Josh Shapiro’s Life of “Purpose” and Jewish Activism Recounted at His 1986 Bar Mitzvah

On a spring day in 1986, Josh Shapiro became a bar mitzvah. Rabbi Aaron Landes told a packed congregation at Beth Sholom Synagogue in Elkins Park that there was something special about the boy.

As Rabbi Landes said, Joshua conducted himself “with a special dignity that reflects a young man with purpose.”

Thirty-eight years later, the adolescent man still has a massive vision. Shapiro, the Pennsylvania governor, could be named Kamala Harris’ running mate this week, catapulted onto the international stage.

In some ways, it’s the next step in a journey Shapiro has been preparing for since he was a child growing up in Dresher, Montgomery County.

“Children for Avi”

An article in the May 27, 1986 issue of the Inquirer detailed the bar mitzvah of “Joshua, the dark-haired boy,” whose coming-of-age ceremony was made especially special by the presence of a guest: 12-year-old Avi Goldstein.

Shapiro and Avi had been pen pals since the American boy was 6. Avi and his family were “refuseniks,” Soviet Jews who were denied the right to emigrate to Israel. Avi’s father, physicist Isai Goldstein, had spent 14 years trying to leave the Soviet Union.

The Goldsteins were persecuted because they were Jews, The Inquirer reported. Their apartment was searched and their relatives were sent to prison.

The Goldsteins, who lived in Tbilisi, the capital of present-day Georgia, homeschooled their son after the second grade but eventually sent him back to school when he was 11.

First, Avi was beaten until he suffered a concussion, and then, after school staff promised his family they would keep him protected, he was attacked again — classmates grabbed him, stripped him of his clothes and took a photo of his circumcised penis, The Inquirer reported.

Shapiro, who learned about the Goldsteins through his synagogue and school, Forman Hebrew Day School, wrote faithfully to Avi. But in 1985 he spearheaded a letter-writing campaign—“Children for Avi”—with participants from the United States, Canada, and England. The goal was to draw public attention to the family’s plight.

After Avi was attacked a second time at school, the family again turned to authorities. In February, Senator Edward M. Kennedy announced that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had agreed to let 25 Soviet Jews, including the Goldsteins, leave the country.

In May 1986, Avi and Shapiro stood side by side at Beth Sholom as Josh celebrated his bar mitzvah.

Avi spoke only a few words of English and had never seen a Torah until a visit to the United States, his father told The Inquirer in 1986. At a friend’s ceremony, Avi sang a blessing in Hebrew.

Avi sat down with Shapiro, with whom he had been faithfully corresponding for years, writing to him monthly.

Shapiro’s letters “were full of details about the life of an American boy,” a 1986 Inquirer article said. “Avi’s letters, likely the victims of Soviet censorship, never reached Joshua’s home. But the messages were smuggled from the Soviet Union to the boy Dresher, Avi’s father said.”

Shapiro said in his bar mitzvah speech that he had lost hope that Avi would be released in time to celebrate his bar mitzvah.

“I thought I would have to symbolically share this information with him,” Shapiro said in his speech.

Although he was delighted that the Goldsteins were finally allowed to leave, the 13-year-old future governor took a broader view: He said his job wasn’t over yet.

In his bar mitzvah speech, Shapiro said he still worries about the “thousands of others [Jewish] children still enslaved in the Soviet Union.”

Evolution in Israel

Shapiro said his work on behalf of Avi Goldstein was formative.

In 2022 he said Forward that “it was probably those memories that led me to this life of service.”

Later, in 1993, while a student at the University of Rochester, Shapiro wrote in the student newspaper that he believed peace would “never come” in the Middle East and that the Palestinians were “too belligerent” to coexist with Israel.

A spokesman for Shapiro told The Inquirer that the governor’s views have evolved in the 30 years since then. He now supports a two-state solution in the Middle East.

Shapiro, along with Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is the favorite to become the Democratic vice presidential nominee. He met with Harris in Washington this weekend.

Harris announced that she will make her first public appearance with her vice presidential candidate in Philadelphia on Tuesday at the Liacouras Center on the campus of Temple University.