A Year After Firebombing, Gov. Shapiro, First Lady Host Interfaith Discussion

By Ian Karbal | Pennsylvania Capital-Star

Tables were set for a Seder, a traditional dinner held on the first night of the Jewish Passover holiday, as Gov. Josh Shapiro and First Lady Lori Shapiro led a conversation in a newly-renovated reception room of the Governor’s Residence with a group of interfaith leaders.

The gathering was held on the one-year anniversary of a firebombing that nearly destroyed the very same space. It was the first full press event in the room since the attack and served as a stark contrast to images of charred tables and prayer books a year earlier. 

Shapiro began by acknowledging the difficulty he and his family have had working through the attack.

“We have had the opportunity to take stock and to work through a number of things both as parents and as public servants,” Shapiro said. “That’s a process that’s ongoing, and we think that today is an important part of that process.”

But he added it was the support he received from members of different faiths across the commonwealth, including some of the leaders with him, that helped them heal.

“Those prayers have truly strengthened us,” he said. “I’ve always been a person who prays — a prayerful person — but I’ve never felt the strength of other people’s prayers in the way that we have throughout this process, particularly in the hours and the days and the weeks thereafter.”

The conversation centered around the rise of political and religiously-motivated violence in America, and what faith leaders, politicians and ordinary citizens can do to combat and cope with it. It’s a topic Shapiro has addressed on several occasions since the incident in Harrisburg, including after two Minnesota state lawmakers were shot in their homes – one fatally – and the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. 

In the early Sunday morning hours last April, Cody Balmer of Harrisburg snuck onto the Governor’s Residence property and set off multiple molotov cocktails inside the home, setting the reception room that had been prepared for a Seder ablaze.

Shapiro and his family were asleep inside. Balmer told police that he’d plan to kill the governor with a hammer if he came across him.

Balmer escaped the property shortly after starting the fire and unsuccessfully trying several doors in the residence. He later turned himself in and told police he was motivated by Shapiro’s beliefs about Israel.

Last October, he pleaded guilty to attempted murder with a sentencing enhancement for terrorism. Balmer will serve a total sentence of 25 to 50 years. He’ll be eligible for parole in 2050 when he is 63-years-old.

“We live in a world where it’s becoming all too commonplace,” Bishop Timothy Senior of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg said about politically motivated violence at the roundtable Wednesday. “I think the bar is lowered and it begins with our public discourse so often. We as faith leaders are really challenged to model that respect for human dignity, and at the core of that is respect for our beliefs.”

Across America, hate crimes and antisemitic assaults and threats have risen in the last several years. Groups like the American Jewish Committee and the Center for the Study of Organized Hate have warned that Islamophobia and antisemitism in particular are becoming more common in online discourse. 

Faith leaders on hand included Senior, Rabbi Ariana Capptauber of Beth El Harrisburg, Vibheeshan Gereddy of Sai Mandir of Harrisburg, Penn Township Fire Company Chaplain John Wardle, Imam Idris Abdul-Zahir of Masjidullah Islamic Center, Rev. Marshall Mitchell of the Salem Baptist Church and President Navtej Grewal of the Harrisburg Sikh Society.

Abdul-Zahir noted that he and Shapiro recently celebrated Iftar together, as they did before the attack. He also said his own place of worship had been “desecrated” several times over the last year.

But, he stressed the importance of unity as a way to navigate the current political climate. 

“For me I think it’s a time of bridge building,” he said. “Any time a place of worship is attacked, we all feel some kind of disruption. In our faith, we say that brothers and sisters of the faith are like one body, and if one part of the body hurts, the entire body aches.”

Speaking about the attack, Cappatauber, who Shapiro said presided over his son’s bar mitzvah, said anniversaries of tragic events are an important part of Jewish tradition. 

“In Judaism, we mark Yahrtzeit,” she said. “Because we know that that anniversary, you can feel it in the body.”

She also noted how important it’s been for her and others in Pennsylvania to see Shapiro so publicly embrace his Jewish faith.

“As a Jewish person, as a mother of young children and as a rabbi, it meant so much to me to see Judaism in this public place, especially being a Jew in the world right now.”

Mitchell said the sentiment is shared by Pennsylvanians of other faiths.

“You should not discount the impact you two have had on us by living your faith in the public” he said to Josh and Lori Shapiro. “That’s not normal in the public sector. For many of us, on Friday afternoons, or Friday night or Sunday morning, when you show up, you belong, because we feel a religious and spiritual connection to you.

But Shapiro said that he’d been struggling to embrace the concept of unity or “oneness” — something he said he felt in the aftermath of the attack — when he sees the way people in the world treat each other. He named President Donald Trump in particular as a figure he sees as encouraging division.

“I struggled to try and figure out whether the goodness I was seeing from folks everyday who were praying for us and lighting us up and speaking with that one voice, but then not matching the politics and the discourse and — no disrespect to anyone here — what we see in the media, how to square that,” he said.

Grewal encouraged him and others facing similar questions to focus on the communities around them, highlighting the Sikh practice of feeding the hungry at places of worship called gurdwaras. 

“That’s what the world needs, the basics,” he said. “We come in the world the same way,  we go in the world the same way. When we’re here 50, 60, 70, 80 years… why can’t we have those basics in our life, and love each other.”

Pennsylvania Capital-Star is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Pennsylvania Capital-Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Tim Lambert for questions: info@penncapital-star.com.