Emma Miller, the teen education and engagement director of the HaZamir: The International Jewish Teen Choir was named one of five emerging Jewish educators awarded the 2024 Pomegranate Prize at a ceremony held on Sept. 24 at the Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in New York.
The Pomegranate Prize is designed to recognize emerging leaders in the field of Jewish education by encouraging them in their pursuits and offering the resources and connections necessary to accelerate their development, deepen their self-awareness, and amplify their impact on the field. The prize is awarded by the Covenant Foundation, which also gives out the Covenant Award, and, since 1991, has honored three outstanding Jewish educators each year for their impact on the field of Jewish education.
HaZamir: The International Jewish Teen Choir provides a rewarding experience of music, culture, leadership and friendship for young people in chapters across the United States and Israel. It was created to give talented Jewish teens the opportunity to sing great Jewish music at the highest standard of excellence while strengthening Jewish identity and fostering leadership. HaZamir has long served as a music and leadership training ground for the next generation. The HaZamir Teen Leadership Program accepts a select cohort of HaZamir upperclass students and cultivates young leaders with intensive online skill-building and in-person retreats throughout the year. Through identity-based exploration and values-driven experiential learning, teen leaders learn to think about who they are, how to practice and refine their leadership style and embark on the process of who they may become.
In her role as teen education and engagement director, Miller strategically redesigned the experiential teen leadership lab and works closely with young people to realize theirpotential and provide meaningful educational development.
“Emma is the driving force behind the HaZamir teen-leadership program,” says Vivian Lazar, director of HaZamir. “She instills a sense of purpose, responsibility and belonging in the teens, while her innovative ideas make learning interesting.”
Miller also serves as theater-arts director at congregation B’nai Jeshurun in New York City, and the Playmakers Youth Theatre director and director of the Francine and Benson Pilloff Family Performing Arts Camp at the Mandel JCC in Cleveland. Miller has founded new models for Jewish performing arts programming. She has also served as an educator and consultant for Perelman Jewish Day School, Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple, Temple-Tifereth Israel, Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan, Tkiya and Romemu. Miller has written original curricula that use the arts to teach students about the Holocaust, Jewish identity and American Jewish history. She is the co-founding artistic director of New York City’s The Hearth theater company as well as a director and producer of new American plays. Now based in New York City, she earned her Bachelor of Arts in Drama from Kenyon College in Ohio.
“This year’s cohort of Pomegranate Prize recipients is creative, energetic, and wholly committed to the field of Jewish education,” remarked Cheryl R. Finkel, a 1999 Covenant Award recipient, former board chair and current member of the board of the Covenant Foundation, who presented each recipient with the prize. “These five educators represent the promise of our field. We are so fortunate to have the opportunity to honor them today for all they have already accomplished and for what we know is still to come.”
HaZamir is a program of Zamir Choral Foundation. For more, visit www.hazamir.org. Media contact: Liz Ammirato, Cathy Callegari PR, liz@callprinc.com.
