By Rav Ahron Kaufman, Rosh Yeshiva, Yeshiva Ateres Shmuel of Waterbury
From Adam Harishon to the Age of Technology
When Adam Harishon was created, he stood as the pinnacle of human perfection. Formed directly by the hand of the Borei Olam, he was the ultimate image and reflection of Hashem in this world. He conversed openly with Hashem, exercised mastery over all creation, and was the very purpose for which the universe had been brought into existence. The Gemara teaches that Adam could see “mi’sof ha’olam v’ad sofo — from one end of the world to the other” (Chagigah 12a), his spiritual vision encompassing both the breadth of creation and the sweep of all future generations. His influence extended to every element of reality; his capacities — physical, intellectual, and spiritual — were unbounded.
Yet, the moment he sinned, that greatness was diminished. His powers contracted, his abilities were curtailed, and the downward spiral of yeridas hadoros — the decline of the generations — was set in motion. The Gemara repeatedly affirms that the earlier one lived in history, the greater one’s stature. A sense of decline permeates Chazal’s reflections on the passage of time.
Perhaps the most well-known statement appears in Shabbos 112b: “If the first ones (Rishonim) were like angels, then we are merely human. And if the first ones were human, then we are similar to donkeys.”
This is an unvarnished acknowledgment of the immeasurable superiority of earlier generations. In Eruvin 53a, Rabi Yochonon further illustrates this disparity: “The hearts of the early sages (Rishonim) were like the entrance to the ulam [the entrance hall of the Bais Hamikdosh], and those of the later sages (Acharonim) were like the entrance to the heichal (the sanctuary); and we are like the eye of a needle.”
The Mishnah in Middos (3:7, 4:1) specifies that the ulam was forty amos high by twenty amos wide, while the heichal was only twenty by ten — half in each dimension. Even the Acharonim, already diminished in comparison to the Rishonim, tower over our generation, which Chazal liken not to a smaller doorway but to the minuscule eye of a needle.
The Gemara proceeds to offer further analogies: Abaye said, “We are like a peg in the wall with regard to learning.” Rava said, “We are like a finger in wax with regard to reasoning.” Rav Ashi said, “We are like a finger in a pit with regard to forgetfulness.”
These are not mere laments over eroding intellectual capacity; they reveal something deeper. Rabi Yochonon’s metaphor speaks of hearts, not merely minds. Why “hearts”? Intellect (seichel) and emotion are often seen as separate — sometimes even opposing — forces. Yet Chazal teach us that the lev represents more than emotion; it is the seat of daas.
Daas is not mere cognitive knowledge. As the posuk says, “V’ha’adam yada es Chava ishto —And Adam knew his wife Chava” (Bereishis 4:1). Here, yada denotes intimate connection, not abstract information. Daas is the faculty that binds the mind’s understanding to the heart’s awareness, transforming abstract truth into lived reality. One may grasp a concept intellectually, but until it is bound to the heart, until it is felt, it remains abstract.
A sevara, a line of logical reasoning, can be understood in two ways:
- Externally: grasping its proofs and logic.
- Internally: feeling its truth until it becomes tangible, almost physical.
Seichel grasps the outer shell of a concept; daas penetrates to its inner core. Earlier generations possessed a colossal capacity for daas — able to understand the core and make their understanding concrete, to feel it, to live it. This is what the Torah refers to in Devarim 4:39: “You shall know today and place it in your heart, that Hashem is the G-d in heaven above and on the earth below; there is none else.” The essential quality of daas is connection — linking intellectual awareness to emotional and practical reality.
Even in the later era of the Tanna’im, we find staggering expressions of this capacity. The Gemara (Avodah Zarah 10b) relates that in the days of Rebbi Yehudah Hanosi, Eliyohu Hanovi appeared daily in his yeshivah. The weakest of his disciples could revive the dead. Rav Yochonon revived Rav Kahana (Bava Metzia 84b). These stories are not mystical figures of speech; they reflect the spiritual potency of souls far closer to Sinai. This is why we do not “argue” with earlier generations in the sense of refuting them — we only question them to better understand.
The reverence for earlier chachomim is rooted in the conviction that proximity to the Divine Revelation at Har Sinai granted a clarity of Torah and a connection to Hashem that later generations could not replicate.
