אָמַר רַבִּי שְׁמוּאֵל בַּר נַחְמָנִי אָמַר רַבִּי יוֹנָתָן: בְּצַלְאֵל עַל שֵׁם חׇכְמָתוֹ נִקְרָא. בְּשָׁעָה שֶׁאָמַר לוֹ הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא לְמֹשֶׁה: לֵךְ אֱמוֹר לוֹ לִבְצַלְאֵל ״עֲשֵׂה לִי מִשְׁכָּן אָרוֹן וְכֵלִים״. הָלַךְ מֹשֶׁה וְהָפַךְ וְאָמַר לוֹ: ״עֲשֵׂה אָרוֹן וְכֵלִים וּמִשְׁכָּן״. אָמַר לוֹ: מֹשֶׁה רַבֵּינוּ, מִנְהָגוֹ שֶׁל עוֹלָם אָדָם בּוֹנֶה בַּיִת וְאַחַר כָּךְ מַכְנִיס לְתוֹכוֹ כֵּלִים, וְאַתָּה אוֹמֵר ״עֲשֵׂה לִי אָרוֹן וְכֵלִים וּמִשְׁכָּן״, כֵּלִים שֶׁאֲנִי עוֹשֶׂה, לְהֵיכָן אַכְנִיסֵם? שֶׁמָּא כָּךְ אָמַר לְךָ הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא, ״עֲשֵׂה מִשְׁכָּן אָרוֹן וְכֵלִים״?! אָמַר לוֹ: שֶׁמָּא בְּצֵל אֵל הָיִיתָ וְיָדַעְתָּ
Rabbi Shmuel bar Naḥmani said in the name of Rabbi Yonatan: Betzalel was named for his wisdom.
(Brakhot 55a)
When the Holy One, Blessed be, said to Moshe: Go say to Bezalel, “Make a tabernacle, an ark, and vessels” (see Exodus 31:7–11), Moshe went and reversed it and said: “Make an ark, and vessels, and a tabernacle [mishkan]” (see Exodus 25–26).
He [Betzalel] said to Moshe: Moshe, our teacher, the standard practice in the world is that a person builds a house and only afterward places the vessels in the house, and you say to me: Make an ark, and vessels, and a tabernacle? These vessels that I make, where will I put them? Is it possible that God told it to you in this way: “Make a tabernacle, ark, and vessels” (see Exodus 36)?
Moshe said to Betzalel: Perhaps you were in God’s shadow [betzel El], and that is how you know this.
Which do you build first, the mishkan — the structure that houses all the sacred vessels — or the vessels themselves? In this story, Betzalel speaks for his own intuitive knowing about which should be made first – the mishkan, the structure – in the face of an external authority, Moshe, presumably carrying God’s instructions, that says the opposite – to construct the vessels first.
This is a story about learning to trust our own internal wisdom. Sometimes people tell us one way is the right way and they have a lot of authority, like Moshe, but something in us knows a different truth. And the truth we know is in fact divine in some way, as in this story, where, it turns out, Betzalel intuited God’s original intent.. Yadata, says Moshe. “You knew.” Sometimes we know.
Normally Don’t Trust Our Own Wisdom
And yet, often we don’t honor our own knowing and we certainly don’t speak for it as Betzalel did. We let it get shut down internally as well as externally. The first step is to notice how this happens, to recognize the strong presence of the inner Moshe voice in your system, the voice of external authority, not just religious authority, but all authority, parental, educational, communal, societal, all the pressure we feel to conform to external norms and ways of thinking and being, all the ways we have bent ourselves, submitted ourselves and lost ourselves in the ongoing process of socialization, all the places that we may have some inkling of a different way, but have learned to snuff that out in order to conform to what others told us, all the heavy pressure of shoulds that go against our grain, all the times we hear something spoken by an authority figure and an inner voice disagrees but we ignore it, push it aside, assume that we are wrong.
What if, like Betzalel, we are not wrong? What if God and the universe want and need us to listen to that inkling, to that intuition, to that inner knowing? What if the world depends on it, what if the world depends on each of us to manifest and speak for this wisdom of our own?
