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Pa. Jewish community wrestles with mixture of feelings after arson attack on governor's residence • Pennsylvania Capital-Star [1]
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Date: 2025-04-28 09:49:06+00:00
In a parking lot across from the governor’s residence filled with construction trucks and contractor vans, a crowd of around 200 gathered and listened to prayers, songs and speeches from members of different faiths — Jewish, Christian, Sufi and Baha’i. They had marched nearly a mile from Temple Beth El, a conservative synagogue on the Susquehanna River, for a vigil organized by the Jewish Federation of Greater Harrisburg.
Only days earlier, Gov. Josh Shapiro and his family were evacuated from the residence just before 2 a.m., hours after their Seder celebrating the first night of Passover. Someone had thrown Molotov cocktails into the room downstairs that was prepared for their next Seder, engulfing it in flames.
“We say in our Seder ‘Let all who are hungry come and eat’ and we open the door,” Rabbi Melody Davis, one of the attendees, told the Capital-Star. She added the attack evoked a history of pogroms against Jewish people on the Passover holiday.
“For this to happen, [it] affects all of us,” she said.
Details of what happened in the early morning hours of April 13 trickled out over the following few days. A man, Cody Balmer of Harrisburg, was arrested after turning himself in to state police. Images of the destruction — a burnt Haggadah, a Jewish prayer book recited at Passover Seders, melted tables and blackened plates — were shown in news stories about the incident around the world
Balmer told authorities he would have attacked Shapiro with a hammer had he come across him, and acted because he did not want to “take part in his plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people.”
It is not known if Balmer targeted Shapiro explicitly because of his Jewish faith, or intentionally acted on Passover, but the circumstances of the attack, the images that have emerged, and what is publicly known of his motive have raised fears in Pennsylvania’s Jewish community at a time when many already already feel vulnerable.
Since the beginning of the conflict in Gaza that began with Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the emergence of a protest movement opposing Israel’s campaign that’s estimated to have killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, debates over what constitutes antisemitism and how institutions and governments should respond have been thrust into the center of American politics. And the Trump administration has used the specter of antisemitism to justify some of its most divisive policies.
In the state that bore witness to the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history in 2018 at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood, the spotlight on Jews has left many feeling vulnerable. That sense was exacerbated following the attack on Pennsylvania’s highest-ranking Jewish official.
“A lot of the conversations I’ve been having are with people saying, ‘This is our worst fear confirmed,’” said Laura Cherner, the director of the community relations council at the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh.
Cherner’s job, as she describes it, involves keeping a finger on the pulse of how Jews are responding to a reported rise in antisemitism incidents that accelerated following the outbreak of war in Gaza. Since the attack on Shapiro, Cherner has received dozens of calls.
“Often, Jews feel like a political football,” she added. “I think, ultimately, many feel like this is almost a confirmation of what we’ve been talking about. We’ve been trying to raise awareness and screaming from the rooftops of the increase in antisemitism.”
Urging caution
The state’s Jewish community has different views on whether the attack on Shapiro can be called antisemitic, but the imagery that emerged from it left an indelible mark.
“I don’t know a single Jewish family that wasn’t talking about it on the second night Seder,” said Andrew Goretsky, regional director for the ADL-Philadelphia. “What happened at Governor Shapiro’s residence, this has an impact.”
For the members of the Tree of Life congregation in Pittsburgh, the photos from earlier this month of the burnt room triggered memories from the 2018 mass shooting that killed 11 people.
“We’ve been in that room. Some of us have been there multiple times,” said Alan Hausman, the president of the Tree of Life Congregation, referring to the reception room in the governor’s residence. “No matter what the motivation is, it’s a difficult thing to look at.”
Following news of the attack, members of the congregation began writing a letter to express solidarity and support for Shapiro. But drafting it proved difficult, and Hausman had concerns with an early iteration.
Initially, he said, it focused too much on the circumstances and timing of the attack on Passover.
“I don’t think that’s important,” Hausman said. “What’s important is to tell him, ‘We’re here. We’re gonna help you get through this. We’re going to help you rebuild.’”
It’s part of a broader message he wants to get across: Don’t jump to conclusions about Balmer’s motive when so much remains unclear.
“There are people that immediately go to, ‘This is 100% antisemitic,’” Hausman said. “But we want to caution against that.”
Members of Hausman’s synagogue know better than most what an investigation into an attacker’s motivation can look like, and how to sit with both the knowns and unknowns. And Hausman worries that prematurely ascribing an antisemitic motive to the attack could cause undue panic and fear.
Shapiro has urged similar caution, refusing in interviews and press conferences to weigh in on whether Balmer should be charged with a hate crime until investigations play out.
But not all Jewish faith leaders share that perspective.
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At a synagogue only a mile-and-a-half from Tree of Life, Rabbi Daniel Fellman wrestled with the same questions over how to address the matter with his congregation.
He first heard about the arson attack when he got an alert on his smart watch during a service on the first morning of Passover. During that day’s prayer for healing, he said words for Shapiro and his family, and left it at that
But as more details emerged, he felt the timing of the attack, and the decision to target a vocally Jewish elected leader over an international conflict he has no control over, led to a clear conclusion.
So on the Friday after the attack, Fellman dedicated the majority of his sermon to calling out what he saw as an explicitly antisemitic attack.
