Vice President’s Aide Walks to Shul

By COLlive reporter

When Tom Rose, an adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, learned that he was going to spend Shabbos at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, he made sure to contact Chabad.

Rose, former publisher of The Jerusalem Post in the early 2000s and a long-time friend of Pence while governor of Indiana, was to be in Colorado Springs and didn’t want to miss going to Shul.

He spoke to Rabbi Moshe and Zeldy Liberow of Chabad of Southern Colorado, and they readily agreed to provide him with kosher meals for the entire Shabbos.

The packed meals were delivered on Friday afternoon to a grateful Rose.

“Thanks again for a magnificent and totally over-the-top Shabbat food package that could have fed your minyan several times over,” he later wrote to the Shluchim.

On Shabbos morning, Rose made the 1.5-mile trek from his place of stay all the way to Delmonico Drive, the new location of the Chabad center. He joined davening there and heard the reading of the Torah.

“His walking to shul was a tremendous Kiddush Hashem in our community when people heard about it,” Rabbi Liberow told COLlive.com.

Rose describes Pence as his “closest personal friend for over 25 years” and has said he was “one of the best friends the State of Israel and the Jewish people have ever had.”

In 2014, the two toured Israel together and were seen visiting the Kotel in Jerusalem accompanied by Israel’s Ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer. During the campaign, Rose was pictured with Pence holding up a sign “Jews for Trump.”