Across Israel, quiet changes are taking shape in the haredi world. They are not dramatic. They are not coordinated. But they are deeply significant.
A growing number of haredi men are entering frameworks of national service. More are stepping into higher education and professional fields—law, technology, and healthcare. Women, long the backbone of the Haredi workforce, are expanding the scope of what that means.
New educational models are emerging—still Torah-centred, but asking deeper questions about integration, opportunity, and what it means to raise children while remaining rooted in Torah and responsive to the world they inhabit.
None of this is being driven from the top. The rabbinic leadership, by and large, has not shifted course. With great care and integrity, it continues to apply what it understands to be God’s instruction—halachically grounded, spiritually committed, and cautious in the face of change.
And yet—something else is stirring. From the ground up, quietly and courageously, there are individuals and families making choices that do not reject tradition but embody it differently. They are not trying to overturn the system. They are simply responding, as best they can, to the world they live in.
It is in this space—in the tension between received instruction and lived intuition—that we meet Betzalel.
The Torah tells us that Betzalel, the young artisan appointed to build the Mishkan (Sanctuary), did all that God had commanded Moshe. But the Midrash suggests something surprising: that Moshe, when relaying God’s instructions, told Betzalel to begin with the Ark and the vessels, and only afterward build the Mishkan. Betzalel paused. “Is that really what God said?” he asked. “Doesn’t a person build a house first, and only then prepare the furniture to go inside?”
And Moshe replied: “You were right. That is indeed what God said. You were in God’s shadow—b’tzel El—when He spoke.”
It’s a stunning moment. A young man, hearing instruction from the greatest prophet who ever lived, does not reject it—but he does not obey blindly either. He listens, and he thinks. He trusts not only what he’s told, but also what he knows. And Moshe, to his credit, listens back. He affirms that Betzalel’s insight was not a deviation, but a deeper alignment. Not less faithful—but more so.
This isn’t a story about rebellion. It’s a story about spiritual maturity—about someone who senses that God is not only above us, but within us. That the voice of Sinai does not end with Moshe, but continues—quietly, enduringly—in those who build with heart, mind, and sacred intent.
Perhaps that is what we are seeing now.
Changes in the haredi world
In the quiet choices of young men entering service. In women shaping new educational paths for their children. In families who ask: how can we remain fully inside our tradition while opening to the world around us?
These are not political statements. They are spiritual ones.
They do not reject rabbinic authority. But they do suggest that the Shekhinah (the Divine Presence) may sometimes rise from below. That there is something holy in the questions people are asking. That a person who builds not in defiance, but in faith and wisdom, may be standing—like Betzalel—not outside the sacred, but in its very shadow.
And perhaps that is what Moshe saw when he looked upon the people’s work and blessed them:
“Yehi ratzon shetishreh Shekhinah b’ma’aseh yedeichem.”
“May the Divine Presence rest in the work of your hands.”
Not only in the Mishkan they built, but in the act of building. In the choices they made. In the courage it took to build something faithful, something true, from the inside out.
That blessing was not just for then. It is for now.