a problem for the Jewish people."

The time for a Labor-Likud coalition may be ripe, Peres said later in the question-and-answer session. "I think that many members of the Likud feel today that more than the religious serving them, they have begun to serve the religious."