Some Lessons About How Change Happens

So here’s what I’ve learned about how change happens: You start screaming about something and though many people turn their backs, some people listen. And if they don’t hear you the first time, they probably hear you the third or fourth time, and then some people take those messages and translate them into their own communities or their own language. And then one day you turn around and see major changes in places you’d never expected. And you start noticing that the wall you were worried about has a myriad of small cracks in many places, and you notice that the cracks come from other people banging on it or from the shoots climbing up through the wall in new places. And then one day, all those tiny cracks converge. And a big chunk of the wall comes tumbling down.

Bat Sheva Marcus, “How Change Happens”, The Jewish Week (6 December 2013), 23.