Tina Snider grew up in Philadelphia, the daughter of Ed and Myrna Snider. Her parents were involved in the Jewish community. Her father, Ed, owned the Philadelphia Flyers, and her mother eventually became an expert sailor. After college, Tina taught elementary school in Brookline, and raised her three children – Sophie, Dylan and Laurel – in Winchester. She helped found a temple in Winchester. She now lives in Gloucester, and leads two nonprofits deeply involved with Jewish causes: the Tina Snider Foundation and the Gevura Fund.

Tina, please tell us about your family and Jewish upbringing.

I grew up in Philadelphia and my father and mother created a very successful business. My father, Ed Snider, started the Philadelphia Flyers and worked in sports and entertainment. My parents were always giving back – that was very important. They got involved in things and they didn’t step away from important subjects. And so we would have great debates around our table. I was the youngest of four. We talked about everything, not only what was going on in the world, but going on for Jews, and it definitely made an impression. I was the first bat mitzvah in my conservative temple. I was the first girl to be able to go stand on the bima. I had pretty rigorous Hebrew schooling three days a week, and it was very immersive. My father was very connected to the Jewish community and had become friendly with Simon Wiesenthal and Natan Sharansky. He was very, very big on freedom. He loved this country, and so that’s where he wanted to focus his life’s work.

Where did you go to college?

I went to University of Colorado Boulder, and I was a humanities/English major. And then I did a funny about-face. I was on my way to law school, and I got offered this insane job by an old family friend who really wanted me to work for him. He convinced me to come out to L.A. and he and I worked on television game shows. I did that for only, like, two years, and then I ended up going back to Philadelphia.

Back in Philadelphia, I became a cook and a chef – with the plan to open my own restaurant – when my dad came to me and said, ‘Would you consider coming to work for me and seeing if you can save our restaurant?’ It was at the arena the Spectrum, and it was a private club and dining, and we handled the suite concessions. I said, ‘Of course.’ Why wouldn’t I take that opportunity and really figure out if I could do this thing? I ended up coming in and pretty much pulling it out of the depths of the ’70s and being very much in the red to completely turning it over, and it was very successful.

You now live in Gloucester, but set down roots with your family in Winchester for 30 years.

My ex-husband is a family physician and opened a practice, and that’s how I ended up in Winchester.

You decided to help found Temple Shir Tikvah in Winchester?

Yes. Wherever I live, I like to belong to a synagogue. I feel like that’s part of who I am. And I found out that they didn’t really have a synagogue. There were these people in Stoneham, and sometimes they met in the Congregational Church in Winchester. And so I found them, and I joined and I would go periodically. And then at High Holidays, we were starting to get a lot of people and we moved to the town hall, and we’re like, ‘What are we going to do about this?’ I would always offer my help when needed and when the conversation came up, it was like, ‘Yes, we need a temple. We need our own temple. We’re growing. We don’t really have a place in Stoneham anymore.’ And more Jewish families were moving to Winchester. So that’s how that happened. I wanted my children to have a temple in their community. It now has over 300 families. People came from Winchester, and also from Medford, Arlington, Lexington and Stoneham.

It sounds like you really have an appreciation for Judaism. What do you love about being Jewish?

It’s such an intrinsic part of who I am. It’s beyond an intellectual explanation. It’s a spiritual part of my being. It’s about a people­hood. It’s something about community … it’s just a very deep, rooted belief in my very core.

Tell us about your mother, Myrna.

My mother passed away about 12 years ago. She was very unique. She got married at 18, had four of us by the time she was 27, and she helped my father build an empire. And because she had never gone to college, she always wanted to see the world. They divorced when I was 17. And when they split, she decided to live her dream and go see the world. And that’s exactly what she did. And she became an excellent sailor. It was a big boat. We had crew, but she was also part of the crew, and had no fear. She was adventurous and everywhere we would go, my mother would become the mayor of wherever we went.

I mean, people would just roll out the red carpet for her. She had a magnetic personality and she was just full of life, fun to be around. And so she created this amazing experience. I got great experiences from both my parents, and that gave a little magic to my life. Without them, I wouldn’t have gotten to do these things, and that helped form, I think who I am, too. My mom’s mother, Shirley Gordon, helped start the Special Olympics.