THE QUESTION OF PROGRESS
This raises an obvious question: If earlier generations possessed greater intellect, deeper daas, and finer spiritual sensitivity, why has the flood of technological innovation emerged only in recent centuries? Why did the transformative inventions of printing, electricity, radio, photography, telecommunication, and computers appear in our era — and not in theirs?
The Chafetz Chaim addresses this in Shem Olam, and his answer is profound: Precisely because of their greatness, earlier generations had no need for such tools. Their understanding was vivid, their emunah vibrant, their awareness of Hashem constant.
For them, the Mishnah in Avos (2:1): “Histakeil b’shlosha devorim v’ein atah bo lidei aveirah: da mah l’maalah mimecha: ayin ro’ah, v’ozen shomaas v’chol maasecha b’sefer nichotovim — “Consider three things and you will not come to sin: Know what is above you: an Eye that sees, an Ear that hears, and all your deeds are recorded in a book,” was not abstract wisdom; it was a lived reality. They breathed the certainty that Hashem sees all, hears all, and records all for eternity. Hashem’s presence was the air they lived in. They did not need external reinforcements.
But as the generations passed, both daas and emunah diminished. Hearts grew less attuned to the Divine presence. In His kindness, Hashem awakened us to what we once possessed and have lost — our inner daas and emunah — and to what we must now strive to reclaim, by introducing into the world physical metaphors: tangible, everyday reminders of eternal truths.
The Chafetz Chaim offers striking examples:
- The telescope — Just as it reveals objects at vast distances, it reflects that Hashem’s vision spans all creation: “An Eye that sees and an Ear that hears” (Avos 2:1). As Tehillim says, “From the heavens, Hashem looks and sees every individual.”
- The telephone — Distance poses no barrier to connection. So too, our tefillos reach Hashem instantly from anywhere in the world. No dropped calls, no missed signals. How careful, then, must we be with the words we speak before Him.
- The photograph — A moment is captured forever, often without the subject’s awareness, just as every action is recorded in the Heavenly archives, to be replayed on the Day of Judgment. The Gemara in Chagigah (16a) teaches that even the stones and beams of one’s home testify about him. Frozen in time, nothing escapes.
- The phonograph — The human voice is preserved even after death, reminding us that all words endure before Hashem. Chazal teach that even the light conversation between husband and wife will one day be recounted to a person.
Koheles concludes with a piercing reminder: “Sof dovor, hakol nishmo, es HaElokim yiro, v’es mitzvosov shemor, ki zeh kol ha’adam — The end of the matter, everything having been heard: Fear G-d and keep His commandments, for this is the whole of man.”
The Targum explains: Sof dovor, hakol nishmo, all deeds, even those done in secret, will one day be revealed to all. Therefore, one must fear Hashem and guard His commandments to avoid hidden sins, and if one stumbles, repentance is the essence of what it means to be human.
Technological inventions are not merely human achievements; they are Divine gifts — material parables designed to restore a fading awareness. They are bridges to emunah for a generation too distracted by materialism to see the eternal truths that earlier generations carried naturally in their hearts.
LIVING WITH THE AWARENESS OF EARLIER GENERATIONS
The earlier generations needed no such aids. They lived with Hashem’s presence as vividly as we see the physical world. For Adam Harishon, the Tanna’im, Amora’im, Rishonim, and even the Achronim, Divine reality was the atmosphere they breathed. The instruments of modernity could have been developed in their time, but they would have been superfluous; they would have been irrelevant. These tzaddikim, perfected as tzelem Elokim, lived in unbroken self-refinement and unmediated connection to the Borei Olam. Their existence was an ongoing dveikus; the awareness these devices might provide was already native to their being.
Even those among our great-great-grandmothers who could neither read nor speak Lashon Hakodesh lived with Hashem in their emunah peshutah, a simple, whole-hearted trust untainted by philosophical abstraction. They were bound to Him in their wholesomeness, not by intellectual argument, but by the unshakable spiritual instinct that is the inheritance of every Jewish soul.
THE PARADOX OF PROGRESS
And here we arrive at a paradox. If we examine the inner purpose of technology, even in its most rudimentary forms, it would seem that its ultimate role is to increase yiras Shomayim and constant awareness of Hashem, thereby advancing man, not merely the world. A telescope, a telephone, a recording device — each could serve as a parable for truths that Chazal have taught us for millennia: that nothing is hidden, that every word endures, that no distance impedes communication with Hashem.
