Linda Park took a winding path to her new position as director of operations at The Jewish Center.
Photo by Marilyn Silverstein
May 06, 2008
Fresh from an early-morning run, Linda Park breezes through the doors of The Jewish Center in Princeton — on the go and on the job there since Feb. 1, when she became the synagogue’s new director of operations.
For the peripatetic Park, the path toward becoming administrator of the 750-family Conservative congregation was neither straight nor narrow.
A native of East Meadow, Long Island, where she grew up in a traditional Reform family, Park earned a bachelor’s degree in marketing from the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan. She then fashioned careers as a manufacturer’s purchasing agent, a holistic health practitioner, a masseuse, a salesperson in the horticulture industry, and an eBay entrepreneur specializing in the sale of seeds and cuttings.
“I have a very eclectic background,” the 43-year-old Park said as she sat in her office at The Jewish Center on a crisp April morning. “I’ve done a lot of things that brought me here today.”
Along the way, about 20 years ago, Park moved with her husband, Bruce, a trainer in the field of finance, to the San Francisco Bay area, where she turned her love for sales into a thriving business selling orchids online.
“Then I had enough,” Park said. “I decided it was time to do something else. That was when I started working in the Jewish community. I was always drawn to the synagogue for comfort and support. It’s like the place that’s home.”
About seven years ago, Park began a new career teaching in religious schools, piecing together teaching jobs at her own synagogue, the Peninsula Sinai Congregation in San Mateo, and at three other congregations in the area. In addition to teaching preschool, kindergarten, and several other grades, she had gigs running a summer camp and managing congregational Tot Shabbat and family programs.
“I loved it,” she said. “It was just a real joy to help parents embrace Judaism for their children and themselves. This is my passion.
“Working for a synagogue allows me to help other people to find Judaism in a way that works for them,” she added. “That gives me the greatest pleasure — knowing that people are fulfilling themselves Jewishly.”
Park soon parlayed her passion into working as director of young adult programming for the Jewish Federation of Silicon Valley. But she missed the life of the synagogue, and in 2005, she took on a new challenge —full-time administrator of Congregation Beth Israel-Judea in San Francisco.
The job was a good fit, Park said, but she longed for the more traditional Jewish life she associated with the East Coast, and when the position opened up in Princeton, she went for it.
Now, happily at home in Princeton Township with her husband and daughters — Jill, 10, and Leah, 7 — Park is overseeing day-to-day operations at The Jewish Center.
“It’s a very vibrant congregation,” she said. “We have so much going on here. I feel like there’s never a quiet moment, and I’m constantly putting on different hats at different moments. It’s constantly changing, which is what makes it so exciting.”
Park sees her multifaceted career as prologue to everything she is doing today.
“I have to say, it took me about 18 years to realize what I wanted to do in life and where my passion was — to realize that I should be working in the Jewish community and that my passion is for the Jewish community,” she said.
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