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Why Josh Shapiro’s memoir could complicate a presidential run
When politicians publish memoirs, the goal is usually clear: introduce themselves to voters beyond their home state, often ahead of an expected national run, and present the version of their story that makes them most appealing to the broadest base. That’s what makes Josh Shapiro’s new memoir potentially counterintuitive.
In Where We Keep the Light, set to be published on Tuesday, Pennsylvania’s Jewish governor does not sidestep the parts of his biography and political record that could complicate a 2028 presidential bid.
Instead, he leans into them. Most notably, in a passage that made headlines earlier this week, Shapiro reveals that during his vetting as a potential vice presidential nominee in 2024, he was questioned so aggressively about Israel — including being asked whether he had ever been an Israeli agent — that he felt singled out because he is Jewish.
Shapiro, who has been mentioned as a potential first Jewish president since his gubernatorial campaign in 2022, was one of six finalists who conducted interviews with the campaign of then-Vice President Kamala Harris, a group that included Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who is also Jewish. Shapiro’s popularity as a governor from a key battleground state, strong oratory skills and reputation as a moderate made him a formidable choice for many Democrats.
But Shapiro’s staunch defense of Israel and criticism of the pro-Palestinian protests after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks made him a more complicated choice at a moment of deep polarization within the Democratic Party. Shapiro refused to call for a unilateral ceasefire in Gaza, he highlighted expressions of antisemitism at pro-Palestinian protests, and he criticized a “culture” at the University of Pennsylvania which he said did not take antisemitism seriously enough.
In his interview with Harris before she ultimately selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, Shapiro writes that he was urged to apologize for some of his comments about the protests to avoid alienating younger, more progressive voters and the Muslim-American electorate in Michigan. “‘No,’ I said flatly,” Shapiro writes.
Embracing a position that could complicate a campaign rather than smoothing away rough edges is not without precedent. In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani sustained criticism during his campaign for his refusal to soften his stance on Israel, which alienated Jewish voters, long considered one of the most influential blocs in citywide races. But he defied expectations, scoring a surprise primary victory in a city with the largest Jewish community outside Israel and winning the mayoralty with a majority of the vote.
But Mamdani’s political focus was local, driven by social media and grassroots organizing, and the response was immediate, not years away. His stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict actually attracted new voters.
For Shapiro, the stakes are national and long-term — and the benefits are far less certain. Palestinian rights and the Gaza war have increasingly become a litmus test for Democrats, many of whom want sharper opposition to Israel. Polls show that Democratic voters are increasingly sympathetic to Palestinians. Even national Jewish Democrats, like Pritzker and former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel — both considered possible presidential candidates in 2028 — have publicly challenged Israeli policy. In July, a record 27 Senate Democrats, a majority of the caucus, supported a pair of resolutions calling for the blocking of weapons transfers to Israel.
“People have grown frustrated with some of their elected leaders who just blow with the wind and take a poll instead of finding their pulse,” Shapiro writes. “I try to stay true to what I believe is right regardless of what others think.”
In the book, Shapiro focuses on humanizing moments, detailing experiences shaped by and tied closely to his Jewish identity.
Passover arson attack
The book opens with a harrowing account of the Passover arson attack on the Pennsylvania governor’s residence, hours after his family’s Seder, by an intruder who said he wanted to beat the governor with a sledgehammer over what he claimed was a lack of empathy towards Palestinians.
Shapiro recounts how the attack rattled his children and sharpened his sense that antisemitic violence is a lived reality — even for a governor with a police detail. “I have hardly been shy about my beliefs and my faith, all of which have put a target on my back over the last half decade,” he writes. “The vitriol only intensified after the October 7 attacks on Israel, as I continued to live my Judaism out loud.”
Still, he continues, until that moment, he felt safe. “The bubble burst that morning,” Shapiro writes. “People did want to kill me. They were hoping to, and willing to try.”