Yet here lies the bitter irony and the tragedy: reality speaks otherwise. Far from elevating yiras Shomayim, the proliferation of technology has accompanied, and often accelerated, its decline. The world is not ascending but spiraling downward, with Hashem’s presence less acknowledged, not more.
Yiras Shomayim, in its truest sense, means more than “fear” of Hashem — it also means seeing Hashem. The two are intertwined: the deeper one perceives His reality, the more awe and reverence naturally follow. That is why the tragedy is so sharp: the very instruments designed — Divinely arranged — to awaken us to Hashem’s omnipresence are frequently repurposed to obscure it. What was meant to whisper “all is revealed” is now harnessed to conceal, distract, and corrupt.
THE LIMITS OF THE HUMAN MIND
How can this be? How can an intelligent person disregard truths that are both revealed and obvious? The answer lies in the limits of human intellect. The human mind, left to itself, grasps only the tangible, the visible, and the measurable. It weighs choices according to the gains and losses it can see.
Spiritual reality, however, is beyond the reach of purely physical intellect. Its essence is abstract, subtle, and cannot be “calculated” or factored in — unless it has been absorbed into the heart, becoming part of one’s very being. As the Maharal teaches in Nesiv HaAvodah (ch. 2), true emunah does not originate in reasoning but in Hashem Himself. It is planted in the soul of every Jew as an inseparable element of spiritual identity, beyond the grasp of logic alone.
When the purity of the heart is clouded by environment, influence, or self-interest, what remains is a lev bosor — a heart of flesh — that ultimately hardens into a lev ha’even, a heart of stone. Once the heart is corrupted, daas, the lived harmony between mind and heart, is distorted, guiding the soul toward falsehood. In such a state, even the profound messages embedded in technology, designed to remind us of eternal truths, go unnoticed and unheeded.
TECHNOLOGY AS TECHEILES
Just as techeiles in tzitzis, mezuzah, and tefillin serve as visible reminders of Hashem’s mitzvos and presence, technology too can serve as an external trigger to awaken mindfulness of Hashem. But just as techeiles does not create emunah — it only recalls it for one who already has awareness — so too, technology cannot generate emunah on its own.
Sadly, many of us live in a fog of distraction. Even while wearing tzitzis, donning tefillin, or passing by the most beautiful mezuzos, we often barely notice them. We daven without directing our focus to Hashem. The reminders are present; the consciousness is not.
Technology, like techeiles, holds power only in proportion to the inner awareness it meets. It cannot replace the deep, internal emunah that flows from a pure heart. And unlike tzitzis, tefillin, or mezuzah — objects inherently imbued with kedusha — technology is neutral. It carries both the potential to inspire and the risk of spiritual harm like a potent medicine. Its benefits depend entirely on careful dosage, while misuse can be as destructive as chemotherapy.
The phone can either strengthen, reminding us that Hashem hears our tefillos, or it can be a cause of distraction during davening. It can strengthen our awareness of shemiras halashon or serve as a tool for lashon hara. The camera can remind us that Hashem sees all — or be misused to capture every mundane image, violating others’ privacy and personal boundaries. A photograph can teach us that nothing is ever truly lost and help us preserve meaningful moments — or it can be misused to view inappropriate content. A recorder can remind us that everything is heard — or can be used to spread improper speech and music. The computer — so vast and all-encompassing — can reveal the breadth of the world and the depth of human potential, inspiring us to grow and build ourselves. Or it can become an instrument of distraction and sin that diminishes the greatness of man.
It’s our choice: to use technology with purpose and mindfulness, or to abuse it.
When used without mindfulness, technology becomes counterproductive. Its side effects are devastating — eroding focus, dulling the soul, and distracting us from true yiras Shomayim. Only those who approach it with vigilance, consciously directing it toward avodas Hashem, can harness its potential for good.
No device, no matter how advanced, can substitute for the inner clarity, purity, and conviction that genuine emunah demands. True emunah flows from the heart; no external tool can manufacture it.
RECLAIMING THE INNER AWARENESS
Our task is to reclaim, through these tools, the inner clarity and consciousness that earlier generations possessed naturally without them. To take technology, so often an agent of distraction, and transform it into a catalyst for connection. To look beyond the surface of invention and perceive the hand of the true Inventor.
If yeridas hadoros has diminished the heart, our capacity for daas, then our personal avodah is to reverse that drift. Not merely to grasp the truths of Torah with the mind, but to feel them with such intensity that they shape every thought, every word, every action.
