Kavod!

Goal: to teach the chanichim a bit about the less-known kind of kavod – kavod to parents,teachers, etc. is obvious, but to your peers there’s a much deeper sense of where kavod comes from.

materials: cut-ups of the different skits, chairs

Stage 1:

Discuss with your chanichim the following briefly:

-          Define kavod (honor, respect).

-          Give examples of how you’re mechabed your friends.

-          Give examples of how you deny your friends of kavod.

-          Crucial question: what do we do to turn a situation of disrespect (no kavod) to a situation of respect (kavod)? Where and how does the change come? 

Stage 2: 

Divide the kids to groups according to the number of skits you have (or their multiples, if you don’t have enough chanichim, or just pick out the ones you want to do.) Give each group a skit (see bottom) to look over, prepare, and then act out to the group. After the skit, ask your chanichim three questions:

What was wrong in the skit (ethically/morally wrong)?

Why was it that way (what might be the reason that it happened)?

How do/can we fix it?

An alternative way of doing this is by shouting “freeze” when the bad thing happens, and then you discuss it and continue from there.

Discussion: After putting on all the skits, try to go over the main problems (not the individual ones in the skits, but rather what stood behind them, since many have a common denominator) and their solutions one more time. This should emphasize very well to the kids some of the examples of disrespect and the reasons for it. We see from this that many times, disrespect doesn’t have real, valid reasons.

Stage 3:

Play one of two games (or both) that connect to kavod/respect.

Broken Telephone –

Who do you respect –

Shabbat Shalom,

Your friendly peula writers

Conversation (3 people)

Two people (1 and 2) are talking to each other, when a third person walks in and starts approaching them. The first person in the conversation sees the approaching person, and says “hey stupid, what do you want?” the third person, insulted, walks away.

To the madrich:

What is wrong? Someone calls his peer an offensive nickname, even if it only a joke.

Why was it that way? maybe because the person is not liked; maybe because the people are mean; but essentially because the two people don’t respect the other person. They don’t respect him, or his right for respect.

How do we fix that?

Brush-off (2 people)

One person walks around the room, when he spots one of his friends. He walks over and starts talking to him excitedly about the basketball game/school/bnei-akiva/video games/anything. the other person, however, looks passed him (like he’s not there), and just keeps walking, ignoring him completely.

To the madrich:

What is wrong? Someone calls his peer an offensive nickname, even if it only a joke. Someone brushes off his peer when his peer tries to talk to him.

Why was it that way? maybe because the person is not liked; maybe because the people are mean; but essentially because the two people don’t respect the other person. They don’t respect him, or his right for respect.

How do we fix that?

Interruption (3 people)

Presentation (5 people)

The Fall (3 people)

Who cares (2 people)