The Beauty of the Slow and Steady

There is a story my daughter loves called “King David and Akavish the Spider,” based on the tale of the spider who saved David’s life by hiding him from King Saul’s soldiers. The message, of course, is that even a small and seemingly insignificant arachnid can have a powerful impact on the course of history.

As adults, we are taught to forget these stories, taught to believe that change comes in the heavy tread of the elephant or the powerful roar of the lion. At its core, we come to believe the story of King David and the spider is just a fable: a nice message, but one that won’t bear out in real life.

But as the world changes and expands — as figures of influence grow even larger than life, and movements even louder than before — perhaps it’s worth taking a look at the concept of micro-impact. What could our lives look like if we embraced the infinitesimal as infinite?

Our sages tell a number of stories like King David’s. One midrash relates: “The Rabbis say: Even matters that you consider superfluous in the world, like flies, fleas, and gnats, they, too, are included in the creation of the world, and through all of them the Holy One blessed be He executes His missions — even by means of a serpent, even by means of a gnat, even by means of a frog.”

The gnat is an interesting motif. The death of Titus, the Roman general who sought the destruction of the Second Temple, comes at the hands (feet?) of a gnat that “picked at his brain” for years. In a notable juxtaposition, this story comes shortly after the tale of Rabbi Tzadok, who fell ill and recovered by a sort of feeding therapy that increased his intake and restored his ability to eat by “allowing his stomach to broaden little by little.” Little by little: Both life and death are created through these repetitions of the slow and steady, the incremental.

In Shemot, God tells the people they will be helped in conquering the land — not through grand miracles as came before, though they should remember these grand miracles and trust God, but on a path cleared by hornets to chase out the nations living there. Not all at once, says God. This time, it will be slowly, slowly, me’at, me’at.

Incremental change. The smallest of creatures. Even here is God.

One of the more interesting Gemaras on these hornets, about which there is quite a lot of Talmudic discussion, is a claim made by Rav Pappa. “There were two hornets,” he is recorded as saying. “One was the hornet of Moses, which helped conquer the eastern side of the Jordan, and one was the hornet of Joshua. The hornet of Moses did not cross the Jordan, but the hornet of Joshua did cross.”

In the time of Moses, the miracles were magnificent: split seas and unnatural plagues. Yet even the miracle of his hornet was short-lived. No, it is the miracles of Joshua’s time, of the Jewish people’s continuing, that are worth looking at. And they come at the hands of hornets that slowly, slowly, drive change.

So where does that leave us?

Here we are. The world around us is distracting, all-encompassing. We refer to our influencers and politicians as if they are gods and demons, treating them as the arbiters of the world’s movement. We begin to use the word “influence” to mean large-scale change rather than the slow shifting of small parts. We start to lose faith in the spiritual leaders who keep their worlds small: Why do they not want more for their pulpits? We ask if a quiet life is worth living. We may even shudder as we read the eulogies of people who have lived these quiet lives.

And we lose faith in the slow processes, too. “There will never be any peace activism or movement in Israel again,” an acquaintance told me recently. “It’s over.”

Over? Even as people on the ground are doing this work day in and out, quietly, slowly, little by little? Change is not impossible. The Earth itself moves incrementally each day, so steadily we don’t feel it, and by the end of the year, it has made a full revolution around the sun. If the Earth moves like this, so can we.

In the way of the hornet and the gnat. In the way of King David’s spider. Me’at, me’at. Le’at, le’at. Little by little. Slowly.

Ruthie Hollander is the Director of Community & Youth Programming at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Outside of work, you’ll find her raising two beautiful daughters with her husband, developing ideas for Jewish continuity and culture, and thinking about the stories no one is telling.