So you went on many sailing trips with your mother. How was it to cross the Atlantic with your mom in a sailboat with a handful of crew?

It was amazing – an adventure of a lifetime. We had so much fun, like we would have theme parties. We would do dress-ups, right? Because sometimes the crossings were long if you didn’t have wind. And then crossing the Pacific was the most amazing, because that was in the early ’80s, that was during my college years. I did the Pacific for three months. I did that two times, probably when I was 19. And I went to islands where they’d never seen a white person, and by the time I left, I’d given all my clothes away to my peers. I would meet girls on these islands, and they would make me all these shell things, and I would give them all my clothes. Luckily, I could wear my mom’s clothes, because by the time I got to Tahiti, that was the first real landfall, I was like, ‘I need some clothes.’ I had given everything away. And it was amazing. Whole villages would turn out to see the boat. The whole village would be around 40 people.

So she was this amazing Jewish grandmother sailing the high seas. And so I became a sailor. And that’s another reason I wanted to be on the water and in Gloucester. And I always brought the kids to Gloucester, to the beach. I’d always come to Wingaersheek beach or Good Harbor when they were little. And I had a friend that lived here, and I was like, ‘I really like Gloucester. It feels good to me.’ And so I looked at a house and I loved it. It’s the house I’m in now. I just love the feeling. I love the mix of people here, and the community.

You run a foundation, the Tina Snider Foundation, and a non-profit, the Gevura Fund.

So let me tell you what I do. I have my own foundation that I’m deeply involved with, but I also started my own nonprofit about a year and a half ago, and we’re very, very busy. It’s called the Gevura Fund. It’s really about justice with strength, you know, and you need that as part of the foundation. And so basically, we’re an organization dedicated to preserving religious freedom in the workforce and education. Where antisemitism is becoming institutionalized, embedded in institutions, we try to push back and stop that, and there’s been a lot of demand for what we do. And I would say that we are a significant player in the labor space. The Tina Snider Foundation is also a known player in the ‘combating’ antisemitism space, and we do it not through your legacy organizations. I am one of those people that has been a little sad in the way some of the legacy organizations have become. They did not function well. They became deeply, I think, bureaucratic … you know, it’s like, what was their purpose? What are they meant to do? They can’t do everything. You can’t promise or be one thing that can do everything and do it well.

How did October 7 impact you?

I remember the day. I remember it was such a crazy day. I couldn’t even get out of my pajamas. I’m talking to my friends and cousins in Israel and checking on people I know – all my cousins; kids that are in the army, all these things. There’s just so much happening and just that feeling like, you know, of getting kicked in the stomach. I jumped on a board call with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, as I am a board member, and said, ‘OK we know the tide is going to turn immediately. Do we have days or hours?’

Jews had that golden period in America when no one asked if we were Jewish or it wasn’t really an issue in work or education. How do we get that back? Or is that over?

I think that we are such a house divided, and we always have been. It really helped me understand how the Holocaust happened. Politically, I didn’t get it. You know what I mean? I just could never quite get my head around it. But I feel like we’re having a lived experience now, and I feel like too many of us live in our bubbles, right in our comfort … You see Jewish guilt around Gaza. It’s like, I’m sorry we were attacked. Yes, war is tough. Yes, there’s been a loss, but there’s also been the greatest care for human life ever conducted by any living army anywhere.

I just get sick of the narrative. I get sick of everything being so politicized here. I get a little weary of Jews having such bad “Trump Derangement Syndrome” that they don’t understand that this is an opportunity for us right now. I don’t care who’s in office. I’m going to take advantage of everything Trump’s offering the Jews right now, and it’s a lot, and people don’t see it, and they don’t want to see it. Did I like how they handled ICE? No, but, but they can’t see anything good, and so you cut off your nose to spite your face. I can’t help it. It is how I see it. I’m a true centrist. I’m a true independent, but now I’m seen as this crazy conservative because I’m going to work with this administration, I’m going to change the laws for Jews, and I’m going to get cases. That’s what I do. I do it through strategic litigation, through legislation, and I do it through a grassroots effort. I come alongside teachers and parents who are not getting the help that they need, and I give them solutions, and we try to help them because as soon as you bring a bunch of politicians in, you know you can create all the words you want, but if you don’t give people agency, and if you don’t hold people accountable, it’s not it’s not worth the paper it’s written on. Θ