Where We Keep the Light

Josh Shapiro, the 48th Governor of Pennsylvania, opens his memoir with the arson attack on the Governor's Residence in Harrisburg during the first night of Passover in April 2024. Shapiro, his wife Lori, and roughly 20 overnight guests were in the residence after hosting a Seder, the traditional Passover meal, for about 75 guests. State police banged on the bedroom door shouting about a fire, and everyone evacuated safely. When Shapiro told his children the next morning that the fire was deliberate, his son Reuben asked if someone had tried to kill them because they are Jewish. The suspect, Cody Balmer, turned himself in later that day. Balmer had scaled the fence and hurled Molotov cocktails through a window. He told police he harbored hatred for Shapiro, citing opposition to Shapiro's "plans" regarding "the Palestinian people." Balmer pleaded guilty to attempted murder, aggravated arson, and other charges, receiving 25 to 50 years in prison.

The attack serves as the memoir's framing device. Shapiro grew up in Upper Dublin, outside Philadelphia. His father was the local pediatrician; his mother, a former teacher, was deeply involved in the Soviet Jewry movement, connecting young Americans with Jewish Soviet citizens denied permission to emigrate. As an elementary schooler, Shapiro wrote letters to Avi Goldstein, a Jewish boy in Tbilisi, USSR, who had been severely beaten by classmates for revealing he was Jewish. Shapiro and his mother started a national advocacy group, lobbied senators, and ultimately reached Senator Ted Kennedy, who petitioned Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Five weeks before Shapiro's Bar Mitzvah, a Jewish coming-of-age ceremony, in May 1986, Avi's family was permitted to leave. Avi stood beside Shapiro at the ceremony, chanting blessings in Hebrew.

Shapiro reveals that his childhood home, though loving in many respects, was marked by instability rooted in both parents' unresolved childhood trauma. He never invited friends inside for fear of what they might witness. The experience instilled a drive for control and deep empathy for underdogs. He found a different model at the home of Lori, whom he met in ninth grade at Akiba Hebrew Academy, a Jewish day school. The two began dating their junior year, and a semester in Israel deepened Shapiro's faith at the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest prayer site, during the High Holy Days, a period encompassing the Jewish New Year and Day of Atonement.

At the University of Rochester, Shapiro was cut from the basketball team and failed a premed exam so badly his professor told him the track was not for him. A hallmate suggested he run for student senate; he won, then won the student body presidency as a freshman. He switched to political science, interned for Senator Carl Levin, and after graduating returned to Levin's office. He and Lori reunited after a college breakup, married in 1997, and settled in Washington, where Shapiro attended Georgetown Law at night, eventually becoming chief of staff to Congressman Joe Hoeffel.

After eight years in Washington, Shapiro moved home to Abington and joined a law firm but quickly realized corporate law did not suit him. In 2004, he ran for state representative in a district roughly 60 percent Republican against Jon Fox, a veteran Republican. His sister Rebecca ran the campaign. Shapiro knocked on 18,000 doors, learning that voters wanted to be listened to, not talked at. Despite trailing badly in early polls, his opponent's negative attacks backfired, and Shapiro won by more than nine points.

As state representative, Shapiro held over 100 town halls. In 2007, he averted a speakership crisis by persuading moderate Republican Denny O'Brien to serve as Speaker of the Democratic majority. He then ran for county commissioner in Montgomery County, where no Democrat had won the top seat since the Civil War era, and broke the 150-year Republican hold in 2011 alongside fellow Democrat Leslie Richards. As commissioner, he closed a $10 million deficit and formed a productive bipartisan partnership with Republican commissioner Bruce Castor.

Shapiro twice declined to run for Congress and the US Senate, concluding legislative work did not suit his executive temperament. In 2016, he ran for attorney general, promising to be a crusader for people's rights rather than a traditional prosecutor. He secured an endorsement from President Obama and won as the top vote getter on the ballot, outperforming Hillary Clinton.

As attorney general, Shapiro expanded an inherited investigation into clergy sex abuse within the Catholic Church into a years-long case spanning six dioceses. The grand jury found credible allegations against more than 300 priests, with over 1,000 identified child victims. Shapiro fought to release the 884-page report, meeting with a bishop in Erie and writing a letter to Pope Francis. The report was made public on August 14, 2018. He pursued the largest wage theft case in American history against Glenn O. Hawbaker, Inc., recovering more than $20 million for over 1,000 workers. He brokered a ten-year agreement between UPMC and Highmark, two rival health care giants, after a woman at a gas station told him her husband's cancer treatments were at risk.

The memoir traces the development of Shapiro's "real freedom" gubernatorial campaign message, which originated with Lori's passionate critique of Republicans claiming to champion freedom while restricting women's autonomy and banning books. Shapiro refined the concept with guidance from Pastor Marshall Mitchell of Salem Baptist Church, a longtime spiritual mentor who pointed him to the Book of James's definition of "real religion" as moving toward people in need.

Shapiro addresses several positions where he broke with party orthodoxy. He supported same-sex marriage as commissioner in 2013. After George Floyd's murder, he rejected calls to defund the police while pushing reform. He publicly criticized COVID-era business shutdowns and vaccine mandates. His views on the death penalty evolved through capital cases and the October 2018 Tree of Life synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh, the deadliest act of antisemitism in American history. When his son Max asked why it was acceptable to kill someone as punishment for killing someone, Shapiro could not finish his standard justification. He announced his opposition at the start of his gubernatorial campaign.

Shapiro details the summer of 2024, when Vice President Kamala Harris vetted him as a potential running mate after President Biden dropped out. A panel of Harris's advisers questioned him extensively about Israel and campus protests. At the Naval Observatory, the vice president's official residence, Harris told him the VP's job is to avoid being a problem for the president. When Shapiro asked for the kind of access he provides his own lieutenant governor, Harris said that was not what she was looking for. That evening, his son Reuben observed, "Dad, it doesn't seem like you want to do it." Shapiro told Lori he was withdrawing and felt immediate peace. Harris chose Minnesota Governor Tim Walz; Shapiro campaigned enthusiastically for the ticket.

The memoir closes where it began, in the aftermath of the arson attack. At Salem Baptist Church, a congregant tells Shapiro she has been praying for him, recalling how he helped her family 17 years earlier when he was her state representative. Shapiro connects William Penn's founding vision of Pennsylvania to the ordinary people whose actions have sustained him: abuse survivors who testified, workers who fought wage theft, law enforcement officers, and a Pittsburgh community determined to rebuild in love. In a time of division, he writes, that shared belief in one another is "where we keep the light."