A Shapiro by Any Other Name

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s rise to national prominence is cause for celebration even if he wasn’t chosen to be Kamala Harris’s running mate.

Enormously popular in his home state, Shapiro is an example that at a time when incidents of anti-Semitism are at historically high levels, American Jews are usually judged by their work and the content of their character, rather than their faith.

One exception is in the brutal world of Presidential politics. A VP candidate’s worth is determined wholly by their chance to help rather than hurt the ticket. Opposition to Shapiro from some unions and the progressive wing of the Democratic party, however myopic or unfair, may have made Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota a safer bet.

I am not, to my knowledge, related to Shapiro, but it would not  surprise me if we were. A sort of Semitic form of Smith or Jones, Shapiro is as Jewish as Slivovitz wine or a particularly bittersweet sense of humor.

Because most Shapiros come from the Ashkenazi communities, scholars tend to find the name’s roots in the Eastern European Disaspora, specifically associating the word’s origins with the city of Speyer, at one time the third largest Jewish community in Germany.

Others prefer to imagine the name does not derive from the Yiddish world, but from  Hebrew, where the word “sapir” refers to sapphire. Or better yet, to ancient Hebrew, where the root comes from the word “handsome.”

Insofar as I look almost exactly like Josh Shapiro, I tend to favor this interpretation. Having spent my adult life being mistaken for the late comic and television star Bob Saget, I enjoy being mistaken for the Governor of Pennsylvania. What’s not to like?

Whatever its history, the name Shapiro has long been a cultural identifier of American Jewishness. Shapiro is the name Billy Wilder gave the Jewish POW in Stalag 17, the name Norman Lear gave Archie Bunker’s doctor in All in the Family. It is one of the many obviously Jewish surnames Alan Sherman used in his patter song Shake Hands With Your Uncle Max.

It is also the credible name for a character in a number of unacceptable ethnic jokes.

Which makes me proud. In the same way it makes me proud that the poet Karl Shapiro won the Pulitzer Prize in 1945, that Irving Shapiro was CEO of the DuPont Corporation from 1973 to 1981, that Andrew Shapiro was a terrific Fresno State punter, or that Jacob “Gurrah” Shapiro was an assassin for Murder Incorporated. It means that like Washington, Jefferson, Cabot, Lodge, Chavez, Obama, Angelou, and Cho, Shapiro is a solidly, proudly American name written into the complex, complicated history of the land that I love.

Like most immigrants, my family’s history in Europe is unknown and unknowable, lost in the chaos of poverty, pogroms and the Shoah. It is a cruelty for a people so rooted in their own lineage and history. The Bible is nothing if not a long list of names, of tribes and ancestors, where they come from, what they did, who they were. In coming to America, so much of our past was lost. We tend to cling to whatever shards of memory come our way.

Though I have no idea if I am related to Shapiro, it doesn’t matter. The fact that we share the most American of American-Jewish names, like the fact that we both look a little like Bob Saget, is reason enough for me to root for him.

Remember the name. He will be back.

Former federal prosecutor Jonathan Shapiro is an Emmy and Peabody Award winning television writer and producer.