The Pennsylvania governor said this sentiment was shared by many American Jews who felt frightened after learning of the attack. But they were also comforted by his response and his refusal to be deterred from openly practicing his religion.
Tree of Life massacre
Shapiro devotes a chapter to the 2018 massacre at the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh that killed 11 people, describing his role as attorney general at the time and the emotional toll of repeatedly standing with a community shattered by the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history. Shapiro was sworn in as the state’s 48th governor on a stack of three Bibles, including one that was rescued from the synagogue.
The episode, he writes, reinforced his belief that political leadership must be rooted in moral clarity. “It has only made me more proud to be Jewish, more willing and able to use my voice and whatever platform I do have in my position to speak out.”
Shapiro faced criticism for switching his position on the death penalty, after initially favoring it for the killer, Robert Bowers. In the book, he defends his evolution on the issue, after meeting with some of the families of those slain in the shooting attack and a conversation with his son Max. “I went the opposite way of what would be politically popular for me,” he writes. “But it was a matter of principle for me, not politics. I wasn’t about playing a game or pleasing a constituency.”
Alliance with Barack Obama
The memoir also revisits an earlier chapter in Shapiro’s political life: his defense of former President Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign, when Obama faced skepticism in the Jewish community over his associations with Chicago pastor Jeremiah Wright and his positions on Israel. Shapiro’s oratory skills are often compared to Obama’s.
Shapiro, who was at the time a state representative, writes that he was criticized within his own community for vouching for Obama, who went on to win the White House. Shapiro said a private conversation with the then-candidate convinced him that Obama’s commitment to the Jewish community was genuine.
“I felt comfortable defending his beliefs,” Shapiro writes. “I thought the attacks were unfair.”
Shapiro recalls that Obama invited him to attend the first-ever Seder he hosted with several Jewish aides as he campaigned throughout the state during the Democratic primary. “I politely declined and explained I needed to be home with my family,” he writes. “He totally understood.” Obama went on to lose Pennsylvania to Hillary Clinton.
A semester in Israel
Shapiro also recounts his early relationship with Israel, including a trip he took as a teenager with his classmates from Akiba Hebrew Academy — around the time he met his wife Lori — and how those experiences shaped his views on the Jewish state.
Shapiro spent four months living in a dorm, taking classes and touring the country. Jerusalem, he writes, felt entirely different from home, where his faith had largely been contained within the walls of his synagogue on Saturday mornings or at the family table on Friday nights. Shapiro and his family are practicing Conservative Jews who keep kosher and gather for Shabbat dinners, joined by Shapiro’s parents and in-laws.
“There was something foundational about being in Israel that really connected me more to my faith,” he writes. “In Israel, it was just everywhere. It was the first time I could feel faith. I could see it and touch it, and it wasn’t abstract.”
On Saturday nights after Shabbat ended, he and his friends would wander Ben-Yehuda Street, watching crowds spill out of cafes and bars. Every time, he would run into someone with a connection to Pennsylvania or to his family. It was a reminder, he writes, of the bonds tying Jews together around the world.
Shapiro proposed to his wife in 1997 under the 19th-century Montefiore Windmill in the Yemin Moshe neighborhood of Jerusalem, during one of more than a dozen trips to Israel.
Vetting as vice president
The final chapter of the book recounts former President Joe Biden’s decision to step aside and Shapiro’s willingness to be considered as a vice presidential nominee. Shapiro writes that while he was publicly praised, there was also what he describes as a coordinated effort to derail his candidacy, including “ugly antisemitic rhetoric.” He recalls praying frequently during that period, hoping the process would go smoothly. “I said the Shema more times during that week than maybe I had in my whole life before,” he writes.
When he first met with the vetting team over Zoom, Shapiro says the panel “spent a lot of time asking me about Israel.” He began to wonder, he writes, “whether these questions were being posed to just me — the only Jewish guy in the running — or if everyone who had not held federal office was being grilled about Israel in the same way.”
