When Josh Shapiro was sworn in as Pennsylvania’s governor on Jan. 17, he took the oath of office on a stack of three Hebrew Bibles, including one that was on the bimah at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue during the 2018 mass shooting that killed 11 worshippers.

“The Bible survived without damage, and Tree of Life is honored by its presence at the inauguration,” said Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, spiritual leader of the synagogue.

Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s outgoing attorney general, also used the same family Bible present at each swearing-in since he was first elected to the Statehouse in 2004. The third Bible — a copy of Readings From the Holy Scriptures for Jewish Soldiers and Sailors, belonged to Herman Hershman, a WWII veteran who earned a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star on D-Day. The Bible was on loan from the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia.

A group of four interfaith leaders — Community Leader Shamshul Huda of Lansdale’s North Penn Mosque, Rabbi Greg Marx of Maple Glen’s Congregation Beth Or, Monsignor Stephen P. McHenry of St. Anthony of Padua Parish in Ambler, and the Rev. Charles W. Quann of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Spring House — delivered the invocation.