From Seder to Smoke: A Passover Night Turned Nightmare for Josh Shapiro
1. A Passover Attack Shakes Pennsylvania Jews
It is a page torn from the nightmares of every Jewish family. A joyous Passover seder comes to its end, the guests leave, the dining room table is still scattered with dishes, and the Haggadahs rest open on their final page. Hours later, in the dark of night, a hate-stricken criminal enters, armed with firebombs and a sledgehammer, determined to harm the residents of this Jewish household.
This is the nightmare Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and his family had to live through last week. The trauma seemed apparent in comments made by Shapiro the day after the event, when he tried to convey to his fellow Pennsylvanians the holiday festivities disrupted by the intruder.
“We stopped to see the chandelier that had come down from the ceiling and was partly melted and partly covered in soot from the fire—it was resting on a place on the floor where just the night before we had celebrated our Passover seder, where two or three weeks earlier we had celebrated an Iftar dinner at the conclusion of Ramadan, where about a year before that kids danced and played at our son Reuben’s bar mitzvah, and right where the Christmas tree stands every December in the governor’s residence,” Shapiro said after visiting the damaged Governor’s Mansion.
The immediate instinct of many, even before an initial investigation had been completed, was to point to an antisemitic motivation. Shapiro is among the most visible and prominent Jewish politicians in current American politics. He rose to national fame during the recent election cycle, making his way to the short list of candidates to serve as Kamala Harris’s running mate and now ranked in polls among the top potential Democratic presidential candidates for 2028. His Obama-like rhetorical skills, coupled with good looks and commonsense mainstream views, have turned Shapiro into a dream politician for Democrats and a threat in the eyes of Republicans.
What was behind the attempted arson?
Initially the police revealed only that the suspect, 38-year-old Cody Balmer, harbored hatred toward the governor. Was this hate related to Shapiro’s faith? To his political affiliation? Or perhaps to local Pennsylvania issues of the type that governors decide on and not all their residents appreciate?
Shortly after, in a court filing, prosecutors said that Balmer called the police after the incident and told them he acted because he would “not take part in [Shapiro’s] plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people.” He also said, according to the police, that Shapiro “needs to stop having my friends killed,” and that “our people have been put through too much by that monster.”
2. How Pro-Israel is Josh Shapiro?
Balmer’s claims seem to reference a strong pro-Israel stance taken by Shapiro, especially following the October 7 Hamas attack and the subsequent surge of antisemitism and anti-Israel incidents in Pennsylvania and all across the country. Shapiro personally visited a Philadelphia restaurant owned by an Israeli American after the place was targeted by protesters using, among other chants, antisemitic language, and he spoke passionately against Hamas’s attack on Israel and in favor of the release of hostages. His critics dug up a college article in which he had claimed the Palestinians were “too battle-minded” to live alongside Israel in a two-state solution, and a mention of a community service project he did as a teenager at an Israeli army base.
That was enough to tag Shapiro as too pro-Israel for several activists in the progressive camp, and some believe that his pro-Israel stance was one of the reasons he was not chosen to run as Harris’s VP.
The fact of the matter is that Shapiro’s views on Israel are pretty much in line with those of Biden Democrats and are situated well within the mainstream consensus of Democratic politics.
Which leads us back to the question of antisemitism.
Was Shapiro singled out by the hate-driven attacker because he held pro-Israel views, or was he chosen as a target for an attempted political assassination because he was a Jew holding these pro-Israel views?
This question will determine whether Balmer will be charged with hate crimes, in addition to attempted murder, terrorism, aggravated arson and aggravated assault.
But beyond the criminal aspect, the attack also inadvertently touched on a bigger question America has been struggling with this past year and a half: When does anti-Israelism cross into antisemitism? And when does criticism of pro-Israel views held by Jewish politicians and leaders turn into targeting Jews for views shared by many non-Jewish Americans?
These questions should, of course, be discussed openly and free of violence, but circumstances suggest that the most significant debate on the issue may actually be carried out in a Pennsylvania courtroom.
3. How Not to Play Politics with the Shapiro Attack
Condemnations of this act of violence immediately poured in from various points on the political spectrum. Naturally, such an act of political terrorism rightly deserves the outrage expressed by Democrats and Republicans alike.
There were, as expected, some exceptions.
GOP Congressman Dan Meuser found it difficult to show empathy to his fellow Pennsylvanian Shapiro and instead qualified his condemnation of the attack. “Our hearts go out to the Shapiro family on this. But you know, they’ve got to tone it down, too. I mean, every action Josh Shapiro has taken so far against the president has either been a lawsuit or a falsehood.” As for President Trump, he seemed to dismiss the incident, telling reporters at the White House that the perpetrator “was probably just a whack job and certainly a thing like that cannot be allowed to happen.”
