Jewish Community Partners

Many readers know the Jewish Community Partners staff through our work. Each Friday, you’ll hear from a different member of the team in our own words, sharing more of the story of who we are. 

 

Gila Golder

Community Impact Associate

 

Birthplace: West Long Branch, New Jersey, but I grew up in Baltimore.

 

College/Graduate school: BA in Creative Writing, Brandeis University.

 

Do you belong to a local congregation? We attend weekly services at Young Israel of Memphis (my husband goes to the 7 AM service and I go to the 8:45 AM service), but we also affiliate with Baron Hirsch and ASBEE.

 

How long have you been a member of the Memphis community? 18 months.

 

Spouse and children: I am married to Rob Golder, who is a criminal defense attorney. We met in Boston (his hometown) when I was at Brandeis.

 

In what initiative or project of your work are/were you most emotionally invested? One of the programs I manage is Choose Jewish Memphis, our program to welcome newcomers into the community. This program is special to me, because when I started my job here, I too was a newcomer to Memphis!

 

Favorite foods to cook: Cooking is a special hobby for me. I love experimenting with new recipes. We keep a kosher kitchen and I’m also a vegetarian, which in theory is limiting (people ask me “What do you eat?”) but I find there’s always something new to try. And I make a really good pareve matzo ball soup!

 

Favorite TV show or movie:

I love ghost shows, Ghost Whisperer and Medium especially. Rob and I also enjoy watching Law and Order: SVU. In fact, we watched an episode together the night before our wedding, when we were both pretty high-strung and felt we needed to relax. In retrospect, we probably should have picked a different show for that purpose!

 

First concert: Blake Shelton at the FedEx Forum in March of last year!

 

What is your fondest memory? Come find me offline and ask me how Rob and I met!

 

Do you have any surprising or unknown talents? Not sure if this counts as a talent, per se, but I’m a huge stickler for accurate spelling and grammar. Typos just jump out at me. I save up old newspapers and read them on Shabbat afternoons. Rob has learned to just nod along when I discover a typo and yell it across the room at him.

 

What’s the earliest global news event you remember being aware of as it happened? I was in sixth grade on 09/11. I remember being really confused and disoriented. I had never even heard of the World Trade Center and didn’t have a clear understanding of what “terrorism” was. I had no concept of the magnitude of what had happened, I just knew that it must be pretty serious since we were all sent home early.

 

Do you have a favorite cocktail, wine, or beer (preferably a local brew)?  I like dry and semi-dry white wines. My favorites are Baron Herzog Emerald Riesling, from the Late Harvest label, and Chateneuf Bordeaux.