The Gold Standard
by Jill Cousins
During winter break in 2019, Fara Gold brought her family down from New Jersey to Central Florida to visit relatives and enjoy a respite from the cold weather. With both sets of grandparents and her husband’s three brothers and their families all living in the Orlando area, Fara’s clan was known as “The Jersey Golds.”
So, Fara wasn’t particularly surprised when sister-in-law Jaime Gold asked the question that was probably on the minds of all the other Florida Golds: “What are you doing? You’re the only ones not here!”
With that seed planted, Fara and her husband Hunter began making plans to move to Florida by the summer of 2021, after oldest daughter Marin graduated high school and younger daughter Riley finished eighth grade.
“We planned to move down here in mid-July, after the school year and after camp,” says Fara, who intended to work remotely in her job as the event planner for the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest in New Jersey.
She told her family, “Okay, this is the plan: Marin will graduate, we will move, she’ll go to college, and Riley will start high school in Florida with her cousins. And life will be great!”
Well, we all know what they say about life happening while we’re busy making plans... and that’s exactly what happened. Shortly after the Gold family nailed down its well-thought-out plan, Fara was offered a job to be chief programming officer for The Roth Family Jewish Community Center of Greater Orlando. And the job would start early – in February 2021.
“I sat down with Hunter and had a serious conversation about it,” Fara says. “This meant leaving my family for five months, and it meant my daughter spending her last semester of high school without me. But, ultimately, what pushed me was, if I said no and we moved here in July, I would’ve regretted that every day.”
So Fara said yes, and she has been busily working to bring her visionary programming ideas to The Roth Family JCC since February. Hunter, Marin, and Riley are still in New Jersey with plans to join Fara in mid-July, as originally scheduled.
Fara brings a wealth of experience in programming to the JCC. For the past 20 years, she has worked with Jewish Community Centers and Jewish Federations in the Washington, D.C., and New Jersey areas. As the camp director for the JCC of Greater Washington, she helped the camp grow from 300 to 500 campers in just four years.
“Fara brings passion for Jewish Community Centers and Jewish life to The Roth Family JCC,” says Keith Dvorchik, the JCC’s chief executive officer. “Her vision, business acumen, and leadership are exciting additions to our staff. I’m so excited to see how she makes us even better and brings new and exciting things to Orlando and the J.”
You CAN Come Home Again
This is actually Fara’s second job at The Roth Family JCC. In 1998, four years after graduating from the University of Miami, the Long Island native took a job as BBYO director and teen coordinator for the Maitland campus.
“It’s hysterical to me that I walk in every morning and see my old BBYO kids dropping off their children at the JCC preschool,” Fara says with a grin. “How did this happen?”
Judaism was always a big part of Fara’s identity. She is the only child of parents who were very involved in their local synagogue as Fara grew up. She was active in youth groups and thrived every summer as both a camper and counselor at a variety of Jewish and non-Jewish camps including Camp Che-Na-Wah in upstate New York, which has a claim to fame as the camp attended by the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
An accomplished musician who plays the flute and piccolo, Fara graduated from the University of Miami in 1994 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in music performance. During the summer before graduation, Fara took part in Walt Disney World’s college program, which led to an advanced internship and a variety of jobs with Disney.
After working her initial job with the JCC in Maitland for two summers, Fara and Hunter, whom she married in 1998, moved to the D.C. area after BBYO offered her a full-time job as an assistant camp director.
Now, in her new role as CPO, Fara is hoping to further enhance The Roth Family JCC’s legacy as an “amazing place for people to come together as a community and the hub of Jewish life in Orlando,” she says. Fara envisions a vibrant, Ritz Carlton-style atmosphere.
“All of the things that I love and do for camps, I can now do for everything: membership, fitness, nutrition, health, arts and culture, seniors – all of it,” Fara says. “I’m so excited. I’m back in the world that I love.”