Ahead of his consequential meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris at the Naval Observatory, Shapiro writes, members of the vetting team asked whether he had “ever been an agent of the Israeli government” or had “ever communicated with an undercover agent of Israel.” Early in his career, Shapiro briefly worked in the Israeli Embassy’s public affairs division in Washington. He says he told Dana Remus, a former White House counsel under Biden and a senior member of Harris’ vetting team, “how offensive the question was.”
The Gaza war loomed over the campaign even before Biden withdrew from the race. Anxious Democrats pressed Biden to take a tougher stance on Israel as a way to recover from his disastrous debate performance in June 2024. Some urged an arms embargo to appeal to disaffected progressives and Michigan voters who had cast “uncommitted” ballots in the primary. Harris took a more forceful public position in calling for an immediate ceasefire to address the humanitarian crisis.
According to Harris’ own memoir, 107 Days, in her private conversation with Shapiro, she discussed how his selection might affect the campaign, including the risk of protests tied to Gaza at the Democratic National Convention and “what effect it might have on the enthusiasm we were trying to build.” Harris wrote that Shapiro responded by saying he had clarified that earlier views he held were misguided and that he was firmly committed to a two-state solution.
Shapiro’s account of that exchange is very different. He writes that Harris pressed him to apologize for criticizing pro-Palestinian campus protests, which he refused to do. “There wasn’t much more issue-based conversation before we moved on to what the [role of] vice president would look like in her administration,” he writes.
After leaving that meeting, Shapiro writes he considered publicly withdrawing his name from consideration. Instead, he privately informed the Harris team that he no longer wanted the job. “I had prayed for clarity,” he writes. “And now I was nothing but clear.”
Shapiro’s memoir will be released on Jan. 27.
The post Why Josh Shapiro’s memoir could complicate a presidential run appeared first on The Forward.
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Synagogue attacks were part of massive ISIS-inspired plot last week, FBI says
(JTA) — A 21-year-old man from Valencia, Pennsylvania, suggested poisoning food in synagogues as part of a mass attack in support of the Islamic State group last week, according to the FBI.
The suspect, Jonathan Kramer, said in an online forum using the pseudonym “Hamza Al Rashid” that “i wish to inject ricin or cyanide into places such as grocery stores inside water/food with a syringe, or going to food events, preferably synagogues and putting the chemicals in their food and drink…,” according to a sworn FBI affidavit.
The prospective poisoning was part of a broader plot of mass violence that included “repeated attempts to encourage and coordinate violence through encrypted platforms, such as advising others on attack methods, discussing chemical poisons, arson, vehicle attacks, drone delivery explosives and firearm based assaults,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Richard Evanchec said at a press conference last week.
The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh said in a security update on Friday that no synagogue had been specified by the FBI. , “We are in close contact with our law enforcement partners and federal prosecutors, and if we learn of anything concerning, we will share that immediately,” the organization noted.
Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Eisenberg announced last Tuesday that Kramer was “preparing for a mass shooting that could have taken many lives, having already secured a rifle and approximately 190 rounds of ammunition for what he called his ‘mission.”
Efforts to reach Kramer’s public defender Jake Morrison were unsuccessful.
FBI agents arrested Kramer in a hotel parking lot in Cranberry, Pennsylvania, the Justice Department said. They seized a semiautomatic rifle, five rifle magazines, a rifle bipod and scope, a total of 190 rounds of rifle ammunition and about 30 knives following a search of him, his house and his hotel room.
Kramer was charged with receiving a firearm and ammunition believing they would be used to commit terrorism. He appeared in court last Wednesday to waive a preliminary hearing, according to CBS News. A court date has not been set for Kramer’s next proceedings, the network reported.
Kramer had been on the FBI’s radar since 2023, when he was charged by Pennsylvania state authorities “for his role in a plot to commit a mass casualty incident” and sent to a juvenile detention facility, FBI special agent Gregory Battaglia said in a sworn affidavit.