Shapiro, three days after the arson attack, said he has yet to hear directly from President Trump. This is not just a matter of common courtesy. After all, back in June, when an assassin tried to kill then-candidate Trump during a rally in Pennsylvania, Governor Shapiro was not only among the first to condemn the attack, he also played a key role in helping law enforcement agencies and the community deal with the fallout of the incident.
A more interesting and nuanced dynamic played out within the Democratic Party. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer sent a letter on April 17 to the Department of Justice, urging it to investigate the attack on Shapiro as a possible antisemitism-motivated hate crime. “DOJ must immediately get to the underlying motive of this case and prosecute it to the fullest extent of the law. We cannot rid society of evil, hatred or antisemitism without investigating all possible hate crime cases and calling it out immediately, loudly, and justly when substantiated—it’s time for the DOJ to do precisely that,” Schumer wrote.
But it was Shapiro himself who pushed back.
“As to Sen. Schumer or anyone else,” Shapiro told reporters, “I don’t think it’s helpful for people on the outside who haven’t seen the evidence, who don’t know what occurred, who are applying their own viewpoints to the situation, to weigh in in that manner.” Shapiro added that he trusts prosecutors to make the right decision and that he would not intervene in the process.
What does this all mean?
That Shapiro is a sophisticated politician, that he is attuned to the delicacies and sensitivities of this issue and also that Republicans are probably right to fear him as a potential future presidential candidate.
4. Itamar Ben-Gvir is Coming to Town
Israel’s national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir is beginning his first visit to the United States this week, and, as expected, the trip is stirring an uproar within the Jewish community and among many Middle East policy watchers.
Ben-Gvir, a chief partner in Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition, is an ultra-nationalist who views himself as a successor to Rabbi Meir Kahane and whose views and comments about Arab citizens of Israel and about Palestinians have made him persona non grata in most government and civil society circles in the United States.
At least until recently.
The Trump administration seems poised to welcome Ben-Gvir and even allow top officials to meet with him. In addition, some right-wing and Orthodox Jews have already set up events with the visiting minister, while others cancelled joint events, presumably following criticism from members of the Jewish community.
The debate will dominate discourse in the upcoming week, but here is one data point to think about before the provocative Israeli politician begins his American tour:
Ben-Gvir has declared openly that he opposes a deal to end the war in Gaza, and even dropped out temporarily from the Netanyahu government when such a deal was signed. He returned only after Israel broke the cease-fire deal and resumed fighting. Ben-Gvir has, of course, every right to oppose ending the war and to use his political weight to try and undermine the deal. But according to the Trump administration, this right is not granted to all those entering America.
In a recent court filing supporting the administration’s attempt to deport pro-Palestinian activist Moshen Mahdawi, the government argued that he cannot stay in the United States because his actions “undermine” the administration’s efforts to reach a deal that would end the Gaza war peacefully.
Hypocrisy is no crime, but by hosting Ben-Gvir, the U.S. government could pull the rug out from under its claim that it is going after pro-Palestinian activists because they are harming an American effort to end the war.
5. Huckabee Begins his Tenure in Israel. First Stop: The Western Wall
A week after being confirmed as U.S. ambassador to Israel by the Senate in a 53-46 vote, Mike Huckabee arrived at his new post in Jerusalem. The former governor and presidential candidate and current Baptist minister delighted many Israelis with the first choice he made upon assuming his new role.
Huckabee, before even entering his new office, made a stop at the Western Wall, the last remaining relic of the ancient Second Temple. At the wall, known as the kotel in Hebrew, he prayed and, in a tribute to a common Jewish tradition, placed a note in between the stones of the wall. “For peace in Israel,” read the note, which reportedly was written and signed by President Trump before sending Huckabee off to Israel.
A devout pro-Israel Christian, Huckabee sent a message to Israelis with his kotel gesture—he did not come to Jerusalem to deliver adversarial messages from the U.S. government but rather to be a friend of the Israeli people.
This is not a novel idea. Previous administrations, both Republican and Democrat, tended to dispatch ambassadors to the Jewish state who were known to be sympathetic to Israel. Many of them were Jewish. Joe Biden appointed Jack Lew, a former top adviser and cabinet member who is also an Orthodox Jew, to fill the post. Barack Obama’s ambassador Dan Shapiro won over Israelis with his knowledge of Hebrew and his connections to Israeli society.
Huckabee, however, is not only pro-Israel; he is declaredly pro-settlement and supports right-wing causes in Israel. He will clearly live up to the promise of being a friendly face to all Israelis, but—similar to Trump’s former ambassador to Israel David Friedman—will also serve as a voice for those who believe that the West Bank should be referred to as Judea and Samaria, that the settlements should be called communities, and that a two-state solution is not a dream the United States wishes to pursue.
Top image: Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro (Credit: Governor Tom Wolf (CC BY 2.0)).