True progress is measured not by the sophistication of our devices, but by the refinement of our hearts. Perhaps the first step is abstention, not in an absolute sense, but as a deliberate pause, to take a moment before use to see the device as a moshol for higher truth.
When encountering technology — a camera, a recorder, a computer — let us remember the Mishnah in Avos (2:1): “Know what is above you: an Eye that sees, an Ear that hears, and all your deeds are recorded in a book.”
By doing so, we may yet transform the tools of a distracted age into instruments of yiras Shomayim, restoring a fragment of the awareness that was once the natural air of our people.
Part 2
Daas or Data? The Battle for the Jewish Mind in the Age of AI
THE WORLD WAS MADE FOR ME
Chazal highlight the immeasurable significance of every single human being — man, woman, or child. The Gemara (Sanhedrin 37a) declares that each person is obligated to say, “Bishvili nivra ha’olam — For my sake the world was created.” In other words: I matter. My unique talents, aspirations, and character traits are indispensable to the world’s mission and purpose.
At first glance, this seems unbearably arrogant. How can any individual, surrounded by billions of others, truly believe that the entirety of creation revolves around him?
And yet, this is not arrogance but truth. Hashem, infinite and beyond all human comprehension, created a universe in which every single person matters infinitely. Not only does each neshomah have a purpose, but the entire cosmos was brought into being for that purpose.
This sense of individual importance is reinforced by the principle of Hashgocha Protis — the understanding that Hashem is actively involved in the life of each Jew, guiding and orchestrating events in a deeply personal way. This is not a vague cosmic control, but an intimate, two-way relationship: our free will interacts with Hashem’s Providence, and Hashem responds to us, even as He simultaneously sustains His relationship with every other person and holds the entire universe together.
INTIMACY WITH INFINITY
From a human perspective, such a reality seems unfathomable. It is a paradox that boggles the human mind: the Infinite invests Himself in the infinitesimal. Hashem conducts the vast orchestra of the cosmos while at the same time attending to the smallest private needs of every Jew. How can Hashem hear my voice in tefillah when, at this very instant, millions of voices rise to Him together? How can He not only hear me, but respond to my personal plea — one that may even run contrary to the cries of others, each of whom also inhabits a world that was created solely for them? How can He chart the intimate details of my life with flawless precision, while at the same time weaving together the infinite and intersecting journeys of every soul, never with overlap, never with contradiction, while sustaining the entire fabric of creation itself? And yet… is it truly possible that I stand before Him in a bond that is uniquely mine alone? That amidst the vastness of the universe, my small voice holds weight, my presence matters, and my life has infinite value in His eyes?
Part of our struggle lies in the gap between Hashem’s infinity and our finitude. We can only grasp reality in pieces — through analogy, experience, and comparison. But how can the finite mind begin to comprehend a Being utterly beyond space and time, yet somehow closer to us than we are to ourselves? How can we naturally feel the full force of His constant, personal attention upon each of us?
THE SOUL’S HIDDEN KNOWING
Yet, Hashem has planted within us an innate sensitivity to this truth. While our minds cannot contain it, our neshomah — a spark of the Divine — knows it intuitively. It is inscribed into the fabric of our hearts. For earlier generations, this awareness was obvious and undeniable. But with the acceleration of yeridas hadoros, that natural clarity has dimmed. What once was self-evident now requires effort. We must work to awaken it, to uncover within ourselves what our souls already know.
Technology of earlier times reinforced only certain dimensions of emunah. It served as a reminder of: ayin ro’ah, v’ozen shomaas — that Hashem sees and hears all. The telephone, camera, and radio reinforced truths we could conceptually understand but not vividly imagine. But no tangible metaphor was needed for Hashgocha Protis — Hashem’s personal, moment-to-moment guidance of each individual life. At the time, the awareness was innate, woven naturally into the consciousness of those generations. Even when not actively considered, it was there — self-evident and alive.
WHEN CLARITY FADES
In our generation, however, as that natural awareness has dimmed, modern technology has begun to offer striking new metaphors — powerful glimpses into how such infinite, individualized attention could be possible. Computers and smart devices that recognize our voice in a crowd, algorithms that predict our choices before we make them, systems that track billions of data points yet respond to the individual with precision — these are but faint echoes of Hashem’s boundless capacity to listen to each tefillah, guide each path, and sustain the fabric of all creation, all at once.
