This article is based on teaching from Rabbi David Kosofsky, SHLITA

Have you ever tried to study some intellectual work, gone over a sentence or two many many times, and still had no idea what it was saying? Have you ever wondered how it is that a doctor who knows and understands firsthand how bad smoking is, still smokes? If you happen to be more philosophically inclined, perhaps you’ve wondered what exactly does it mean to know anything?

Judaism teaches us that there are three modes of “knowing” something, and understanding them will enhance our overall understanding of what it means to know anything. 

It’s known as the ChaBaD formula: Chochma, Bina, Daat. Anything you can intellectualise can be fit into one of those three modes. Let’s break them down and see how these can be understood in practical terms.

Chochma

The word chochma is commonly translated into English as ‘wisdom’. This is useful sometimes, but in terms of the concept of knowing, it’s not very useful in my opinion, so bare that in mind as I give the introduction to chochma (hang in there and I’ll write what I think is a better translation later):

Chochma is straight, raw knowledge: The sky is blue. Terrorism is bad. You shouldn’t go swimming in a rip current. 

Note on the nature of chochma: Despite all the examples I’ve picked above, it’s possible that chochma can be subjective and doesn’t need to be necessarily true. This is because we’re specifically categorising knowledge here and not verifying or fact checking. If you think you know that the earth is flat, that is still indeed chochma, though false chochma.

From a Judaic perspective, you can have chochma from the side of kedusha (holiness), which would be when chochma is based in truth, and conversely, chochma from the side of tuma (impurity) when it’s based in falsehood. 

That being said, the translation of chochma as ‘wisdom’ does have some merit to it, and it could be that in certain contexts that chochma is indeed talking specifically about truth.

And this is why in my opinion, at least for the purposes of this article it is more appropriate to translate chochma as knowledge rather than wisdom. True, all three of chochma, bina and daat are their own forms of knowledge, but chochma is by far the one we can most associate the term “knowledge” with in English. 

The thing about chochma is that it’s specifically abstract knowledge that we haven’t necessarily internalised yet. It’s the pure essence of an idea or a thought or a concept, divorced from anything but itself and in fact it’s even divorced from you, the knower. 

Remember the first question I asked in this article? It seems strange that we can read something so many times and yet not know what it is saying…. The truth is that we do know what it says, we just don’t understand it yet since it’s completely divorced from us. It’s not like we’re reading some foreign language.… We know what the words are, and the sentences make sense. 

We may have even read it so many times that we’ve memorised it and yet it remains in our brains purely as abstract thought…. Which is chochma!

All this isn’t to say that when you understand something that it isn’t chochma anymore. The above example is just to demonstrate what pure chochma looks like. Once the understanding is developed we still know the information in our chochma just as much.

Bina

Bina is commonly translated into English as ‘understanding’ which is lucky for us because that’s the one common translation that I actually agree with for this and any context. So by all means, do feel free to think of Bina as understanding.

Bina comes in three forms: Rational, emotional and experiential. These forms are not exclusive or unrelated at all, and in fact very often overlap.

Rational

If chochma is the ‘what’, bina is the ‘and therefore’. The sky is blue, and therefore we can conclude that it allows the wavelengths of light that aren’t blue to pass, and blue light to reflect back at us. Note that if we can’t relate the former part of the sentence to the latter part (IE. we don’t realise why/how the conclusion was drawn), it is chochma and not bina. 

What makes the former bina and the latter chochma is that in the former we have done a calculation using our brain and therefore internalised the knowledge and allowed it to affect us to the point where from its effect on us we have some new perceptible outcome (in this case the conclusion). 

The more conclusions we can draw from a piece of abstract information, the more we understand it. 

My physics teacher would say: if you can’t explain something to someone else, then you don’t understand it. This is because even though we hear something over and over again, until our brains start making the calculations and coming to the conclusions, the only way we know a piece of abstract physics is by the words of others. We can only form our own words when we’ve internalised the information and our brain starts saying “and therefore…”

Emotional

Let’s now go back to our terrorism example: Even if we are told about terrorism theoretically, we can still construct an image in our minds of someone committing a horrific crime which can elicit strong emotions and from those emotions we can know that terrorism is bad and as such we want to stay away from terrorism. 

