Josh Shapiro's Second Bar Mitzvah Speech (Substack)

I thought I would be upset that Josh Shapiro wasn’t chosen to be Kamala Harris’s running mate. But I’m not. What we got from him was perhaps more enduring - the best Bar Mitzvah speech ever delivered on an American political stage.

No, I’m not concerned that he lost out ostensibly in part because of his support for Israel, even though his views are no different from those of all the other contenders and Harris herself. It is absurd to think that simply being Jewish creates a sense of dual loyalty to the point that we should somehow suppress our love for Israel. Last week’s passing of Martin Indyk, the former American ambassador to Israel, was yet another reminder of that absurdity.

So is this on-point meme:

Nor am I concerned that his candidacy may have been sabotaged by a few extreme Hamas supporters calling him “Genocide Josh.” It’s an obscenity, but online trolls write stupid, snarky and factually wrong epithets all the time. Come to think of it, funny as they are, and to a degree deserved, all the couch jokes directed at JD Vance are pretty unfair too. I hope the GOP will remember that when they start swift-boating Walz in a week or two with some trumped up accusations to besmirch his exemplary military service.

Nor am I concerned about Shapiro being singled out for scorn because he is Jewish. The rise in antisemitism is alarming, but it’s not as if Jews can’t win elections - or even be nominated for VP. Joe Lieberman broke that glass “huppah” a quarter century ago. And as of the moment, there are nine senators (including the majority leader), twenty six members of the House and four Jewish governors, including Colorado’s Jared Polis, the self described “balding gay Jew” who is now leading the nation’s governors. As Larry David would say, “Pretty, pretty good!” And next January, those numbers might also include one Jewish First Gentleman.

A Jewish Veep would be nice, but who’s to say that this is the time to break additional glass ceilings? Kamala Harris will break several, if she is elected, but there is no doubt in my mind that had she gone through a normal nominating process, she would have faced the same anti-female bias that hurt her and other women in 2020. It’s not out of malice toward women, but the overwhelming need to defeat Donald Trump that has compelled Dems to play it safe since 2016, when Hillary Clinton, like Joe Lieberman before her, actually did win the popular vote. That loss continues to spook people into veering away from nominating women for the top spot. We tend to forget that some of the most patriarchal countries imaginable have had female presidents and prime ministers - including Israel, though it’s hard to say whether Golda Meir could be Prime Minister in Israel now.

Fate, combined with one bad debate and an attempted assassination, have put Harris in position to become the first female president. It’s embarrassing to think that it would take such a Hollywood-esque confluence of events to land our first woman in the Oval Office. So we can wait another cycle or two for a Jew - and that Jew might well be Shapiro.

And let’s not forget that approximately 50 percent of all Jews happen to be women, some of them women of color. That’s a lot of glass ceilings to break in one election. Especially when the defeat of Trump and trumpism is all that matters. If glass breaks on the way, so be it.

If it’s true that, according to one inside source, polling showed that Shapiro’s presence on the ticket would not significantly help to win his home state, Walz makes perfect sense as VP. Shapiro may be popular among swing voters in Pennsylvania, but Walz looks and sounds the part of the guy who can appeal to all those old upper midwestern white guys that Harris will find hardest to reach. He’s a Minnesota-nice and Wisconsin-adjacent Ted Lasso waiting to coach up your kids and pick up your shirts at the cleaners on the way home. He can also teach your daughter how to drive.

I’m OK with Walz and only slightly disappointed that the chance was lost, for now, to elect someone whom young Jews would be able to look toward as a role model, and one who could arguably have become the most powerful representative of the Jewish people before the world - a title that would have been wrested away from Prime Minister Netanyahu (which for Bibi would be akin to Trump losing out to Kamala on crowd size). Like Joe Lieberman, Shapiro is an observant Jew, but less dogmatic in his practice, and unlike Joe, who served in a different era, he’s willing to stand up to Israel’s leaders when needed. And unlike Joe, who was Orthodox, Josh grew up in a progressive Jewish community, much like the vast majority of American Jews of his generation.

But Shapiro doesn’t need to be Veep to be a role model for Jewish youth. He is one already. Yesterday’s speech cemented that.

Josh Shapiro’s Bar Mitzvah has been in the news lately. His 1986 celebration was featured on the front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer this week.

At the time, Shapiro did what many of my Bar and Bat Mitzvah students were doing, “twinning” with Jews in the Soviet Union who were not able to emigrate or even learn about their heritage. In this case the pen pal, Avi Goldstein, was actually able to be there.

In yesterday’s speech, Shapiro spoke about Judaism as a faith “that calls me to serve.” And then he said pointedly (about 16 minutes in), in a line that was not in the prepared text, “And I am proud of my faith.”

“Now hear me,” he continued, “I’m not here to preach at you” (the crowd implores, “Preach! Preach”) “But I want to tell you what my faith teaches me. My faith teaches me that no one, no one is required to complete the task, but neither are free to refrain from it.”

Quoting the Talmud (tractate Avot), as any good Bar Mitzvah speech would do, and selecting the passage most pertinent for a time of generational transition and extraordinary challenges, Josh Shapiro summoned his generation and the people of our country to a monumental calling - and he did it as a proud Jew, one who explicitly framed his message in his pride at being Jewish - not just Jewy or Jew-ish, or Jew by ethnicity - but Judaic-Jewish, Sinai-Jewish, with a speech overflowing with Jewish words expressing Jewish values and unabashed pride in Jewish peoplehood.

People who are viewing that speech through the prism of what could have been are missing the significance of what he did. This guy quoting Talmud leads one of the largest states of the nation, and to win that post, he had to beat out an election-denying right wing extremist. He spoke of loyalty and mission and love, of family and faith of selfless sacrifice for the sake of a greater good. It was such a perfect Bar Mitzvah speech that I impulsively wanted to get up there and hand him his Bible, tree certificate and Kiddush cup.

The message of the past few weeks is not simply that the Democrats have a great “bench.” It’s that the country does. There are moral, kind people waiting to step up. Joe Biden gave us all a blueprint for decency in politics and like the rabbis of old in tractate Avot, he has handed those lessons to a new generation.

With people like Shapiro, Harris and Walz leading the way, we may yet be able to save our republic this November. If we can keep it.

“I am proud of my faith.” Those words, spoken in that setting, were priceless. In the most dramatic political shift since the tides at the Red Sea, decency may be on the cusp of winning.