I experienced this firsthand while driving with my wife and another passenger. We all opened Waze at the same moment, entering the same destination. My wife and I received identical routes — yet her estimated arrival time was five minutes earlier than mine. Our passenger, however, was given an entirely different route — yet with the same projected arrival time.
At first, the differences puzzled us. Then it struck us: Waze knew us. My wife tends to drive faster. I tend to take my time. Our passenger habitually favors the alternate route. The system factored in not just the road we were on, but the way we travel.
Programs like ChatGPT, Waze — or even Google — can process millions of simultaneous queries, providing each user with personalized guidance while taking into account the decisions and movements of countless others, all without delay or confusion. And these are mere human inventions.
If a program fashioned by finite minds can orchestrate such individualized direction on a global scale, l’havdil, how much more so, the Creator of those minds — and of all reality itself. Hashem knows with absolute precision where each of us has been, where we are headed, and how to redirect our course with flawless accuracy, weaving every step seamlessly into the grand design of creation.
The world may marvel — or even shudder — at the power of AI. But rather than standing in awe of technology, we can let it serve as a window into emunah, Hashgocha Protis, and bishvili nivra ha’olam.
SO IRONIC
And here lies the piercing irony and the tragedy of our generation. The very reality that should awaken us to Hashem’s nearness, to the living truth of bishvili nivra ha’olam, that the entire universe was created for me, has instead been twisted into a counterfeit god. Artificial intelligence, a tool that was fashioned to serve man, has become something man bows before. What should have been a bridge to deeper emunah is instead a widening chasm.
In severing man’s bond with his Creator, it severs man from himself. Hours dissolve unnoticed as eyes remain fixed on a glowing screen, and the mind drowns in an endless flood of stimuli — from everywhere except the here and now. Surrounded by torrents of information, man loses awareness of his own surroundings. Saturated with noise, he can no longer hear his own soul.
Attachment hardens into addiction. Presence evaporates. Awareness dims. And this, perhaps, is the most profound yeridas ha’adam, the descent of man. Instead of rising to the gadlus ha’adam, the greatness for which he was fashioned, he collapses inward, forgetting not only his Creator, but his very self.
THE LONGEST DISTANCE
As Rav Yisroel Salanter taught, “The greatest distance in the universe is between one’s head and his heart.” Human failure rarely stems from ignorance. More often, it is born from our inability to translate what we know into what we feel — and, ultimately, into how we live. Rav Yisroel’s insight is timeless: the greatest distance is not measured between people, nor between heaven and earth, but within each of us — between intellect and emotion, between what we know and what we embody.
Our challenge, therefore, is precisely this: to bridge that inner chasm. To transform knowledge into lived reality. To internalize Torah until its truths do not remain concepts lodged in the mind but become forces that shape our decisions, ignite our passion, and animate our lives.
This challenge becomes all the more acute in an age dominated by artificial intelligence. AI can process staggering amounts of data, generate innovative solutions, and master information at speeds our minds cannot fathom. Yet for all its brilliance, AI cannot feel. It cannot believe. It cannot take knowledge and transmute it into conviction.
AI dazzles with its speed and cleverness. It mimics human analysis, produces elegant summaries, and even imitates creativity. But all of this belongs only to sechel. It is computation without soul. It has no daas, for daas requires interiority, rootedness, and being. AI cannot connect knowledge to essence because it has no essence. It can only calculate and reproduce.
INFORMATION ALONE CANNOT TRANSFORM
We, in contrast, were created with that unique capacity — to unite head and heart, sechel and daas. Our mission, and our opportunity, is to exercise that gift with intention: to cultivate daas in its deepest sense, so that what our minds grasp becomes what our hearts embrace, what our souls live.
We live in a time intoxicated with information. At the swipe of a finger, we summon libraries of data, oceans of commentary, instant answers to every question. Google has become the oracle of our age; artificial intelligence — the new prophet. And yet beneath this flood of knowledge lies a bitter paradox: the more information we acquire, the less wisdom we seem to embody. We are wealthy in sechel — cleverness, calculation, abstraction — but impoverished in daas, the living integration of truth into the self.
The Maharal explained this distinction centuries before our technological revolution. Time and again, he draws a clear line between sechel and daas. Sechel is the capacity to grasp, to analyze, to calculate. But daas, as Chazal teach, is far deeper. Daas is knowledge fused with the knower. It is connection. It is when truth becomes part of one’s very being. To possess daas is not merely to know something — it is to become it.