Internalising that committing a horrific crime of terror would elicit strong emotions and using those emotions to draw the conclusions that people shouldn’t commit terrorism (IE, that terrorism is bad) is in itself a form of understanding.

An emotion itself can be a conclusion to some knowledge, and feeling that emotion shows that you’ve internalised it and that it’s affecting you. 

Experiential

Who do you think better understands that you shouldn’t swim in rip currents? The one who was simply told that you shouldn’t swim in a rip current (regardless of whether they thought about it further or not) or the one who tried to swim a rip current, nearly drowned and needed to be rescued by lifesavers? Even if such an experience somehow didn’t affect you emotionally, having that experience now certainly builds an internalisation. 

We all have an instinct to avoid death. Even if you were previously only ever told not to swim in a rip current and didn’t otherwise know why, now having the experience of swimming in a rip current you develop the understanding that you could drown in a rip current through the connection that you made between avoiding death and not swimming in a rip current. This connection is itself the process of internalisation, since you actively made the connection.

It is important to note that bina is specifically experiences that are enacted on you. Experiences that you enact yourself (and again, those two things aren’t exclusive) are now in the realm of daat.

Sensory stimuli such as taste and smell are experimental bina. They can’t be put into words like chochma, but rather you can only explain them relative to other sensory experiences. 

How can you describe the taste of turkey to someone who never ate it before? You can say it tastes like chicken, but if they’ve never had chicken before or anything else similar, there’s no way you can describe what you know you know to them

Divine Feminine Bina

Judaism teaches that women possess a certain divine sense of bina that allows them through their senses and feelings to tap into higher truths. Men are rational and tend to listen to reason but women are right more often just through their intuition.

We see an example of this in the book of Bereshit when Sarah asks Avaraham to cast out Hagar and Ishmael. The verses tell us that Avraham wasn’t happy with this decision, presumably because he couldn’t figure out what Sara’s reasoning for this decision was. Nonetheless, HaShem tells Avarahm to listen to his wife, which he does, and it turns out that it was the right decision.

Daat

And following on from the experience of almost drowning in a rip current, next time that person is on a beach and there is a rip current, what do you think that person is going to do?

Daat is commonly translated into English as knowledge due to this being the way the word is used in Hebrew. In English it makes no sense to me to translate daat as knowledge, as you should already know since above I translated chochma as knowledge in English. I would translate daat in english as either will, or actualisation. 

If bina is knowledge that you internalise, daat is knowledge that you externalise meaning that some action based on knowledge is performed.

With respect to the question above, even if the subject of our rip current analogy really desires to swim in the ocean, they will (probably) still not swim. This may be a lack of an action rather than an action itself, but this is still a valid form of daat. 

Daat is what you do with the knowledge; It is knowledge that has been externalised (like bina is internalisation, daat is externalisation).

Previously I said that daat is actualisation: The root of the word ‘actualisation’ in English is the word ‘actual’ meaning that daat is knowledge that makes its way from you to actuality. A very similar way to think of daat is as realisation. Again, the root of the word ‘realisation’ is real: Daat is knowledge that you make real. 

To actualise knowledge means to take the appropriate action based on that knowledge.

Daat doesn’t have to be complicated.… Pretty much everything that you do that isn’t pure reflex or instinct is daat. If I invite you to my wedding (thus granting you the knowledge of when and where my wedding will take place) and you show up to the wedding, that’s an expression of daat since you actuallised your will based on your knowing that I’m getting married and knowing where and when.

Daat is also experiential, similar to Bina, but distinct. Bina are experiences that which you are affected by and daat are experiences that you affect yourself. 

For example, take a master blacksmith and random layman, put them side by side at the forge and have the blacksmith explain what he’s doing and demonstrate while the layman follows along. 

