Daily Kickoff
👋 Good Thursday morning!
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we preview Pennsylvania Gov.-elect Josh Shapiro’s inauguration and look at House Appropriations subcommittee assignments on Capitol Hill. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Gideon Taylor, Carolyn Maloney and Nelson Peltz.
Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff is set to meet this afternoon with the co-chairs of the House Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch has learned. The closed-door meeting will serve as something of a listening session for Emhoff to hear from members of Congress.
“This meeting will be an opportunity for the second gentleman to hear directly from members of Congress and discuss the administration’s efforts to combat antisemitism,” a White House official told JI on Wednesday.
Emhoff, the first Jewish spouse of a president or vice president, has made combating antisemitism a core focus of his responsibilities as second gentleman. Last month, he convened a first-of-its-kind meeting on antisemitism, attended by a diverse array of Jewish leaders, at the White House.
An individual with knowledge of Emhoff’s visit to Capitol Hill told JI the meeting is meant to indicate that antisemitism will remain a priority for him as he heads into his third year as second gentleman. Read more here.
Emhoff will deliver remarks tomorrow at a naturalization ceremony commemorating National Religious Freedom Day.
The second gentleman will travel to Poland and Germany later this month with U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Emhoff will participate in a wreath-laying ceremony at Auschwitz-Birkenau and attend a meeting of special envoys focused on antisemitism in Berlin, Emhoff’s communications director, Liza Acevedo, announced Thursday morning.
exclusive
Josh Shapiro to use Tree of Life Bible at Pa. governor inauguration

When Josh Shapiro is sworn in as Pennsylvania’s governor next week, he will take the oath of office on a stack of three Hebrew Bibles, including one that was on the bima, or prayer platform, at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue during the 2018 mass shooting that killed 11 worshippers, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
Miraculous survival: “It was regularly used on Shabbat mornings, and would have been used that fateful morning, but the services were abruptly interrupted by gunfire,” Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, the spiritual leader at Tree of Life, told JI. “The Bible survived without any damage, and Tree of Life is honored by its presence at the inauguration.”
Keeping the faith: On the campaign trail, Shapiro’s Jewish identity played a prominent part in his pitch to voters. One campaign ad showed his family having Shabbat dinner, which he pledged to continue in Harrisburg. In his stump speech, and in his election night victory speech, Shapiro quoted from Pirkei Avot, or Teachings of Our Fathers: “No one is required to complete the task, but neither are we free to refrain from it,” he told a cheering crowd in November.
Full story: Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s outgoing attorney general, will also use the same family Bible he has used at each swearing-in since he was first elected to the Statehouse in 2004, a spokesperson told JI. The third Bible — a copy of “Readings from the Holy Scriptures for Jewish Soldiers and Sailors,” which was given to soldiers when they entered the military — belonged to Herman Hershman, a World War II veteran who earned a Purple Heart on D-Day. Hershman, who died in 2013 at 87, attended Beth Sholom Congregation, the same suburban Pennsylvania synagogue that Shapiro attends. The Bible is on loan from the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia.
Local leaders: A group of four interfaith leaders — including Rabbi Greg Marx of Maple Glen’s Congregation Beth Or — will deliver the invocation at Tuesday’s inauguration.
Read the story here.