Herein lies the spiritual peril of our age. If we outsource our intellectual and spiritual labor to AI, we habituate ourselves to live only on the plane of sechel. We become brilliant collectors of information yet strangers to transformation. We know more — and become less.
Reliance on technology reshapes the very architecture of thought and the very way we think. The human mind — created b’tzelem Elokim — was designed for contemplation, synthesis, and deep insight. Unrestrained technology dulls these faculties, weakens memory, and robs us of the joy of discovery. It starves us of ahavas haTorah and ahavas Hashem, eroding the capacity for true mesirus nefesh.
The Torah demands daas. AI habituates us to sechel.
THE CLEVER FOOL
The words themselves bear witness: sochol, “fool,” echoes sechel. The sochol, sometimes referred to as kesil, is the person who possesses intellect without integration, whose study never takes root in the heart. The kesil is not stupid. On the contrary, he may be brilliant. But he lacks daas. He can manipulate words, juggle ideas, and dazzle with arguments, yet his life is a wasteland of emptiness.
Chazal underscore the gravity of this state: “Whoever lacks daas, it is forbidden to have mercy on him” (Brochos 33a). Even more sharply: “A Torah scholar without daas is worse than a carcass” (Vayikra Rabbah 1:15). What lies behind these harsh words?
The Torah is not condemning ignorance. A person who lacks knowledge deserves guidance, support, and compassion. The issue is deeper: daas is not mere information, but the power to bind wisdom to life, intellect to action, and soul to soul. Without daas, this connection is severed. Learning remains abstract; life becomes detached from truth.
The Maharal explains that mercy exists only where there is connection. A father has compassion for his child because their souls are bound. Klal Yisroel are commanded to show mercy to one another because we share a common root. Compassion flows from unity. But one who lives without daas is locked within himself. He becomes purely physical — and the physical, by nature, divides. Without shared daas, there is no bond — and without bond, there is no basis for mercy.
Is it any wonder we have become a generation dulled to feeling, drifting through life in apathy? When our minds are constantly fed and our hearts remain disengaged because knowledge never becomes daas, self-centeredness takes root. Without connection — without the union of intellect, emotion, and soul — our moral and spiritual senses deteriorate. We see the world only through the lens of ourselves: our convenience, our desires, our gratification.
As the self becomes the measure of all things, empathy fades. Compassion yields to convenience, depth to superficiality. The qualities that once bound communities and souls — the sensitivity to others, the ability to share in the suffering of the world — erode. In their place rises a hollow “liberalism,” a philosophy of freedom divorced from responsibility, elevating choice above virtue, and self-interest above care for the soul and service of Hashem.
We are left with minds overflowing with information yet hearts empty of engagement; eyes glued to screens, yet blind to the world around us and to the Divine spark within ourselves.
KNOWLEDGE WITHOUT DAAS BREEDS DESTRUCTION
Sechel without daas is not an advantage but a liability. The clever fool is more dangerous than the simpleton, because his intelligence becomes a weapon of destruction.
Evil, though dreadful, can be confronted, resisted, and argued with. Stupidity is far worse. Stupidity is not the absence of knowledge — it is the inability to integrate knowledge into judgment. The foolish person may parrot facts and slogans, but none of them become his own. He becomes a conduit, repeating whatever is dominant, fashionable, or loudest.
Chazal named it first: what we call stupidity, they called knowledge without daas. It is sechel unmoored from depth, cleverness unanchored to conscience. A brilliant mind without daas can justify any crime, excuse any corruption, rationalize any evil. Such a person never binds truth to himself. He may possess chochmah, even dazzling binah — but without daas, he is a ship without anchor, blown by whichever wind is strongest.
The last century offered the most horrifying proof. A culture of towering intellectual achievement — physics, engineering, philosophy — produced Auschwitz. Why? Because brilliance without daas is emptiness. Knowledge without conscience, information without depth, is worse than ignorance. Professors, doctors, scientists, educated men, became accomplices to barbarity. They proved that one can be a genius in sechel and a monster in daas.
