Elul Thoughts

This summer at Camp George I ran a program with my fellow faculty members with 11 and 12-year-olds about productive arguments. We use as the basis for our program the arguments of Hillel and Shamai, the most well known commentators in the Talmud who constantly disagreed.  The lesson was that while they might have not been able to agree on Jewish law, the Talmud records both their answers because their arguments were both valid: “ Eilu v’eilu”- this and that are honorable.  The campers were then to try and look at examples at Camp and so they debated the merits of different snacks from the tuck shop, Skittles versus potato chips, pop versus Gatorade. Then we debated activities at camp, water skiing versus high ropes course, arts and crafts versus pottery. We set up debates and allowed them to make arguments and present their case including rebuttals. At the end of the day they realized that we didn’t need to settle on one winner or the other, but that all the arguments were valid. Overall, what we wanted to teach was that whether it’s a summer camp or life they’re always going to be people who disagree with you. The point is that we need to validate other people while still expressing our opinions and understand that sometimes there can be merit in both sides. And there’s value in hearing each other and that all of our honest and thoughtful reasoning is valid.