Who drinks the water?

This sourcesheet initially only included the Talmud text to have a very dynamic havruta during the 2017 InternattyCon, led by Natalie Assa (MH Vienna). She launched it with a quick game around the idea of disagreement (statements discussed, followed by a high five, handshake or crossing your arms depending on what came out).

The participants studied the source in pairs and then were made to stand in a triangle depending on what they would do with the water (drink, not drink, share). They discussed between the different groups (for lack of time, they didn't discuss within group but could have).

One of the residents from Montevideo brought up the plane story, because one of the survivors was coming to their house for an event the next month. I added the story to the sheet subsequently as a real life parallel to the Talmudic hypothesis. You could use it as a way to trigger the session or a way to give a new direction to the final debate if it gets stuck.

Total duration: about 45 minutes.

Supplies needed: sourcesheets and a large room without chairs.

Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 was a chartered flight carrying 45 people, that crashed in the remote Andes in early spring (Southern Hemisphere) on 13 October 1972, in extremely heavy snowpack, in an incident known as the Andes flight disaster and, in the Hispanic world and South America, as the Miracle of the Andes (El Milagro de los Andes). More than a quarter of the passengers died in the crash, and several others quickly succumbed to cold and injury. Of the 27 who were alive a few days after the accident, another eight were killed by an avalanche that swept over their shelter in the wreckage. The last 16 survivors were rescued on 23 December 1972, more than two months (72 days) after the crash.
The survivors had little food and no source of heat in the harsh conditions at over 3,600 metres (11,800 ft) altitude. Faced with starvation and radio news reports that the search for them had been abandoned, the survivors fed on the bodies of dead passengers that had been preserved in the snow. Rescuers did not learn of the survivors until 72 days after the crash, when passengers Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa, after a 10-day trek across the Andes, found Chilean arriero Sergio Catalán, who gave them food and then alerted the authorities to the existence of the other survivors.
Before the avalanche, a few of the survivors became insistent that their only way of survival would be to climb over the mountains themselves and search for help. It was decided that a group would be chosen, and then allocated the most rations of food and the warmest of clothes, and spared the daily manual labour around the crash site that was essential for the group's survival, so that the chosen might build their strength.

בבא מציעא ס״ב א:ב׳

ורבי יוחנן האי וחי אחיך עמך מאי עביד ליה מבעי ליה לכדתניא שנים שהיו מהלכין בדרך וביד אחד מהן קיתון של מים אם שותין שניהם מתים ואם שותה אחד מהן מגיע לישוב דרש בן פטורא מוטב שישתו שניהם וימותו ואל יראה אחד מהם במיתתו של חבירו עד שבא ר' עקיבא ולימד וחי אחיך עמך חייך קודמים לחיי חבירך

Bava Metzia 62a:2

The Gemara asks: And Rabbi Yoḥanan, what does he do with this verse: “And your brother shall live with you”? The Gemara answers: He requires the verse for that which is taught in a baraita: If two people were walking on a desolate path and there was a jug [kiton] of water in the possession of one of them, and the situation was such that if both drink from the jug, both will die, as there is not enough water, but if only one of them drinks, he will reach a settled area, there is a dispute as to the halakha. Ben Petora taught: It is preferable that both of them drink and die, and let neither one of them see the death of the other. This was the accepted opinion until Rabbi Akiva came and taught that the verse states: “And your brother shall live with you,” indicating that your life takes precedence over the life of the other.