Dennis Ross, the former Middle East envoy, has been spending a lot of time on the road and in synagogues these days.
Since joining joining Barack Obama on a Middle East trip and then publicly coming out in support of the Democratic presidential nominee, Ross has been on a tour of the Jewish community in battleground states.
On Sunday, he stumped for the Democratic nominee in Tampa and then Parkland, Florida.
While imparting the reasons he’s supporting Obama, Ross, looking around at Congregation Kol Tikvah’s new shul in Parkland, Broward County, noted how he’s also gleaned some valuable insights of his own.
“I have shul building envy,” Ross told about 75 people seated in the building that opened earlier this year.
Ross explained that he’s co-chair of the capital campaign at Kol Shalom, a seven-year-old Conservative egalitarian congregation in Maryland that is raising money to construct a synagogue.
His timing couldn’t be worse to be chair of a campaign hitting up donors, Ross said in a reference to the global financial meltdown.
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Why is a comment about synagogue capital campaigns the news-worthy item here? It seems a discussion about the role of the next U.S. President in developing a new foreign policy strategy would be a little more important than the obvious "it is hard to raise capital for building a synagogue in a recession".