Nearly eight years ago, 11 worshippers were killed at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Proposed U.S. $24.3 billion sale of F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia advances
(JTA) — The State Department has approved a possible $24.3 billion sale of 48 F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia — a move that would make the kingdom the second Middle Eastern country after Israel to have the world’s most powerful combat aircraft.
“This proposed sale will support the foreign policy and national security objectives of the United States by improving the security of a major non-NATO ally,” the department said in a statement.
Israel wants the sale attached to a normalization deal with Saudi Arabia, but that doesn’t appear to be on the horizon. However, there is a small chance that Congress could keep the sale from happening.
When President Donald Trump first confirmed that he was considering the sale last November, Israeli officials told Axios that while they don’t oppose the sale itself, they wanted it “to be subject to Saudi normalization with Israel.”
Although Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly brushed off the deal’s significance last fall, a security source at the time warned on CNN that the possibility of Saudi Arabia acquiring “the same capabilities” as Israel was “very concerning.”
The prime minister was more vocal in his opposition to a July announcement from Trump that he was weighing selling the advanced jets to Turkey as well, telling CNN that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is “not exactly a model ally of the United States.”
Israel has already purchased 50 F-35 jets, in two procurement rounds that occurred in 2016 and in 2017, according to the Israeli Defense Ministry. However, local media reports indicate that two of the 50 have yet to arrive, meaning that just 48 are on the ground – the same number of planes that the State Department has approved for Saudi Arabia’s potential purchase.
Israel would have many more F-35s than Saudi Arabia for the time being, because its Defense Ministry announced in 2024 that it would be procuring 25 more of the planes, slated to begin arriving in 2028. Earlier this year, the Defense Ministry revealed that it would be procuring yet another squadron of the jets, although the quantity remained unclear.
Congressional approval is not assured; wariness of the Saudi regime, stemming in part from the state-sanctioned 2018 murder of a U.S.-based journalist in Turkey, crosses party lines.
The U.S. Arms Export Control Act requires the executive branch of the government to notify Congress regarding major defense equipment sales to most countries. Congress can then deem a country ineligible to participate in a sale through a joint resolution. The president can then veto the resolution, which Congress would need a two-thirds supermajority to override.
Additionally, U.S. law requires the president to ensure that Israel maintains “a qualitative military edge over military threats” when considering arms sales to other Middle Eastern countries. Israel, per the law, must be able “to counter and defeat any credible conventional military threat” from both other nations and “non-state actors.”
“The proposed sale of this equipment and support will not alter the military balance in the region,” the State Department said on Thursday. It called Saudi Arabia “a force for political stability and economic progress in the Gulf region,” adding that the sale would help “deter current and future threats by strengthening its homeland defense.”
The department maintained that not only would the sale improve Saudi Arabia’s defense capabilities, but it would also boost “interoperability” with both U.S. forces and other players from NATO and the region.
As for the potential deal’s logistics, Saudi Arabia has requested 48 of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter Jets, as well as 49 Pratt & Whitney engines, according to the State Department.
The kingdom is also seeking to acquire other non-major defense equipment, such as cryptographic devices, precision navigation, secure communications, simple key loaders and support for electronic warfare databases, maintenance and personnel training.
Producing and delivering these planes can take many years.
Meanwhile, just a day before Trump’s announcement, The New York Times surfaced intelligence concerns that China could acquire F-35 technology by spying on Saudi Arabia or through its partnerships with the kingdom.
U.S. House Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat from Illinois, warned in a statement on X that “Beijing has spent decades stealing American intellectual property” and that this deal could “help them do it.”
“Our own intelligence community is warning that it could put the crown jewels of American military technology within reach of the Chinese Communist Party,” Krishnamoorthi added.
The Biden administration reportedly ended a past F-35 deal with the United Arab Emirates — secured by the first Trump administration — due to similar concerns about the country’s connections to China, as well as to Russia.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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After outcry, Texas lieutenant governor says schools should teach Holocaust books ‘Night,’ ‘Anne Frank’
(JTA) — The lieutenant governor of Texas says his recent call for the state’s public schools to remove “over 2,000 titles” of “dirty, filthy and vulgar books” was not meant to include books about the Holocaust.