“If you ask me personally, if Governor Shapiro was a good Lutheran, that firebombing wouldn’t have occurred in Harrisburg at the governor’s (residence). It just wouldn’t have happened, and we have to acknowledge that,” Fellman said. “People need to understand that was an attack not just on the governor and his family, but an attack on all of us here. And it was certainly an attack on the people of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”
‘Outside Pressures’
For Fellman, the violence can’t be viewed in a vacuum.
Since Hamas attacked Israel in the fall of 2023, and Israel responded by waging a war on occupied Gaza that has killed tens of thousands, Fellman has felt a need to speak out, including criticizing what he saw as Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians.
His congregation includes both fierce critics and defenders of Israel. Most, he noted, are somewhere in the middle, which he defines roughly as believing in the country’s right to exist, while disagreeing with many of its actions. He is encouraging dialogue, even teaching a class on modern Israel that addresses history and politics.
“Jews are raised and nurtured on arguing for the sake of Heaven. We believe in discussion. We believe in debate,” Fellman said. “The difference here is the outside pressures that this has released … That has made this much more complicated for the folks in my community.”
Those outside pressures, he said, include people who he sees as conflating the actions of the state of Israel with a reflection of the desires of the Jewish community writ large.
Fellman, who describes himself as a moderate, says he sees that in the actions of pro-Palestinian protesters who have targeted Jewish students and businesses. And he sees it on the political right, where politicians have cheered on the punishment and deportation of critics of Israel in the name of opposing antisemitism.
“I think for most American Jews, we’re feeling the confusion and the unsettledness of it all,” Fellman said. “And the governor’s mansion being firebombed is just adding to that.”
‘Red herring’
In its 2024 audit, the Anti-Defamation League noted that around half of the more than 5,000 anti-Israel rallies contained antisemitic rhetoric. The ADL included justification of antisemitic violence, equating Judaism with Nazism and celebration of the October 7 attacks as antisemitic rhetoric or activity.
The ADL has been under scrutiny after its CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, made comments conflating anti-zionism and antisemitism. But the group said its audit conforms with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which includes holding the Jewish people as a whole accountable for the actions of the Israeli government.
Ten days into his second term, President Donald Trump signed an executive order taking steps to combat antisemitism.
But for some Jewish people, those bring their own concerns.
Sen. Judy Schwank (D-Berks), co-chair of the Pennsylvania Jewish Legislative Caucus, worries about what these measures will mean for the Jewish people in the future.
“Are we going to face the brunt of the anger of people about what the administration is doing?” she said.
Since the executive order, the federal government has arrested students who spoke out against Israel on the grounds that they were participating in antisemitic activities or even endorsing terrorism.
This includes Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University student from Turkey who was in the U.S. on a visa. Her apparent crime was co-writing an 2024 op-ed in her student newspaper urging her school to divest from companies with ties to Israel.
Öztürk was approached and arrested by six plainclothes federal agents on a street near her home in Massachusetts and placed in an unmarked car. Now, she’s in a detention center in Louisiana fighting her potential deportation in court.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said that Öztürk engaged in activities supporting Hamas, the militant group that governs the Gaza strip and is deemed a terrorist organization by the U.S.. But an internal memo from the U.S. Department of State, reported by the Washington Post, said they found no evidence linking her to Hamas or engaging in antisemitic activities.
Security camera footage of Öztürk’s arrest went viral, and became a rallying call for critics of the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts to snatch and deport student visa holders for their roles in anti-Israel protests.
“I believe that agents within the federal government representing the Trump administration are calling out antisemitism, but it’s really just a red herring, an excuse to forcibly and maybe illegally remove people from this country,” Schwank said.
Following multiple lawsuits, the Trump administration reversed course and restored thousands of revoked student visas, but a federal lawyer told one judge that U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement is developing a policy for future revocations.
Rabbi Linda Holtzman, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace, argued that reports of antisemitism at pro-Palestinian protests have been drastically overemphasized, and that the narrative is being used to punish those protesting.
“What’s clear to me is that the Trump administration uses antisemitism in order to punish Palestinian rights activists who are trying to stop a United States-backed genocide … that’s where I see antisemitism being used in a way that’s illegitimate and inappropriate,” she said.
She worries that what she believes are false accusations of antisemitism obscure people’s ability to address legitimate concerns.
Jonathan Goldman, chair of the Pennsylvania Jewish Coalition, does see a link between anti-Israel protests and rising reports of antisemitism.
“I believe it’s intellectually possible to have views that are anti-Israel — anti the state of Israel — and not be antisemitic,” Goldman said. “But man, is that slice of cake thin.”
Still, he opposes policies punishing foreign students who participated in protests without offering them due process, and of threatening universities where protests took place.
For him, the images of Öztürk’s arrest, and the crackdown on perceived political enemies more broadly, evoke darker times of Jewish history.
“I watched that video before bed, and then I watched it again the next day,” Goldman said. “Those are not Jewish Values … Historically speaking, Jews do well where a society is more free and democratic politically.”
But Goldman has spoken to some Jewish people who support the administration’s efforts to combat alleged antisemitism, but as he sees it, those tools can be turned on other perceived enemies.
“The Jewish institutions are scared, even the ones I’m representing,” Goldman said.
“What’s happening in the broader political environment is insane, and it’s affecting the way people are feeling with regard to this firebombing and the way people are acting and speaking with regard to it.”
Last updated 9:11 a.m., Apr. 28, 2025
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