Summer Leadership Learning Ideas

Need a new book, podcast on leadership? Take a look at Na’aleh’s staff picks for some summer learning resources.

The Ministry of the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson (no relation) tells the story of our future from the perspective of fictional eyewitnesses to climate collapse.  Perhaps surprisingly, the book offers a hopeful vision grounded in the human ability to catalyze change, through committing ourselves to the rights of future generations.  If you choose to read it, let’s grab a drink over the summer and imagine how we might do better at repairing our world.

— Dr. Bill Robinson

The Choice: Embrace the Possible, a memoir by Dr. Edith Eva Eger, was recently recommended to me by someone on the Board of the Jewish Library and it is one of the only books this year that I have instantly devoured.

The author (whose sister I discovered was my childhood piano teacher in Baltimore) interweaves her remarkable personal journey as a teenaged survivor of Auschwitz with the moving stories of the clients she has helped to heal as a trained psychologist. In the memoir, she explores how we can be imprisoned in our own minds and shows us how to find the key to freedom.

— Andrea Hendler

Identity Crisis Wet Hot American (Jewish) Summer 

The podcast describes a window into how summer camps have changed the landscape of American Judaism through the teachings of the particular movements and how summer camp facilitated a change in the movements such as  singing in Reform synagogues, egalitarianism in conservative Judaism and different ways to be Zionistic. There is also a discussion about how summer camps form a utopian Jewish community and what that can look like in our own communities, organizations and synagogues. 

–Rachel Plotkin

I do listen and recommend the podcasts: Work Life with Adam Grant and The Modern Manager with Mamie Kanfer Stuart

— Cindy Goldstein

I am currently enjoying “Unreasonable Hospitality:The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect” by Will Guidara. As someone who does not enjoy reading leadership books (ironic, I know) I found this book to be extremely easy to read, well-written, thoughtful, insightful, and a huge asset to anyone in the leadership space.

–-Aviva Cohen Gross