The last photo Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro posted of the governor’s mansion — his home — before an arsonist lit it on fire was one of his seder table.
“From the Shapiro family’s Seder table to yours, happy Passover and Chag Pesach Sameach!”, he captioned the photo. A mere four hours after he and his family finished that long seder meal, they were evacuated from their home at 2 a.m. on Sunday morning. This week, they managed to salvage some of the ritual objects from that seder. Some are lost forever. According to police, Cory Balmer started that fire at least in part because he opposed “what Shapiro wants to do to the Palestinian people.”
In a video filmed with Jewish Philadelphia food influencers before the arson, Shapiro reflected on what it meant to him to celebrate Passover in that home. “You know, William Penn started this place that is now known as Pennsylvania, as a place that would be welcoming for folks of all faiths, all different walks of life,” he said. “He probably didn’t imagine there’d be a Passover Seder [at the governor’s mansion] one day here, but he’d probably be proud of the fact that this is a place that’s warm and welcoming for all.”
“It is very special for us. This home, this governor’s residence, is a place where people of all different faiths feel comfortable coming. Where we celebrate the Seder, it’s the exact same place where we have a Christmas tree in December, where we just hosted an Iftar about two, three weeks ago, and where our son had his bar mitzvah,” he continued. “It’s a place where everyone, I think, feels comfortable coming together, and it’s a reminder that this is the greatest country on the face of the earth, because there are other places around the world where if you try to openly express your faith, you’d be thrown in prison or worse. And here we get to openly celebrate that. So for us to open up the doors of the governor’s residence to the community, have people come and celebrate the Seder with us, or celebrate a different holiday with us, it’s really, really special, really special. And I think like we have a special responsibility to do this work.”
His wife, Lori, had her own take on it. “It really is a privilege,” she said. “It really, really is, and I think it’s so special in this moment in time when students, especially students on campuses, are feeling a lot of antisemitism, for them to see people being proud of who they are, and so to see us living our faith out loud in a public way, I think it’s really, really important that they can know that they can be proud of who they are.”
“I love that you show your Jewishness openly. And I think that honestly makes me more comfortable being open about being Jewish,” Emily of the food blog Diet Starts Tomorrow shared with the couple.
Governor Shapiro thanked her and added: “We want people to be proud of who they are. They should worship how they want. They should live how they want. They should be comfortable in their own skin. And if we can give people that sense of comfort, if we can give people that that belief in their identity, whatever their identity is, and know that they can live outwardly and proudly here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania that makes us feel really good.”
After the arson, Shapiro said he found solace when the fire department chaplain shared with him a letter quoting the Priestly Blessing.
“It’s a prayer we recite in Hebrew for our kids. It’s from the Book of Numbers: ‘The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make his face shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee and give thee peace.’ That’s a prayer and a hope that we have for our kids every day, that they have peace in their lives,” Shapiro said. “Obviously, that peace was shattered on Sunday morning, but it is a hope and a prayer that we have, not just for our kids, but every child across Pennsylvania that they live in a society that’s free and peaceful where they are protected and they are watched over by God.”
