Chapter 30Torah
Daas
Knowing something and being in relation to it are not the same operation.
Daas is knowledge that has been joined to. The culmination of the Messianic era is not universal agreement but universal attachment to what is true.
Hebrew uses the same root for intellectual knowledge and for the deepest human intimacy, and this is not a euphemism.
וְהָאָדָם יָדַע אֶת־חַוָּה אִשְׁתּוֹAnd the human knew Chavah his wife.
The standard verb for knowing. Tanach could have chosen another word and consistently did not.
And the human knew Chavah his wife.
The standard verb for knowing. Tanach could have chosen another word and consistently did not.
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 מְכַסִּיםFor the earth shall be filled with knowledge of Hashem as the waters cover the sea.
Not water poured on, but water where water simply is. Ambient rather than acquired.
For the earth shall be filled with knowledge of Hashem as the waters cover the sea.
Not water poured on, but water where water simply is. Ambient rather than acquired.
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.