Any organization is only as good as its people. In that way Aish has been blessed from the start. Rabbi Noach Weinberg, zt’l understood that to accomplish great feats one must surround themselves with talent. Rabbi Weinberg also understood that talented people need to be empowered and given space to do what they excel at. That is the main reason that Aish attracted so many entrepreneurs. Everyone knew that Aish was the place where you could try new ideas and be encouraged to experiment. That’s why so many major organizations like Honest Reporting, Hasbara Fellowships, OpenDor Media, Project Inspire, Momentum etc were started at Aish.
Three years ago, Aish, guided by our brilliant Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Yitzchak Berkovits, made an audacious declaration. We stated that we would attempt to get three million Jews who were not currently immersed in their religion to study Jewish wisdom. This was equivalent to 20% of the overall Jewish population. Our goal was to make the acquisition of Jewish wisdom, which has been responsible for the establishment of ethics and morality across the globe for the past 3500 years, part and parcel of the definition of what it means to be Jewish. We quickly realized that we would need talented professionals to make AishVision 2030 happen.
We soon realized that the one way to access every Jew around the world was through social media. We initiated a global search for someone to lead us in that space. It soon became apparent that there was only one name to pursue, and so we made Jamie Geller the captain of our social media ship. Aside from having personally managed to have over a billion video views, Mrs. Geller understood the digital marketplace better than anyone I have ever encountered. She helped Aish shift from the immensely popular Aish.com website into the social media space where millennials can be found.
Two years into Mrs. Geller’s immensely successful tenure, we realized that we needed to elevate the entire organization to stay on par with our cyber triumphs. So one year ago we hired Hillel Scheinfeld to be our COO. Hillel was not your typical Aish hire as he had never worked in the non-profit space before. Hillel was an experienced business development and operations executive who plied his craft in successful Tel Aviv tech start-ups. As he completes his first year at Aish, he has already taken us to great heights. We have smashed every goal that we have set in the digital arena. We now have millions of followers on social media and are averaging over a million video views a day!
We could just as easily have rested on our laurels, as we are now the largest and most successful Jewish organization in the social media sphere. But that is not what Aish DNA is made of. We always need to do better. We always need to be better. So with Hillel Scheinfeld and Jamie Geller leading the way, we questioned how we could be more proactive with our followers. We came up with a concept we are referring to as “Vertical Communities.” We decided that we could build space for Jews to interact with each other and form communities around topics like spirituality, Jewish philosophy, Jewish history, Jewish cuisine etc. The question then became who could lead this new effort.
I am proud to announce that Noah Levine has joined us as the Senior Director of Aish’s Global Digital Community. Noah has been consulting for Aish for the past few years. He has provided us with the wisdom that he shared when he worked with Google and many other Fortune 500 companies. His expertise is in helping companies understand, target and augment behaviors of users online. Just as companies seem to know everything we want to buy, our goal is to come to know what aspect of Jewish wisdom any Jew would like to delve into. In that way we can build communities where we support each other and improve our day to day lives by using the uplifting vehicle of Jewish wisdom.
As I’m sure you have come to realize, Aish’s future and that of the Jewish people is bright. AishVision 2030 set us on a path to immerse ourselves in the needs of Jews around the world and has made us more successful than we ever could have imagined. That success comes from the staff of Aish. Having Jamie Geller, Hillel Scheinfeld and now Noah Levine on board has made us infinitesimally stronger on every level. Aish literally plucked this team from the business world to run the Almighty’s business. The business of inspiring and strengthening the Jewish people around the world. This is one IPO that I recommend everyone invest in. Each of us, no matter what we do in our professional lives, can work for the Almighty. It is time for all of us to roll up our sleeves together and uplift the Jewish Nation.
May the Almighty continue to strengthen all the members of the greater Aish family as we set out to inspire our brothers and sisters around the world.