Dan Patrick’s statement, provided exclusively to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Friday, comes after a month of confusion following a press conference in which he and a conservative Christian activist threatened schools with potential loss of state funding if they did not comply with his directive to purge their libraries.
“I believe Texas students must learn about the Holocaust, and that includes reading books such as ‘Night’ by Elie Wiesel, ‘The Diary of Anne Frank,’ and other books about the Holocaust,” Patrick told JTA, singling out two books on the removal list he had promoted – one of which, “Night,” that he previously explicitly called for removal from middle schools.
Patrick added that his initiative was “focused on age-inappropriate, sexually explicit books in public school libraries across Texas.” At his earlier press conference, he had directed viewers to an online list compiled by an activist group that features several books about the Holocaust and Jewish identity.
Patrick’s threats have teeth. In Texas, lieutenant governors are more powerful than in many other states, playing central roles in shaping the budget and determining the legislative agenda.
Patrick also appeared to walk back some of the harsher proclamations from his Aug. 19 press conference, at which the Republican had stated, “We’re coming for the books.”
“As the law states, local communities have the right to make their own decisions about their public school libraries,” he told JTA Friday.
The lieutenant governor, who is up for reelection this fall, appeared at the conference with Bonnie Wallace, the head of the activist group Recover America, and told viewers to “go to RecoverAmerica.com.” That group has circulated a list of more than 2,100 “Harmful Books in Libraries.” Its list, which it describes as “books with harmful, sexually explicit, and vulgar content,” includes more than a dozen titles of particular import to Jewish readers.
Recover America’s flagged books include both volumes of Art Spiegelman’s “Maus,” a comic-book adaptation of Frank’s diary and Bernard Malamud’s novel of a blood libel “The Fixer” — all books that have been removed from school districts in Texas and other states in the past amid broader conservative-led library culture wars. In some cases those books were restored to the districts following public outcry, but spurred deeper dialogue about the state of Holocaust education and antisemitism awareness in public schools.
Patrick’s latest push would go much further than a handful of districts, affecting the more than 5.5 million students in public schools across the state.
One book of particular contention on Recover America’s list was “Night,” Elie Wiesel’s bestselling memoir of surviving Auschwitz and Buchenwald, which has been taught in schools for decades. After a Houston Chronicle story noted the book’s inclusion on the Recover America “harmful” list, Patrick initially doubled down on “Night,” saying that it was not appropriate for middle schools owing to its “violence.”
“If ‘Night,’ by Elie Wiesel, were made into a movie, it would likely be rated R,” Patrick wrote on the social network X on Aug. 26. “‘Night,’ which includes depictions of graphic violence and the machine-gunning of babies, should not be available to sixth graders in middle-school libraries. High school is more age-appropriate.”
His tweet appeared to contradict the state’s own K-12 required reading list, passed this summer, which mandates that “Night” be taught in the eighth grade beginning in 2030.
Now, in response to questions from JTA, the lieutenant governor said he would defer to the Texas State Board of Education on the appropriate grade to teach “Night.”
“The State Board of Education decides the appropriate grade level for books and will determine whether ‘Night,’ by Elie Wiesel, is at the appropriate grade level,” Patrick told JTA in his statement.
He continued to insist that books in schools should be held to “FCC standards,” referring to the Federal Communications Commission, an agency that governs broadcasting content and does not regulate publishing.
The head of the Texas Holocaust, Genocide and Antisemitism Advisory Commission, a governor-appointed panel which advised the state on the inclusion of “Night” and other Holocaust texts on its required reading list, did not return a JTA request for comment.
In a statement, the Texas Educational Authority, which drafted the required-reading list, told JTA, “When Texas students learn about the Holocaust, they will be exposed to the horrors of the Holocaust. That is why the SBOE placed the book in 8th Grade to ensure age appropriateness for students.”
