Andrew Watt – Principal

Welcome to Adina Roth, our Head of Jewish life 

I was delighted to welcome Adina and introduce her in-person to our staff and students this week. Adina has arrived from Johannesburg, South Africa and will later be joined by her husband Farryl, a musician and physiotherapist.

Adina Roth

Adina and Farryl have two children: Maya, who will be commencing in Year 8, and Adam, who will be commencing in Year 4 next year. We look forward to welcoming them into our Emanuel family. As Adina shared in a previous communication, she will be partnering with us to ‘raise the sparks’ of Jewish life, of meaning-making, Jewish learning and ritual, spirit, and soul for the students of Emanuel and our wider community. 

Adina has been working in the field of Jewish education in South Africa for over seventeen years. She has designed and delivered an independent Bar and Bat Mitzvah Program, which is about making the years in the build-up to this coming of age as rich and meaningful as possible. Adina is also a Clinical Psychologist. She seeks to bring psychological insight into her teaching of children, pre-teens, and teens at these incredibly impressionable times in their lives. Adina’s first great loves were literature and poetry. Thus, she incorporates stories and poetry as she teaches the profound stories and teachings of our heritage, seeking to make them relatable. Where appropriate, Adina encourages the use of art, music and dance in Torah learning and at times, she likes to take her students out to nature to learn in earthy settings.

Adina has taught courses for Melton and her own Torah classes to adults for many years, drawing on insights from traditional midrash, psychology, and literature.  She is currently a rabbinical student at Yeshivat Maharat, the groundbreaking modern-orthodox institution in New York, currently ordaining women!

Adina hopes to bring her wide experience and love for this work to our community. She loves to jog, spend time in nature and listen to podcasts and she is so excited to be joining our school community. We hope that Adina’s time at Emanuel is rich, rewarding, and fruitful.

Our growing dependence on social media

Some parents may have watched Todd Sampson’s expose, Mirror Mirror, in which he highlighted both the danger of unsupervised use of social media and the growing dependence of young adults on their devices. It is clear that social media has become a dominant force in our world, for better or worse. On waking up each morning, the first thing over 55% of us do, is to check our phones for posts, likes, news, or WhatsApp messages left overnight. Apparently, the average Australian looks at their phone screen 221 times per day, or once every 4 minutes. Social media is now an unstoppable global phenomenon and is accessed 24/7 by the 98% of Australians who own a device. In the last two decades, young adults have moved from an average of 10 minutes each day, to nearly 3 hours per day. That is 20% of our waking hours – and this must have an impact. Research shows that TikTok, Instagram and Snapshot are the current favourites, but a wide range of new social media sites are emerging. Some online chat sites, like OMEGLE are all about talking to strangers, and these can pose a real danger, due to online predators. The impacts of the overuse of social media are both profound and disturbing. It has been closely linked to sleep deprivation, social anxiety, loneliness, bullying and depression. The more time we spend on social media, the less time we have to actually interact face-to-face and develop new relationships. This can impact academic performance and our physical health

In assembly this week, our students were challenged to reflect on their use of social media, to determine whether they were showing signs of dependence. If your child can stay off social media for a week without anxiety, or feeling that they are missing out, and if they can resist urges to look at their screens over this period, they are in the minority! Most people can shift over to socialising, exercising, and studying, but a growing number of young people are struggling to switch their devices off.

Why is it so difficult to cut down usage or to switch off our devices?

The science of neurology explains that posting on social media or receiving ‘likes’ on a post releases a rush of dopamine, which triggers a reaction of pleasure. Scientists have likened getting likes on social media to winning money or eating chocolates. We do it once and we want to do it again and again. The brain can gradually re-wire, to seek the reward or pleasure pathway, creating a dependence on our social media experience.

Parents are encouraged to monitor their child’s social media use – the websites that they visit and the amount of time that they spend online.

The following simple measures can have a significant impact:

• Turn off notifications, as they prompt us to look at our screens
• Do not allow mobile phones to be charged/remain in bedrooms
• Set and commit to time limits for gaming and online activity
• Maintain a fixed routine for social media use in the evenings
• Cease activity on devices at least one hour prior to bedtime

The school will continue to work in close partnership with parents, to raise awareness of the dangers associated with the misuse of and dependence on social media.

Mitzvah Meals 

Please join me in thanking parents, Carli Rothman, Anna-Lisa Palmer, Ilana Weschler, Naomi Raiz, Lisa Strous, Louise Romer, Rebecca Pal, Sarah Joseph, Deb Kaplan and Elly Berger, our parent Mitzvah Meals chefs. The group, under Carli’s guidance, volunteered their time to cook comforting meals for Emanuel families or staff who have been affected by serious illness, a death in the family or other hardship.

Our Mitzvah Meals program could not run without your time and energy and we are most grateful!

Fiddler’s Journey to the Big Screen

This week, the Emanuel School Foundation sponsored an exclusive screening of this film for the Emanuel community, as a prelude to the JIFF festival starting soon at Randwick Ritz. It was a wonderful event to attend, along with many of our staff members, parents and broader community. I thoroughly enjoyed the evening and learnt many wonderful facts I did not know about the making of this famous production!

Thank you to the Emanuel Foundation Board for hosting an educational and entertaining evening out.

With Natanya Milner and Marla Bozic

 Mazal Tov

• To the Year 10 History debating team, who was successful in defeating Roseville College in the Quarter Final of the J.A. Thompson History Debating competition. The team now sees them move into the semi finals of the competition and also means that Emanuel now has 2 teams (Year 10 and Year 11). They are one win away from the Grand Final. The students involved include: Yael Rembach, Tamarah Aaron, Bella Freed, Ella Sherman and Alice Milner. The topic was “that Modern Australia was founded on the notion of a fair go” Emanuel was the affirmative team.The team argued that the 70s under Gough Whitlam’s government ushered in modern Australia and that his revolutionary policies prompted a modern ideological shift around the notion of a fair go.  

Tamarah Aaron, Yael Rembach,, Bella Freed, Ella Sherman and Alice Milner

• To Ella Millner, Year 4, for her award winning photograph of a peacock at the zoo. She has been selected as one of the winning entries in the 2022 Ripple Effects Australia Photo Contest
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  Ella’s photograph

Quote of the week

“Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.”  Steve Jobs