Openly Jewish Shapiro sworn in on Jewish Bibles

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Schatz, the director of government affairs at the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia. “And it is always in that framework of Jewish values.”

Schatz contrasted Shapiro’s openness about his Jewish identity with one of his Jewish predecessors as governor, Ed Rendell, for whom Schatz worked when Rendell was mayor of Philadelphia.

“Josh shows up for us just by being so proudly Jewish, and that is really something, because Rendell, who I worked for and who I love, I mean, he never hid his Jewishness, but he didn’t wear it on his sleeve,” she said.

Perhaps Shapiro’s most direct antecedent is Joe Lieberman, the Orthodox former U.S. senator from Connecticut who was Al Gore’s vice presidential running mate in 2000. Lieberman, the first Jew on a major-party presidential ticket, recalled being ridiculed and questioned by Jewish groups for expressing his faith at campaign events.

That hasn’t happened for Shapiro, who is part of a relatively younger generation that includes congresspersons Elaine Luria of Virginia and Becca Balint of Vermont, and expresses unabashed Jewish identities when campaigning among the broader public.

What separates Shapiro is his outsize success in a competitive race in a swing state — a record that has insiders bandying about his name as a potential presidential candidate one day.

Shapiro’s interest in things political goes back to his days growing up in Montgomery County, just outside Philadelphia. Shapiro centered his bar mitzvah, for example, on a letter-writing campaign to free a refusenik, a Jew whose intended emigration was blocked by the USSR’s bureaucracy.

By the time he was 31, in 2004, he was running for his first elected position: Pennsylvania state representative. He impressed people in his district with his low-key straightforwardness, said Betsy Sheerr, a Jewish lay leader and a Democrat. “With Josh,” she said, “there never has been any confusion about where he stands on things.”

Within two years, Shapiro rose to statewide prominence when he brokered a deal to break a deadlock in the state house, where Democrats had a one-seat majority. Under Shapiro’s plan, Democrats would back a moderate Republican, Denny O’Brien, to keep the scandal-plagued incumbent speaker, Republican John

Perzel, from reelection. As soon as O’Brien got the job, he named Shapiro deputy speaker.

Shapiro’s backers cite the now-legendary episode as a sign of his leadership. His detractors say it’s a signal of his self-promotion and gamesmanship. (Perzel ended up serving time in prison.)

Schatz said Shapiro remained sensitive to issues affecting the Jewish community, helping expand Medicare assistance for the elderly, instituting Holocaust education and targeting terroristbacking countries like Iran for sanctions.

In 2008, Shapiro was among just a handful of establishment Democrats who endorsed Barack Obama for president. (Hillary Clinton went on to win the Pennsylvania primary.) Shapiro defended Obama when his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, came under fire for antisemitic comments.

The following year, the Democratic machine eliminated the “deputy speaker” title, leading the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent to muse, “The Once-Lofty Shapiro; Has He Been Brought Down a Few Pegs?”

Shapiro soon was looking to advance elsewhere: He ran for and won a spot on the three-member Montgomery County Board of Commissioners. He was elected chairman, effectively the mayor of the populous and prosperous suburban Philadelphia county.

In 2016, Shapiro was elected Pennsylvania attorney general. He led battles against President Donald Trump’s efforts to limit entry to the United States of people from a number of Muslim-majority countries, and to keep Trump acolytes from overturning his 2020 loss in the state. He also led the investigation into child abuse in the Roman Catholic Church.

Shapiro’s gubernatorial campaign launch last April was an ad in which he declared, “I make it home Friday nights for Sabbath dinner,” while the camera closed on challahs. It also stars his four kids and his wife, Lori, whom he refers to as his “high school sweetheart.”

Shapiro’s ultimate victory was especially sweet to many Jews because he defeated the Republican Doug Mastriano, who had highlighted Shapiro’s Jewishness, but not in a positive way.

It is a source of delight to Shapiro and his backers that his open Jewish identity did not alienate Pennsylvanians.

Mastriano’s team, toward the end of the campaign, appeared to notice the resonance Shapiro’s beliefs had among Pennsylvanians. His surrogates pivoted to claiming Shapiro was not a genuine Jew, with one consultant saying Shapiro’s defense of abortion rights made him inauthentic, and Mastriano’s wife claiming that she and her husband loved Israel more than Jews did.

Since the election, Shapiro has stayed largely out of the public eye, focusing on preparing for his inauguration and putting together a transition team. The team bears signs of Shapiro’s long and deep Jewish ties. Marcel Groen, for example, a retired attorney on the economic development advisory committee, attended synagogue with Shapiro’s father.

Maybe someday Shapiro would like to make history as America’s first Jewish president. For now, he has said, he is focused is on his home state. “I have an a mbition to get a little bit of sleep, to reintroduce myself to my kids,” he told CNN right after winning the election, “and then to serve the good people of Pennsylvania as their governor.”