At the Emmys this week, when “The Librarians,” a documentary about librarians facing book removal threats, won an award, retired Texas librarian Carolyn Foote joined the producers on the stage and held up a copy of “Night” in protest.
“I felt like it was very symbolic to bring ‘Night,’” Foote, a subject of the film and a co-founder of the librarian activist group FReadom Fighters, told JTA. “Having read it, I just know the importance of not forgetting our past. And that’s part of Elie Wiesel’s whole legacy, is remembrance, and so it just felt very important for me to carry that book, coming from Texas.” Another librarian onstage for the win held up “Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation.”
Elisha Wiesel, Elie’s son and chair of the Elie Wiesel Foundation, told JTA that “Texas deserves credit for recognizing that Holocaust education belongs in the eighth-grade curriculum.” Yet, the younger Wiesel suggested, Patrick’s concerns about the book’s violence were misplaced.
“‘Night’ contains violence because the Holocaust was violent; its purpose is not to shock young people, but to help them understand where hatred and indifference can lead,” he wrote in an email. “With context and guidance, students should not be shielded from this history. They should be equipped to confront it.”
Despite having directed viewers to Recover America’s book list during his press conference, Patrick’s new statement to JTA said, “I do not have a book list.” He pointed instead to a law passed in the state legislature in 2025 regulating school books that he said districts were required to follow.
Yet some districts in the state have removed every book on Recover America’s list from their own libraries out of fear of losing funding, Foote told JTA. While the list nominally contains a ratings system, many of the books do not have a rating.
Besides “Night,” “Maus,” “Anne Frank’s Diary” and “The Fixer,” other books about Judaism and the Holocaust on Recover America’s list of “Harmful Books” include:
- “Annexed,” a young-adult novel about Peter van Pels, who hid in the Amsterdam annex with Anne Frank
- “The Berlin Boxing Club,” a young-adult historical novel based on German boxer Max Schmeling, who helped young Jews during Hitler’s rise to power
- “Black, White and Jewish,” a memoir by Rebecca Walker, the mixed-race Jewish daughter of author Alice Walker
- “Caste: The Origins of our Discontents,” a nonfiction book analyzing the “caste systems” of Nazi Germany. “Caste” had been included on an earlier, Wallace-spearheaded list of books for removal from a Texas public library in a case that the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear in 2025, allowing the removals to proceed.
- “Kasher in the Rye,” a memoir by Jewish comedian Moshe Kasher
- “Pride: the story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag,” a children’s picture-book biography of the pioneering Jewish LGBTQ legislator
- “Sophie’s Choice,” the bestselling Holocaust novel for adults
- “The Violin Maker’s Daughter,” a historical novel about a Jewish family of musicians during the Holocaust
- “White Bird,” a young-reader graphic novel about a Jewish girl in Nazi-occupied France
In response to JTA sharing a list of the above books, Patrick’s statement mentioned only “Night” and Anne Frank by name. The Recover America list is largely made up of romance and fantasy novels, many with an LGBTQ element, while also including classics such as “The Glass Menagerie” and “Cat’s Cradle” and some picture books for children.
Recover America did not immediately return a JTA request for comment Friday on Patrick’s new statement. Wallace, the group’s leader who has also appeared on Patrick’s podcast, previously told the Houston Chronicle that she had “thought long and hard” about including “Night” on her list.
She ultimately did so, she said, because “an eighth-grade student is 13 years old. Do they need to read about soldiers massacring, throwing up babies, and killing them with machine guns?”
She added, “It’s not to say this doesn’t happen in life. And the Holocaust was maybe the worst tragedy in the history of the world.”
For Cameron Samuels, a Jewish alum of Texas public schools and founder of the activist group Students Engaged in Advancing Texas, such efforts do not help Jewish students.
“Non-Jewish people are deciding for us what’s best, and making this public policy,” Samuels said. “We can’t readily access these books and stories. And that makes students feel alone. It also means that our classroom peers are not learning authentic Jewish narratives.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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