(RNS) — Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro opens his new memoir, “Where We Keep the Light: Stories From a Life of Service,” on the night his governor’s mansion was set on fire in the quiet hours after his family celebrated the Passover Seder.

Shapiro describes the arsonist and his motives: “He later told police that he harbored hatred for me. If he had found me, he told them under questioning, he would have beaten me with the hammer. He added that he would not take part in my ‘plans’ for whatever I ‘[wanted] to do to the Palestinian people.’ Now, I never have had any ‘plans,’ nor do I know what he meant by what I want ‘to do to the Palestinian people,’ but the statement seemed pointed.” 

To the incident, Shapiro responded with faith. He writes: “We don’t look toward the darkness. I knew that we would find meaning from the fire. I knew that we would lean on our faith and our community even more as our way through. I knew that after everything, that’s where we keep the light.” 

Shapiro is, unapologetically, a Jewish Jew. As a child, he attended Jewish day school and he attended synagogue regularly. He spent time in Israel as a teenager and became an activist for Soviet Jewry. He corresponded with a young Russian refusenik and brought the case to U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, which resulted in the Russian Jewish boy standing beside Shapiro at his bar mitzvah, a free Jew.

He observes Shabbat with his family. He keeps kosher. His children attend Jewish day school. And the word he returns to again and again to describe his Jewish identity is simple: faith.

Faith shows up in how he understands public service. He writes: “You show up, even for people who didn’t vote for you. You listen, even if you don’t agree 100 percent of the time. Maybe even especially when you don’t. You talk to them with respect. You feel empathy for what they are facing. That is the soul work, the service.”

That “soul work” and “service” refer to avodah, the Hebrew term that means both work and worship.

It’s clear that Shapiro’s faith informs how he thinks about life-and-death issues like capital punishment. It no doubt shaped his moral courage in confronting abuse within the Roman Catholic hierarchy when he investigated systemic sexual crimes that church leaders had concealed. He understands that faith can be a source of healing and that corrupted faith can be a source of harm. When he visited Israel, as he describes in the book, he placed his hand on the stones of the Western Wall, and he felt the touch of centuries of Jewish hands smoothing its surface. That is not geopolitics. That is spiritual memory rooted in the land of Israel. 

Then came one of the more surreal moments in his public life — the vetting process for vice president. During it, Kamala Harris’ vetting team asked him if he had ever been an agent of the Israeli government. He was stunned. He told the questioner how offensive the question was, he wrote in his book. The questioner continued: “Have you ever communicated with an undercover agent of Israel?”

“If they were undercover,” he replied, “how the hell would I know?”

Later, he wrote about being asked whether he would apologize for comments he had made about antisemitism on college campuses: “‘No,’ I said flatly. I believe in free speech, and I’ll defend it with all I’ve got. Most of the speech on campus, even that which I disagreed with, was peaceful and constitutionally protected. But some wasn’t peaceful, was designed to instill fear and incite violence, and I wouldn’t back down from calling that out.”

Ultimately, he realized the vice presidency was not for him, he wrote. That realization, too, was grounded in faith — knowing who you are, and who you are not meant to be.

Shapiro is an American hero. He models how religious conviction and democratic responsibility can strengthen each other rather than compete. And he is an American Jewish hero. He shows Jews that deep engagement with Jewish tradition does not limit their place in society — it enriches it. Jewish literacy, practice and peoplehood can be a bridge, not a barrier.

It is easy to imagine this memoir is a prelude to a presidential run. And if that is the case, he knows exactly what he is doing.

He knows that Judaism is far more than a faith. It is a people, culture, religion and more, all mixed together. But he also knows that the only way enough “typical” Americans would vote for a Jew for president would be if they sensed that the Jewish candidate was a person of faith, because faith is the common language of America. That is how Shapiro presents his Jewish identity — as a Judaism of faith and prayer, which he mentions many times in the book.

Will it work?

The late Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an observant Jew, ran for vice president on the Democratic ticket in 2000. Apparently, his candidacy hardly experienced antisemitism. That’s perhaps because Americans saw a man who loved his faith and his country, and many admired that.

The cynic in me says that couldn’t happen again. The world has changed, and America has changed. The internet amplifies hatred. But it is still possible that millions of Americans might see in Shapiro a familiar image: a family gathered around a sacred meal, prayer and symbols at the table. It’s something many religious Americans understand instinctively — particularly evangelicals and Catholics, two key political demographics.

Shapiro is offering a vision of American life infused with faith, family, resilience and service. Could that win him votes? Only if Americans could once again believe that faith can be a source of light, not division, and that a deeply Jewish life can also be a deeply American one.

Josh Shapiro is betting that it still can be. And that may be the most hopeful act of faith of all.