This Shabbaton gives teens the opportunity to consider how they make decisions and who they are at their core.
This Shabbaton was created for New England Fall Regional.
For more information about how to run this Shabbaton, please contact Josh Munk or Devorah Weinstock.
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Theme: Making Decisions ("Introducing You to Yourself")
The Fall Regional 2015 program focused on two main points:
- The keynote speaker, Rabbi Y.Y. Rubenstein, in his speeches that addressed the entire group at various times during regional, focused on building up teens’ Jewish pride and self-confidence.
- The Friday night educational game/program and the text-based Breakout Sessions focused on decision-making and deciphering information to understand what information we use - and should use - to make the best decisions possible for ourselves.
Click here to see the letter that we sent to advisors in advance of the Shabbaton.
Friday Night Program:
How Do You Make Decisions?
Friday night after dinner, there were two separate programs, one for 9th/10th grade and one for 11th/12th grade. Teens were split up into groups with advisors, who ran the programs. (As a technical note, we used the same groups and advisors the next day in the Breakout Sessions.)
Part I: Would You Rather? (35 minutes)
- First, teens played “Would You Rather” with fun cards that we created (10 minutes).
- Then, for “Round 2,” they played the game with Rabbi Bashevkin’s "Would You Rather" cards (25 minutes) and learned and discussed the sources that accompany the cards, with the discussion led by the advisor in the group.
Part II: Fact, Myth, or Opinion? (15 minutes)
Next, we gave each group of teens a sheet of sources to analyze for being fact, opinion, or myth.
At the end, the person leading the session ties the three rounds of the activity together as follows:
- First, we played a fun game without giving much thought to why we decided between two choices, and it was funny to see what different people would choose.
- Then, we looked at some more serious topics and realized that there might be reasons to choose between one choice or the other, but when we are given information, how do we decide whether a source of information is something we should listen to or not?
- We analyzed sources of information to try and gain a perspective of which sources of information are legitimate and which ones are not.
Part III: Wrap-up Discussion (5 minutes)
We all want what is best for ourselves in life, but unfortunately we live in an age when tons of information is available to us, but much of it is bad information. If we want to make the best decisions for ourselves, we need to make those decisions based on good information. It used to be that if someone published something, their reputation would be destroyed if what they published was factually inaccurate. Today, anyone can put something in print on the internet and facts are not checked.
Before you make a decision that will affect your life, pause for a moment to think about what kind of information you are getting, and use your best judgement to make the best decisions for yourself.
Shabbos Afternoon Breakout Session:
Who Are We Really?
Break the teens up into groups (which are already labeled on their name tags) and give them 20 minutes to learn through the sources on the source sheet (Children of Avraham Avinu: Who Are We Really?). (We ended up giving them more than twenty minutes because most of the groups were very into it – so make a timing judgement call as the session progresses if more or less time is needed.)
- Advisors should use the advisor version, which contains additional information and direction to help facilitate a meaningful discussion.
- Can be run as a “Beit Midrash” session where everyone is in the shul or as a “Breakout Session” where advisors take their groups around a pre-specified area of the hotel for more room.
- Can begin with an introduction from the person running the session, or without an intro - just having the groups delve directly into the sources.
- Finish off with a wrap-up that ties all the sources together.
The gist of the session is as follows:
As the children of Avraham Avinu, who are we at our core? If one looks through the first few sources, one will find that the essence of Avraham was chessed and loving kindness, a burning desire to do nothing but chessed for people – to love and help everyone. This is what made people so attracted to following and learning from Avraham, because they could tell he loved them and cared for them, and had only their best interest in mind.
Contrast that with the sources farther down where Avraham raises an army to save Lot and utterly destroys his enemies. True, he was doing it to help his nephew, but he could have used his skills of love and kindness, perhaps, negotiate a deal with the King of Sodom – instead, Avraham raises an army and goes to violent, bloody war. Add in the commandment for us to wipe out Amalek, and one might be wondering if we really are supposed to be the loving and kind, righteous children of Avraham, or if we have a darker side to us that we would seek to wipe out an entire nation - women and children included?
We wrapped up with Rabbi Hirsch, saying that the essence of a Jew really is kindness and justice, but sometimes, even though we don’t want to, we have to resort to violent tactics to defend ourselves when others try to hurt us. When others attack us and try to hurt us, we need to defend ourselves. In order to defend ourselves, we need to be tough, and that often has to involve violence, but that’s not who we are at our core – it’s only something that we sometimes have to do. When we go to war, even though we need to kill our enemies to prevent them from killing us, we have to remember that at our core, we are the loving and kind children of Avraham Avinu who love to help people and do chessed and only when we are forced to violence to defend ourselves, we do what we have to do, but that is NOT who we are at our core.
- Remember to add in some personal stories and make the wrap up entertaining, not just a boring closing speech.
- See source sheets for more information.
Keynote Speaker
Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein addressed the entire group at various times during regional, focused on building up teens’ Jewish pride and self-confidence.