What does it mean to argue in good faith? Simply, a good faith argument is when the people arguing are saying what they actually believe. They are willing to stand by their position and trust that the person they’re arguing with is doing the same. The unspoken goal of the good faith argument t is for the parties involved to understand a great truth and to know what is the best plan of action or best way to look at a situation.

On the other hand, a bad faith argument is when the parties involved care more about winning then truth. More about clobbering the other party and asserting dominance than working out their kinks for the sake of coming together as a team.

It seems to me that good faith arguments are becoming less and less common. We don’t see them on reality TV, we don’t see them on cable news, we don’t hear them on podcast or the radio. In fact, on the rare instances when there is an example of a good faith argument, those clips go viral as if to say, “Look at how we used to speak to each other! How weird is this!” As high-level productive disagreements become less common, what can we do to hold on to what we have, and perhaps even build up our ability to speak with those we disagree with.

There is no better place for the Jewish people to look for how to argue than within the Gemara, also called the Talmud. We can look at the Gemara as the courtroom dictation of Jewish legal Jewish prudence over a span of roughly 700 years. (Some would say longer, some would say shorter, but that’s an argument in and of itself).

I cracked open a Gemara for the first time when I was 25 years old. I had high hopes in my ability to be able to mine the wisdom of our sages. After all, I performed very well in my philosophy major as well as in my religion classes. However, learning how to learn Gemara was not only difficult, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever learned to do. It took me roughly a month to grasp just the first page of Gemara. It would take me a year to learn my first chapter. The hardest part was not learning the Aramaic and Hebrew of the text, it was learning how to wrap my head around the argumentation style. Why were they evaluating disproven arguments? Why did it look like there were arguments among Rabbis who lived hundreds of years apart? Why did some arguments end with a clear answer and some arguments ended with “Kasha” or “this is a difficulty” i.e. the resolution could not be determined.

So, while I whole heartedly encourage you to find a teacher and join that ancestral Jewish past-time of Talmudic study, I’ll share a couple insights that I’ve learned along the way that will be useful in everyday life.

Always show the utmost respect to anyone and everyone you speak with. As the Mishna says in Pirkei Avot 4:1, “Who is wise? He who learns from everyone.” That means everyone. Not just people of a certain caliber, background, or belief. There is something to be gained in learning from everyone.
Your job is not to be agreeable; your job is to say what you believe is correct. We are held to a standard of being well thought out and to stand by what we believe is true. If our stance is defensible, beautiful. If we are proven to be wrong, even better! We can learn to refine ourselves and our way of thinking. Our beliefs must be cultivated by reason and logic, not just emotion, and certainly not emotional whims.
Not everyone has to agree with you in order for their opinion to be correct. There is an incredible phenomenon in the Gemara called “eilu v’eilu divrei Elokim Chayim” these and these are the words or the Living God. This principle applies when Rabbis of equal stature come to directly contradictory conclusions and are both able to back themselves up with equal logical reasoning, legal precedent, and textual support. When this happens, both opinions are considered true and it is up to the individual to decide which opinion to follow. There is no crisis of faith, there are no ad hominem attacks, there is acceptance and appreciation that human beings are limited in our understanding of how the world and since we cannot disprove the other, we accept that what they can defend works for them, and what we can defend works for us.

The only way for us to see the discourse around us improve is to commit to improving it ourselves. Be kind, be generous, make sure your beliefs are thought out and well founded, be courteous to those who disagree with you.

Good Faith Arguments

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