Just six days after his appointment as Home Secretary, Grant Shapps has been moved to the role of Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's first cabinet.
The former transport secretary became the first Jewish home secretary in over 25 years when he was appointed by former prime minister Liz Truss last week after Suella Braverman resigned. She has now been re-appointed to the role.
Shapps had joined the ranks of several other British Jews to serve as Home Secretary, after previously serving as Transport Secretary under Boris Johnson and Tory party chairman under David Cameron, before being fired after allegations of him using alter egos to shape his online image.
The Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP @GrantShapps has been appointed Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy @BEISGovUK.#Reshuffle pic.twitter.com/32RycRvjJv
— UK Prime Minister (@10DowningStreet) October 25, 2022
A former BBYO president, Shapps told the JC in a 2010 interview, that he was "totally Jewish" saying: "I don't eat pork, we only buy kosher meat and we don't mix meat and milk. I like being Jewish and I married a Jewish girl. It's like a way of life and it's good to be able to instil some of that sense of being in your kids."
Dominic Raab has also been given a Cabinet post by the new prime minister, taking the roles of Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Justice which he held under Boris Johnson's premiership.
The Rt Hon Dominic Raab MP @DominicRaab has been appointed Deputy Prime Minister, Lord Chancellor, and Secretary of State for Justice @MoJGovUK. #Reshuffle pic.twitter.com/aikeZwQ1rH
— UK Prime Minister (@10DowningStreet) October 25, 2022
After being first elected to Parliament in 2010, Raab has also held the roles of Brexit Secretary, Foreign Secretary, and Lord Chancellor.
Raab is the son of a Czech-Jewish refugee who arrived in the UK in 1938 at the age of six fleeing the Nazis. His family decided to flee because the Munich Agreement gave the Sudetenland part of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany. His father died when Raab was 12 years old.
The Deputy Prime Minister also spent a brief period as a volunteer on Kibbutz Sarid in Northern Israel before studying law at Oxford University.
Raab told the JC in 2020 of his “pride” at his family’s Jewish ancestry. He heard stories of the family’s ordeal in Eastern Europe from his grandmother, who “lived to a ripe old age” and lived close to his family home.
“Dad rarely spoke about his past or where he came from. Part of that was horror, part of that was that he was a classic, assimilated Jewish man,” said Mr Raab.
“My grandmother was different — she was a Czech who married a Hungarian man, which is where the name Raab comes from. She was scarred, not just by what happened, having left behind her parents and all the other members of the family who perished.
“She felt a huge sense of loss — and, I suspect, guilt for having left her parents behind. They tried to persuade them to come — my dad, his grandparents, I think his uncle was with him. They left and went through Tangiers refugee camp and then arrived in the UK in 1938.”
Mr Raab said the loss of his father and the deaths of large numbers of his family in the Shoah had made him appreciate what was “precious in life.”
