August 3, 2015

Jo Reingold

Jo Reingold was born in Dallas, Texas, in 1956, the daughter of parents who had each come from Brooklyn, New York. Her father moved to Dallas on a lark to work in the merchandise business, and after meeting at a family party in Brooklyn, her mother followed and the two married. Three of her grandparents were from Eastern Europe, and at the time of her bat mitzvah she still had all four grandparents and five great-grandparents living, most of them in New York. She grew up in Farmers Branch, one of only a few Jewish families in the area, and endured the early loss of a younger brother to Tay-Sachs disease; her parents later adopted her brother Mark.

As one of very few Jewish students at her schools, Jo threw herself into her synagogue youth group, BBYO, and Young Judea, serving as a chapter president and on local and regional boards. She was a serious pianist as well as a singer and dancer, performing at weddings, bar mitzvahs, and Israel Independence Day events, and she once sang in a group with Mark Creditor. She attended the University of Texas at Austin, choosing the Texas system in part to spare her father out-of-state tuition, and earned her degree in education. She went on to teach for nearly 29 years, mostly in Dallas Jewish day schools, and helped open new schools including Solomon Schechter and Wise Academy.

Jo married David Reingold, whose family she had known since childhood through Tiferet Israel, in a memorable ceremony at Fair Park's Butterfly Garden officiated by Rabbi Scott Cohen. Throughout her life she served the Dallas community, holding leadership roles in Hadassah, where she revamped the professional women's group and started a nurses council, and later serving on its regional board. She was active in the Jewish War Veterans women's group and co-chairs the Hello Israel program for the National Council of Jewish Women. As a teenager she served as a teen representative on the Federation board. She witnessed the Dallas Jewish community grow from about 10,000 to roughly 60,000 and recalls vividly the day President Kennedy was assassinated.

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