Whose sword is going to come out better? The blacksmith’s of course, but why? Theoretically the layman could have followed along in the exact same manner and produced the exact same result, but we all know that the layman simply won’t be able to do that, and the reason is because the blacksmith has the daat and the layman doesn’t. No amount of chochma and bina is going to fix that. 

Failure in Daat

Take this scenario: 

Two mates are sharing an apartment together: Saul and David. Saul comes home from work and finds that David left a bunch of dirty dishes in the sink. This bothers Saul immensely so he immediately confronts David and violently shouts at him.

David apologises and says that he’ll be more careful about washing up properly in the future, but also expresses that Saul should be asking him in a more calm and dignified manner. Saul realises that David is right, calms down, and apologises to David.

The next day, the same thing happens all over again: Saul finds dirty dishes in the sink, shouts at David, they both apologise and say they won’t do it again.

Why did David leave all his dishes unwashed? Does he not know that you should be courteous and hygienic? Why did Saul shout at David? Does he not know that being quick to anger is a serious character flaw, and that he should resolve the issue without raising his voice?

Of course they both knew those things, but when it came down to the moment when it mattered the action of the knowledge was absent.

This is a failure in daat.

Many times in life, there are things that we know that seem obvious, and so we don’t respect them with the severity that they deserve. 

After the first confrontation, David was thinking to himself “Well, I’ll just wash up quickly next time! Duh!” and Saul was thinking “Well, I’ll just ask him calmly next time, for sure”, but neither of them took the right steps in order to make sure that their will would be brought into fruition. They just assumed that since it was easy that they wouldn’t do it.

The first thing that you need to know in order to start fixing a failure in daat is that you need to recognise that for yourself this is not easy (despite that it may sound simple or that it may come easily to others) and that you need to actively implement steps in order to make sure the correct action is taken based on your will.

When coming up with the steps themselves, the same logic needs to be applied: each step needs to be not something that you just assume is obvious but rather steps that you, knowing yourself, know that you can certainly actualise.

Yes, ironically trying to fix a failure in daat is itself a form of daat.

The second thing you need to know in order to fix a failure in daat is that it’s not at all shameful or cheating to solicit and accept help from others. 

After the Nth time battling with your alarm and failing to get out of bed, it’s not giving up to say that you simply can’t do this yourself, and that you need to appoint someone trustworthy to get you out of bed on time, even if it means literally dragging you out of bed. This realisation is itself a high form of wisdom.

There’s probably more that can be said here, but perhaps this topic warrants its own separate article. The purpose here is to draw your attention to the link between knowledge and failure to act on it.

The ChaBaD Journey

None of these modes are ‘higher’ or ‘lower’ than each other; They are all on the same ‘level’.

That being said, if you’ve been paying attention there is a sequential pattern the modes go through, and you’re at the centre of the pattern.

We start off with chochma, which is knowledge that you have, but is divorced from you. Bina is knowledge that you’ve internalised and daat is then knowledge that is externalised. We went from surface to inner to outer. 

It is not necessary that in order to have bina you must have chochma. 

For example, have you ever had such a profound feeling and you simply couldn’t put it into words?

Another example: you can know in your chochma that the ice-cream tastes like Vanilla, but you can’t describe the taste of Vanilla. You can relate it to other tastes but to someone who’s never tasted anything like vanilla before you’d never be able to relay this experimental form of pure bina to them. 

And likewise, you don’t necessarily need bina or chochma to have daat. If someone trustworthy enough tells you to eat something, you can certainly make the decision to eat it without understanding what it is or why your friend is asking you to try it.

That being said, you cannot have daat without either chochma or bina (IE, while you don’t need either individually, you do need at least one), since daat is specifically action based on some sort of knowledge. An action of pure reflex or instinct is not an expression of daat. 

Therefore animals don’t have daat since they live their lives purely based on reflex and instinct, like for example how almost every animal knows to run away from fire. It’s not because they understand how dangerous fire is, it’s because milenia of evolution has instilled this instinct. 

Even when you train a dog, you’re just adding to the dog’s reflexes and not enhancing the dog’s knowledge.

