Miller Enjoys Time Spent at Aleh Summit

Aleh, from the Hebrew word for “uplift,” is a leadership summit hosted by M², the institute for experiential Jewish education.

For Jessica Miller, who works at the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta (MJCCA) as assistant director of Club J, the three-day summit provided an excellent opportunity for networking, in between and within the Jewish learning, seminars, and breakout groups.

“There were a lot of opportunities that were very intentionally built into the program for creating new connections, which I think is really valuable as a bunch of early career professionals,” said Miller. “There were a lot of opportunities and encouragements of ‘go find someone that you’ve never met before. Go find another person you’ve never met before, talk about this new value, talk about this new thing.’”

As a pre-requisite for the program, Miller was recommended by a co-worker, Kelly Cohen, who leads the MJCCA’s Center for Experiential Jewish Education.

“She is very involved in M² and ended up actually being one of their speakers. She was on a panel during it, as well as some seminars. She had forwarded me the email basically telling me that I should apply, that I fit right in the range, and she thought it would be a great opportunity for me,” said Miller.

“Specifically for this program, they’re looking for people who are three to five years into their Jewish nonprofit career. And I think that that is like spot on for the kind of programming that they’re running. Definitely anyone who wants to stay in the nonprofit world, I think it’s really valuable for.”

As far as what she took away most, Miller highlighted the reflective aspect of the summit. “I feel like a lot of times [summits] are very skills-based, which is really useful, and there was definitely a lot of skills-based things happening at this, but they also really hold up a mirror and ask you like, what’s your values? And there’s a lot of time to really focus on looking inward and how do you pull that into your work, which I really enjoyed.”