<body><div><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=3I4Jyc_0wFVFGmu00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=3I4Jyc_0wFVFGmu00" width="360" height="500" ><figcaption>Emma Miller holds her 2024 Pomegranate Prize recognizing her as an emerging Jewish educator in the United States. Submitted photo</figcaption></figure>A Laurel School graduate and part-time Shaker Heights resident is one of the five emerging Jewish educators in the United States who received the 2024 Pomegranate Prize at a ceremony Sept. 24 at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City.Emma Miller, 31, splits her residency between New York City and Shaker Heights while in Northeast Ohio to fulfill her responsibilities as director of the Mandel Jewish Community Center’s Playmakers Youth Theatre and the Mandel JCC’s Francine and Benson Pilloff Family Performing Arts Camp.Miller is an alumnus of the Playmakers Youth Theatre, having first performed as a 6-year-old girl in stage productions at the theater.“My parents and grandparents supported the arts,” Miller told the Cleveland Jewish News. “It was an important part of my upbringing. We went to art galleries and museums, and to the theater.”Miller said she was shy as a child and experienced separation anxiety.“My parents sent me to Playmakers when I was 6 years old, and I never left,” she said.Miller continued to perform as a teenager and through her graduation from Laurel School in Shaker Heights.Miller graduated from Kenyon College where she earned an undergraduate degree in theater and also studied at the National Theater Institute, in Waterford, Conn.“I grew up in Playmakers and when the opportunity came up for me to give back to it, I was thrilled to become director,” said Miller, who has been director of the Mandel JCC’s Playmakers Youth Theater since 2020.Miller’s work at the Mandel JCC was recognized nationally.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 necessary to accelerate their development, deepen their self-awareness, and amplify their impact, according to a press release announcing the recipients.“This year’s cohort of Pomegranate Prize recipients is creative, energetic, and wholly committed to the field of Jewish education,” Deborah S. Meyer, chairwoman of the board of the Covenant Foundation, which bestows the Pomegranate Prize, said in a news release. “These five educators represent the promise of our field. We are so fortunate to have the opportunity to honor them for all they have already accomplished and for what we know is still to come.”Also receiving the Pomegranate Prize was Beckee Birger, director of DEIJ initiatives, Moving Traditions, Chicago; Kimberly Ariella Duenas, director of learning and founding member, Jewtina y Co., Venice, Calif.; Rabbi Zachary Rothblatt, Judaic studies teacher, Kohelet Yeshiva, Bala Cynwyd, Pa.; and Liana Rothman, director of youth empowerment, Adamah, Palo Alto, Calif.Miller said she is “truly honored” to have been selected.“Being recognized as an emerging Jewish educator for doing the work I love is an incredible privilege,” she said. “This award inspires me to continue to teach and guide children and teens as they learn and grow to reach their full potential on stage and in life.”In addition to serving as director of two programs at the Mandel JCC in Beachwood, she is also the theater arts director at B’nai Jeshurun in New York City, which was also part of the national recognition. Miller directs adults in theater productions at venues in New York City.But as director of the programs at the Mandel JCC, she reaches about 250 to 300 children, from kindergarten to 12th grade from private and public schools in Northeast Ohio each year, she said.Children in the Mandel JCC’s theater program learn not only about performing, but about themselves, Miller said.“We teach them to develop their own voice, grow in self-confidence and be comfortable in their own skin,” Miller said. “I look at each of the kids thought the lens of developing the whole child as an individual (and) one who will be a member of their community their whole life.”Kevin Corvo is a freelance journalist.</div></body>

Mountain View, CA

NewsBreak

Laurel School graduate earns Pomegranate Prize

A Laurel School graduate and part-time Shaker Heights resident is one of the five emerging Jewish educators in the United States who received the 2024 Pomegranate Prize at a ceremony Sept. 24 at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City. Emma Miller, 31, splits her residency between New...