On Saturday, John Kasich gave what many of the reporters covering his campaign thought was one of his most effective and touching speeches yet. Because it was in a New York synagogue, cameras were banned and even note taking was considered forbidden. As a result only the 500 or so Orthodox Jews who were in the room at the Great Neck Synagogue will ever have seen it.

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That, in microcosm, is what John Kasich faces as he stumps New York. The Ohio governor is, in effect, running not to lose. With no path to the 1,237 delegates required to win the nomination (he still needs well over 1,000 and there are only 852 still available), Kasich is banking on a deadlock leading to a contested convention and then emerging as a dark horse if neither Donald Trump nor Ted Cruz prevails.

The Ohio governor’s strategy speaks to his precarious situation. Kasich is hopscotching the state from congressional district to congressional district, to places where he can keep Donald Trump under 50% and finish second, thus winning one delegate.

Kasich spent Saturday targeting Jewish voters, many of whom are wary of Trump for reasons ranging from his inconsistency on foreign policy to his sometimes autocratic presentation. The appearance at the synagogue in Great Neck – a heavily Jewish community with a mix of Ashkenazi and Persian Jews – came at a time when many Jews in the United States are feeling particularly uneasy with the rise of Islamic terrorism and growing antisemitism throughout the world.

As Rabbi Dale Polakoff told the congregation just minutes before Kasich appeared: “We all know the very tenuous state of the Jewish people throughout the world … It is a world that is much different from the world where many of us grew up. But it’s actually a world not so different from that world in which six million of our parents, and grandparents and great-grandparents, were murdered.”

Kasich, though, took a slightly lighter touch as he ascended to the pulpit in a sanctuary where there was no microphone because of the Sabbath (the result was as the candidate began to speak, there were cries of “louder, louder” from the back of the room). As opposed to the prayer service, where congregants prayed using different prayer books, at different paces and chitchatted throughout, Kasich received a polite welcome. His speech was viewed with some trepidation: only a few days earlier the Anglican from Ohio had seen fit to lecture yeshiva students about the Torah at a campaign stop in Brooklyn. The resulting awkwardness became internet fodder.

There were moments of awkwardness here too, including Kasich briefly citing the end of Psalm 23 to solve a debate among Jewish theologians about the afterlife; and he cited the approaching holiday of Passover as an opportunity to see the Cecil B DeMille classic The Ten Commandments. But mostly the Ohio governor talked about his faith in a touching, personal way. He rooted it in a retelling the story of how his parents were killed by a drunk-driver in a car accident, and discussed the story of Joseph from Genesis.

His sincerity was evident. Kasich cited his past gaffes defensively – “I’m not trying to teach, sometimes when I get carried away they say he’s trying to teach to us and preach to us; I am not.” The only hint of anything political was when he offered what was probably an inadvertent contrast with Trump: “Sometimes we invest too much in the power of leadership and not investing enough in the power of ourselves to bring a healing and justice to this world to live a life bigger than ourselves.”

Finally, the candidate thanked congregants “for the opportunity and privilege to stand in this pulpit and share some of my heart with you”.

Kasich’s other stop of the day came at a deli on the Upper East Side of Manhattan where he ate new pickles, soup with kreplach (a traditional Jewish dumpling) and apple strudel surrounded by a crowd of reporters. Here, Kasich fended off questions about his political fortunes by saying: “I am not a political guy like that.”

It was less introspective and less retail-oriented – after all, even on the prosperous Upper East Side it’s hard to find a registered Republican to glad-hand. Instead it was simply an opportunity for the Ohio governor to make the local news on the Sunday before New York’s primary and tout his endorsement from the Nevada governor, Brian Sandoval, one he received almost two months after the Silver State held its caucuses.

He faced one tough question from a member of the public who leaned around the deli counter to ask him how the food compared with a deli in his home state of Ohio. Kasich answered: “Don’t try to trip me up, I make enough mistakes on my own.”

The only hope for the Ohio governor is that in the coming months, both of his rivals make more mistakes than him.