Kapitel 30Tora
Daat
Etwas zu wissen und zu ihm in Beziehung zu stehen sind nicht dieselbe Operation.
Daat ist Wissen, das zur Bindung geworden ist. Die Vollendung der messianischen Zeit ist nicht allgemeine Zustimmung, sondern allgemeine Bindung an das Wahre.
Hebrew uses the same root for intellectual knowledge and for the deepest human intimacy, and this is not a euphemism.
וְהָאָדָם יָדַע אֶת־חַוָּה אִשְׁתּוֹUnd der Mensch erkannte Chawa, seine Frau.
Das übliche Verb für Erkennen. Der Tanach hätte ein anderes Wort wählen können und tat es durchgehend nicht.
Und der Mensch erkannte Chawa, seine Frau.
Das übliche Verb für Erkennen. Der Tanach hätte ein anderes Wort wählen können und tat es durchgehend nicht.
Veha’adam yada — and Adam knew Chavah. The verb is yada, the standard verb for knowing. Tanach could have used another word and chose not to, consistently, across the entire corpus.
What the usage implies
It implies that the paradigm of knowing, in this language, is not observation. Observation leaves the observer unchanged; that is its methodological virtue. Daas is the opposite: a form of knowing in which the knower is altered by the connection and cannot step back out of it.
In Kabbalistic terms, daas is what completes chochmah and binah. Chochmah is the flash. Binah is the analysis. Neither of them involves the knower — one can have an insight about something one does not care about, and analyse it thoroughly. Daas is the faculty that attaches the person to what the other two produced.
Information
Held. Retrievable. Leaves the holder unchanged. Can be true and inert.
Daas
Joined to. Reorganising. Changes the knower. Cannot be held at a distance.
The earth filled with knowledge
כִּי־מָלְאָה הָאָרֶץ דֵּעָה אֶת־ה׳ כַּמַּיִם לַיָּם מְכַסִּיםDenn die Erde wird voll sein der Erkenntnis Haschems, wie Wasser das Meer bedeckt.
Nicht Wasser, das auf etwas gegossen wird, sondern Wasser dort, wo Wasser einfach das ist, was ist.
Denn die Erde wird voll sein der Erkenntnis Haschems, wie Wasser das Meer bedeckt.
Nicht Wasser, das auf etwas gegossen wird, sondern Wasser dort, wo Wasser einfach das ist, was ist.
The famous verse uses de’ah, from the same root. And the image chosen for it is water covering the sea bed — not water poured onto something, but water in the place where water is simply what is there.
This is a precise image for the difference. Information about Hashem is available now and has been for millennia; the libraries are full. What is described is not more information but a change in the medium — a world in which knowledge of Hashem is ambient rather than acquired, the way the sea bed is not informed about water.
The Messianic era is not better religious education. It is a different relationship between knowing and being.
And this is why Moshiach is fundamentally a teacher, and why the culmination of his work is not attention directed at him. A teacher whose students end up permanently oriented toward the teacher has failed at teaching. The measure is the sea bed, not the pointing.