Listening to the Body
How can we get in touch with this inner knowing that sometimes contradicts the accepted external wisdom? I believe one of the main ways is through the body.
Betzalel was an artisan who worked with his hands, with his body. His knowing was an embodied knowing. He understood how things work in this physical world where a house, a body, is essential, before you bring in the furniture. Moshe, on the other hand, was a scholar who abstained from bodily sustenance for 40 days and nights, and later abstained from being with his wife. Betzalel had an alternative, more embodied perspective that needed to be heard.
Indeed, we could even understand the content of their disagreement in this way, as a question of how much the body was to be honored and prioritized. Moshe put the structure of the mishkan, its skeleton, its body, second, to the holy vessels, the internal organs like the mind, but Betzalel argued that no, the mishkan’s body is primary.
The Body’s Wisdom
When we are struggling with a decision or a choice, like the question before Moshe and Betzalel concerning what to build first, turning to the body can help us discern our own intuitive wisdom. We can bring the particular question to mind – what step do i take next, which way do I go now – and listen to what our body has to say about it. Is there a particular direction your body wants to go – is drawn to, like a magnet? Which choice has more positive energy? Which choice feels more tight and constrained? Does one feel heavier and one lighter? Dropping deep into the well of your core inner wisdom, what do you actually feel and know about this choice? What is your body’s truth?
What Gets in the Way
So much gets in the way of our listening to this intuitive voice. We have internal voices of Moshe like authority that object, saying – no, this is the way you should go, the way the community or the world expects you to go. If you free yourself for one moment from those chains and you sink deep into the middle of your body and listen to that deep well of inner knowing, what do you actually know in your body? What is your truth?
How God Speaks To Us
I believe that this intuitive bodily knowing is how God speaks to us. Moshe recognized this in Betzalel. Betzalel expressed his view simply as an intuitive knowing. He said: This is what feels right to me. And Moshe responded: Oh, that’s actually what God said. Your intuition is a kind of knowing of the divine will. You must be living betzel el, in the shade of God, under the influence of God. We are always going to be under someone’s influence, in someone’s shade. The question is whose? Will we be only betzel others, under the shade, the influence of other humans, or will we also retain access to our own intuitive bodily knowing and therefore to God speaking through us? Our bodies are the portals for this knowing of the divine inside us.
The Exiling of the Body
This type of intuitive embodied knowing is not always easy or natural for us to access. We live in a culture that has, in many ways, exiled the body and its ways of knowing. We might even understand Moshe’s resistance to prioritizing the mishkan structure, its body, as an enactment of precisely this devaluation of the body, despite God’s instructions otherwise. The body has been placed in the dark, in the shadow, betzel, so that our bodily knowing has been exiled and repressed, often difficult to access. This rabbinic story calls us to retrieve this way of knowing, this embodiment, from the shadow, and to honor it and speak for it, as Betzalel did.
Living Into This Knowing
Can you feel what that might be like for you, to trust this inner knowing in a world that does not always support it, to stay true to yourself and speak up, speak out, as Betzalel did? Can you feel the courage, the confidence and the clarity of this stance? Can you feel in your body the energy and the strength of holding onto your own truth, your integrity? You are strong in your own knowing. It’s not that you are necessarily right or have the only point of view, but that yours is needed, too, in the conversation, an essential part of the divine truth. You are not just betzel, in the shadows, a secondary figure. Your voice matters. Like Avraham arguing with God over the destruction of Sodom, we are called to trust our inner truth and speak it out, to say to someone, even to a person of power, even sometimes to God – hey, that doesn’t feel right to me. Might it be this other way? To trust and honor that intuitive knowing deep in your body and give it voice.
What is at stake is our very aliveness, our freedom, our individuality and our creativity. Betzalel created beautiful things for the mishkan from this place of embodied intuition. This is what happens when we are in touch with that inner knowing. We create, we blossom, we flower,.we manifest. We offer to the world the gift that we are uniquely meant to give, whether it be in the artistic realm or in some other. We can only give our special gift to the world if we are in touch with this inner knowing and if we have the courage to honor it. The world needs you in particular, your voice, your essence, your knowing.
Image by Viktor at Pexels
