Josh Shapiro and Ben Shapiro Share a Surname, but Do They Share Any Relatives?

We all thought the biggest political news in 2024 would be the failed assassination attempt against Donald Trump, but just eight days later, President Joe Biden announced he’d be stepping out of the presidential race.

This opened the door for his Vice President, Kamala Harris, as the frontrunner for the democratic nominee, leading many to question if Josh Shapiro will be her pick for running mate.

As Josh’s name circulates in the media cycle, many who may have never heard of the Pennsylvania governor are wondering if he’s related to Ben Shapiro. Josh is a uniting blue force in a Trump-loving swing state, while Ben is a right-wing pundit determined to keep the Democrats out of office. So are the two Shapiros somehow related?

While it seems like the only thing Josh and Ben have in common is their shared surname, as voters learn about both of them, they can’t help but wonder if that one commonality means that they’re related. In fact, both have talked openly about their Jewish faith and how that informs their dedication to tackling antisemitism.

Despite this, they’ve found themselves on opposite sides of the aisle. While Josh follows his Judaism by trying to unite people, give Tzedakah (a Jewish tradition of doing good deeds), and follow the perspective of tolerance and love, Ben takes a different approach.

Antisemitism is tricky — Jews have been called “the world’s oldest scapegoat” and antisemitism is “the world’s oldest hatred.”

As far-right politicians align with white supremacy (Ben Shapiro included), antisemitism is inherent to the party’s stance. However, the far-left has also shown instances of antisemitism in the fight against Israel and their understanding of Zionism, so it’s natural for someone like Ben to rail against the left.

Even still, Josh and Ben’s approaches to the same cause differ greatly, making Josh a potential Vice Presidential candidate, while Ben remains a controversial figure.

Because of this, Josh has distanced himself from Ben, confirming in 2019 that the two are not related. He tweeted, “For the record, I am not related to Ben Shapiro.” While that should have been the end of it, people are still confused as to why they’re not related if they have the same name. However, this is quite common in Judaism, especially with a name like Shapiro.

According to 23andMe, “[Shapiro] is one of the old Ashkenazic surnames. In Eastern Europe, it was used by rabbinical families well before the mass adoption of surnames by local Jews at the turn of the 19th century.” It came from the Jews living in the German city of Speyer, which in Yiddish, inspired the name, “Shapiro.”

In fact, Speyer held one of the oldest Jewish communities in Europe, starting in 1084 after Jews settled there after fleeing pogroms in Mains and Worms, thanks to the kind bishop of Speyer, Rüdiger Huzmann.

Even still, several pogroms and massacres of Jews throughout the centuries moved them around, and by the Holocaust in the 1940s, most of the Jews of Speyer had been forced to leave.