How did the Israeli national anthem survive the fire at Gov. Josh Shapiro’s mansion if the Haggadah he posted before the Seder doesn’t include it? Photo by PAcast
By Louis Keene
April 17, 2025
Inside the charred southern wing of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s official residence were the burnt remnants of a Haggadah — and a mystery.
Printed on one surviving page was Hatikvah — the Israeli national anthem. And yet a different image Shapiro posted prior to the holiday showed a table set with matching Haggadot that don’t include the anthem.
Have a look:
In the pre-Seder photo, a white tablecloth is set with a silver Seder plate and a bottle of Mt. Tabor Cabernet, an Israeli wine; on each seat is the Feast of Freedom Haggadah, published in 1982 by the Rabbinical Assembly. It makes sense that Shapiro’s Conservative Jewish family would make that Haggadah its default.
But Feast of Freedom concludes the way most Haggadot have for centuries: with the aspirational phrase L’shana Haba’ah B’Yerushalayim — next year in Jerusalem. So where did these pages come from?
The answer, which I found after a few hours of digital and real-world sleuthing, tells a story about Shapiro’s politics, about his Jewish identity, and about the moment we’re in. And like any good Passover puzzle, the solution only begets more questions.
Sung, then singed
Let’s have a closer look at the picture:
The most visible line is “Od lo avda tikvateinu” — our hope was not yet lost — the soaring turn of the anthem. I tried Google Lens to reverse image search the portion of the image showing that page. No luck.
But to the left of that page is another which shows another clue: “One little goat, one little goat” — an English translation of the post-Seder song Chad Gadya. The similarity of the fonts between the two pages indicates that the Hatikvah came from a full Haggadah and was not just printed out as an appendix. The size of the font and the typeface itself make it seem contemporary — last 20 years would have been my guess.
After searching unsuccessfully in my parents’ great big box of Haggadot, I took to Google Books to find all examples of that phrase, hoping a newer Haggadah would appear in its index. “One little goat” has appeared in a bunch of Haggadot, of course — there’s also a Dara Horn children’s book of the same title — but none of the examples looked like ours.
Yes, I asked the governor’s office directly: Manuel Bonder, Shapiro’s press secretary, told me he didn’t have any further details. And to my surprise, the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia said it didn’t know anyone who had attended a Shapiro Seder — this year or ever before. (So don’t feel bad if you weren’t invited, either!)
A colorful clue
A different image from the fire in the governor’s photo gallery yielded another potential clue: A gold-colored band running across an adjacent page. It looked upside down, which could mean that there were more than one of the Haggadah at the table or that the page had been ripped from its binding in the blaze.
I threw the gold text block into Google Lens, which only turned up the same photo.
Stumped, I enlisted ChatGPT in a brute-force task — could it provide a list of Haggadot that included Hatikvah? Unsurprisingly, it could not.
What if I searched X for “Hatikvah” and “Seder” to find people who said it? Suddenly, there it was:
We used a Haggadah tonight that my brother got at Hostages Square in Israel. All the parts of the Seder were accompanied by writings from hostages and their families. pic.twitter.com/BXrcfHjAUZ
— Arielle Aronson (@aharonson28) April 14, 2025
I purchased a digital copy of the Haggadah from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum to confirm. Sure enough, there they were: Hatikvah, “One Little Goat,” and dashes of gold throughout.
So if Feast of Freedom was invited to the Shapiro table, perhaps the Haggadah of Freedom was the unexpected guest.
Let all who are hungry come and…read?
The inclusion of the latter Haggadah tracks for Shapiro, who is known for his deep engagement with Israel and its political twists, turns and alliances. And like Shapiro — who said he was praying for the hostages in last year’s pre-Passover post — the Forum had been scathingly critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Haggadah, which was published this year — the second Passover marked as Oct. 7 hostages remained captive — includes reflections from freed hostages such as Liri Albag, as well as from relatives of current captives, like the mother of hostage Nimrod Cohen, whose selflessness during captivity was recounted by released hostage Eli Sharabi in a speech to the United Nations.
Was it Gov. Shapiro’s Haggadah, or someone else’s? Again, his office couldn’t (or wouldn’t) tell us. But there’s good reason to believe it was at his table, and not someone else’s: Photos showed that only one table — the center table one would suspect belonged to Shapiro’s family — was really scorched. It’s unclear whether other tables were even occupied; police said another family staying at the mansion after the Seder was evacuated in the fire, but the guest list was never made public.
If Feast of Freedom was invited to the Shapiro table, perhaps the Haggadah of Freedom was the unexpected guest.
There are plenty of reasons Shapiro might have posted one Haggadah, put out decades ago by the Rabbinical Assembly, the international organization of Conservative rabbis, and read from a more overtly political companion during the Seder itself. The simplest explanation — aside from it being someone else’s — is that like many Jews, Shapiro likes switching up which Haggadah he uses! There’s a reason my parents have a great big box of Haggadot, after all.
Shapiro might also have shied away from highlighting Israeli politics in a holiday message intended to be universal. His pro-Israel positions landed in the crosshairs of some progressive groups last year when he was floated as the Democratic vice presidential nominee — a few even called him “Genocide Josh” — and, according to a Pennsylvania State Police warrant, led an arsonist to the home where he and his family slept.
However it got there, the presence and apparent use of that Haggadah leaves another question about Shapiro’s Seder lingering: Does the governor’s family sing Hatikvah at their Seder? If his press office couldn’t give us the scoop on the Haggadah, I imagine it won’t be quick to settle this debate. Inquiring minds would like to know — but in 2025, when the question of identities and allegiances have become so fraught, some questions might be better left unanswered.
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