Rav Kook taught there are two types of teshuva (spiritual growth) that humans can strive for. One comes to a person from some Divine influence: a powerful awakening and change can occur instantaneously. The other type is human made and change is slow and incremental (Orot haTeshuvah).
We are taught not to despair by the enormity of the Torah, but to learn it step by step (Midrash Rabbah, parashat Nitzvaim 8:3). Saadia Gaon compared Torah to a tree since the growth of a tree is not noticeable until many years (beginning of Emunot v’Deot). Our spiritual growth cannot be detected. It is slow but when we keep steady over years the growth can be enormous. Likewise, the Torah is likened to the fruit of a date palm. This is a meditation and a reminder that, like the date, it takes a slow amount of time to mature and cultivate spiritual wisdom (Midrash Rabbah, Parashat Pinchas 21:15).
Authentic and sustainable growth requires consistency, discipline, and enormous patience. Rav Kook further elucidated:
In the world, there exist both gradual development and sudden leaps forward. There are soulful people whose trait of leaping forward is stronger than their gradual growth. This is the character of the Jews: deeply influenced by the concept of teshuvah, yearning for the most exalted realities. Our surroundings and conditions may not be in concert with that. Nevertheless, our powerful yearning is the power that turns the universe, and gives forth the most perfect wealth that may be found within life” (Orot Hakodesh II, 567).
Our work is never done and even when it seems that redemption has come. “Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai used to say: ‘If there is a sapling in your hand when they say to you, Behold, the Messiah has come! Complete planting the sapling, and then go and welcome the Messiah’” (Avot d’Rebbe Natan, version B, #31). The redemptive process only makes sense if we continue the work. Once we stop planting for the future, the path toward redemption will be lost.
50 years after the attempted march to Montgomery from Selma for voting rights, we are still battling racial injustice in America. It is a long path to freedom.
While it is perfectly acceptable to embrace gradualism, and constant consistent growth, we must also be quick to pursue new opportunities as they emerge. A crucial prospect for change may be fleeting and recognizing its potential, even if the implications might take years to bear out, are critical indicators of our willingness to take substantial risks. The Israelites left Egypt very quickly, but then they had forty years in the desert to process where they came from and where they were going to.
It is not only true that we must invest in little moments of inner spiritual growth, but also that we must remain committed to little acts of goodness that have the potential for broader transformation. Leadership scholar Margaret Wheatley wrote:
Changes in small places also affect the global system, not through incrementalism, but because every small system participates in an unbroken wholeness…We never know how our small activities will affect others through the invisible fabric of our connectedness (Leadership and the New Science).
We never know when our small steps will lead to inner growth or external impact will have an explosive effect, but nonetheless, we invest in each moment striving to ensure that our mark upon the world will last leaving an edifice to our commitments to dignity and justice for all.
Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz is the Executive Director of the Valley Beit Midrash, the Founder & President of Uri L’Tzedek, the Founder and CEO of The Shamayim V’Aretz Institute and the author of seven books on Jewish ethics. Newsweek named Rav Shmuly one of the top 50 rabbis in America.”
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