From the story of the elephant and the rope, we can see that the elephants simply don’t understand how the rope is holding them back. They simply have developed a reflex to not try to break out of it from when they were young. If they had the bina/daat, they would be able to realise that they are now strong enough to break the rope and free themselves at any time.

Examples of Daat from Parashat Bereshit

As mentioned earlier, daat is often translated into English as ‘knowledge’. Parashat Bereish (the first part of the book of Genesis) mentions knowledge a few times, and I think that a brief study of these verses can offer a profound insight into the nature of daat or at least we can utilise our understanding of daat to better understand the verse.

Let’s start with the very first mention of knowledge in the Torah. You most probably already know what it is… Perhaps you’d like to take a guess before reading on?

Note: I’ve bolded the word for knowledge in each verse. The root of the word is always daat (see uplanic note at the end)

OK, on the surface this one may seem straightforward: They ate from the fruit, and consequently they gained the knowledge of good and bad. 

But given what we learned above about the nature of daat, we can see this isn’t exactly the case.

The Torah giant Chaim Volozin in his magnum opus: Nefesh HaChaim explains that before Adam HaRishon ate from the fruit of the tree, he had an awareness of what good and bad were. The language that Nefesh HaChaim uses states that after the sin of Adam, good and bad became incorporated into his being in that now he was able to choose to actualise bad.

Paraphrasing Nefesh HaChaim: Adam knew good and bad in his chochma from his inception; Eating from the fruit gave him the daat (Hence why it was called ‘Etz HaDaat’): the ability to act on the knowledge of good and bad or to bring badness into his will and actualise it. The result of the eating of the fruit is that the knowledge that they already knew now became integrated into their will.

(A bit of context: This is right after Chava and Adam ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge)

What is this passage trying to teach us? 

To answer that question, we need to ponder the main question this passage raises: Did they only now know that they were naked? How could they not have known it up until this point? I mean, it’s pretty clear that when the passage says that their eyes were opened that it’s not being literal. They weren’t bumbling about the garden of Eden blind with their eyes closed. Surely they knew that they could see that they were naked from the moment of their inception, no?

A common understanding similar to what we spoke about above, is that they of course knew that they were naked from their inception but until now they didn’t know that it was wrong…. While I’m by no means saying that this is incorrect I would like to re-draw attention to the original question: What is this verse trying to teach us? 

If it was trying to teach us that now they knew that being naked was wrong, the verse would probably say something along the lines of “they knew that being naked was wrong”… But it doesn’t say that.

I would like to posit that the key to understanding this verse lies in the second half of it. What’s going on there?: It’s an actualisation of knowledge! Observe that the word that is used for knowledge here is daat (see ulpanic note) which as we said when we spoke about it is the actualisation of knowledge. 

Above we came to the conclusion that the fruit of the tree integrates knowledge into your will, IE allowed you to act on the knowledge, and this is exactly what we see happening here. 

I would say that a more accurate translation of this verse is that it should say that they realised they were naked since the knowledge of their nakedness which they had before was now made to be real.

Even forgetting the last third of the verse (the quote), it seems kind of strange, don’t you think? What does the first third of the sentence “Now the Human knew his wife Eve” have to do with the second third: “and she conceived and bore Cain”? 

Even if you already know that “knew” in this context means copulated, it still raises the question of why they decided to use the word “knew” rather than just outright saying that they copulated.

If daat is knowledge that is made into will and thus is acted upon, it seems to me that what this verse can teach us with its terminology is that in order to truly know someone you need to experience them. You can know a lot about someone, but only through enacting intimacy do you truly know someone.

In Hebrew, when you say you know (‘yodeah’, which is ‘know’ in the present tense and masculine form) someone it always means a sexual manner.

To say you know someone without any sexual implications, you would use the word ‘mekir’ which comes from the word familiar. You’re saying that you’re familiar with them rather than that you know them. 

This reinforces the lesson learned above that without the enactment of intimacy, you don’t know someone. Before experientially enacted intimacy, the extent of your relationship with them ends at familiarity. 

Please email me questions!