Rise of Jewish Contenders Connected to the Presidential Race May Outrage Antisemites
Despite the reported tidal wave of antisemitic sentiment surging throughout the United States, Jewish candidates and personalities have begun to play an unusually prominent role in the upcoming national election.
Consider the example of Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, often described as the most likely choice for Kamala Harris to name as the Democratic nominee for Vice President. Shapiro isn’t just casually connected to his Jewish identity, but unlike other celebrities, he honors traditional religious practices. He attended Akiba Hebrew Academy in Philadelphia, a Jewish day school, as a teenager and there he met his future wife, Lori in the ninth grade. He proposed to her in Jerusalem, and they’ve raised their four children (Reuben, Sophia, Max and Jonah) in a kosher home. If he becomes the Democratic nominee, he’ll become only the second Jewish citizen in the nation’s history to appear on the ticket of a major political party. His only predecessor in earning that distinction was the late Senator Joe Lieberman, who Shapiro views as a personal inspiration.
Another prominent Democratic office-holder reported to be high on the Kamala Harris shortlist for elevation to the Vice Presidency, is Arizona Senator Mark Kelly. A former fighter pilot for the Navy and much-decorated astronaut for NASA, Captain Kelly is of Irish ancestry, but his marriage to Gabby Giffords, former member of the House of Representatives, was a Jewish ceremony performed by a rabbi. After his wife’s wounding in a mass shooting in Tucson, she worked to prepare for her own Bat Mitzvah in 2021 (at age 51!) as part of her recovery, and she plays a conspicuous role in the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in Tucson.
If this mixed but deeply pro-Jewish household finds its way to the Vice-Presidential residence at the former Naval Observatory, they would follow the path of the structure’s current occupants: Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband of a decade, Doug Emhof. He holds the designation of “second gentleman” of the land and counts as the first Jewish spouse for any president or Vice President. In 1988, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis (of Greek Orthodox background) and his Jewish wife Kitty won the Democratic nomination for president but lost in a landslide to Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush. Harris and Emhof honor multiple religious traditions in their home, celebrating Christmas (Vice President Harris identifies as Baptist) and Kwanza, as well as Hanukah, with well-publicized menorah lightings.
If Harris wins the presidency with either Governor Shapiro or Senator Kelly as her running mate, it is amazing to think that the households of both the President and Vice President will have a publicly Jewish component. Combined with the first woman of color, and of South Asian descent, this may enrage the die-hard Jew-haters and racists who continue to promulgate their bigotry, but it should simultaneously encourage and inspire the rest of us.