We must shudder to realize that our own generation risks repeating this mistake in a new form. A generation with infinite access to data but little cultivation of depth risks collapsing, not from ignorance, but from clever foolishness. We see it: loud opinions, surface cleverness, viral slogans — but no rootedness in truth. Propaganda thrives not because people are unintelligent, but because they stop exercising daas. Algorithms do not teach patience, reflection, or moral discernment. Social media does not reward thought. Social media rewards speed over depth, outrage over truth, and virality over integrity. Lies spread six times faster than truth — because daas has gone silent. AI cannot cultivate daas. It can feed the sechel, but it cannot integrate wisdom into the soul. A generation accustomed to instant answers risks becoming a generation of clever fools — sharp, informed, but unmoored from judgment, empathy, and conscience.
We are raising children who can navigate apps before they can read, who can access terabytes of data but struggle to look another human being in the eye. We are producing adults who can analyze markets but cannot analyze their own hearts, who can code algorithms but cannot form relationships. The clever fool has been reborn, this time holding a smartphone.
And so, one fears, today as ever: when a society lives without daas, it becomes defenseless against deception. The slogans may change — progress, freedom, authenticity — but the underlying reality remains the same. The real danger of our time is not ignorance, not lack of intelligence, but artificial intelligence without daas. And the Torah’s answer is clear. Chazal taught: “Daas kanisa, mah chasarta? Daas chasarta, mah kanisa?— If you have daas, you lack nothing. If you lack daas, everything else is worthless.”
EYES OF A JEW, NOT OF GOOGLE
A Yid lives in a different mental world. His perception is not merely sharper — it is otherworldly, rooted in Daas Elokim — a divine depth and scope that penetrates to the essence of a matter, far beyond the reach of human reasoning. This is not limited to Torah topics. Even in areas that seem “secular” — science, nature, history — the talmid chochom perceives truths inaccessible to those who operate only within the narrow confines of human intellect. The Maharal teaches that the greatest secular minds, for all their brilliance, operate within the narrow walls of human logic. Our chachomim draw from chochmah penimis, an unbroken chain from Moshe Rabbeinu, who received it directly from Hashem. Their way of thinking is of a different kind entirely.
When we feed our minds with Google, AI, chatboxes, Instagram, or WhatsApp, we train ourselves to think and operate chitzoni — shallow, fast, and surface-level. Because of their external nature — processed, surface-level conclusions detached from the deep inner reasoning and spiritual roots of the matter — they dull our daas. The constant stream of alien culture embedded in these platforms subtly reshapes our values, opinions, and worldview. Our thought patterns begin to mimic the secular world — quick takes, emotional reactions, “fast-food” information — rather than the deliberate, penetrating thinking of Torah. This change seeps back into our Torah learning, dulling our comprehension and sensitivity to the depth of Chazal.
THE TRAGIC RESULT
This is why, tragically, even sophisticated and intelligent frum Jews begin to “not get” the words of our chachomim — judging them by shallow standards and missing their depth. They challenge the integrity or the conclusions of the greatest minds in our history — not out of malice, but because their own thinking has been unconsciously shaped to be shallow, quick, and external.
For the secular world, this mode of thought is expected — they never claimed to possess Daas Elokim. But for us, who live by the Torah of Hashem, it is a spiritual tragedy.
OUR CHOICE: DONKEYS OR DAAS
Rabbeinu Bachya, in his classic Chovos HaLevavos, warns of this tragic irony: a person who studies but fails to grasp the true worth of what he’s learning. Such a person, he writes, is like a “Chamor noseh seforim — like a donkey carrying books.”
A donkey can haul priceless manuscripts, yet remain utterly ignorant of their value. Likewise, one can fill his shelves, his head, even his conversations with Torah content — yet if it never becomes Toras Chaim, a living Torah that shapes his daily conduct, it remains an external, hollow load.
Rabbeinu Bachya’s choice of metaphor is deliberate. The donkey, chamor, shares its root with chomer, raw, unshaped matter. A donkey is physicality without refinement, body without soul. Across languages, “donkey” has become a slur for dullness and foolishness. And tragically, this is the fate of one who accumulates wisdom but never allows it to penetrate the heart, shape character, or guide deeds.
In our generation, the danger is sharper still. One whose “wisdom” comes from artificial intelligence or the endless scroll of digital voices may be no better than a donkey carrying seforim — perhaps far worse. For he carries not only holy texts, but a payload of logic, slogans, and assumptions alien, sometimes even hostile, to the Torah mind.
The solution is not more data, not more information, not more sechel. It is daas, knowledge, anchored in conscience, integrated into life, fused with soul.
Without daas, we are donkeys carrying seforim. With daas, every sefer, every word, every fragment of wisdom becomes alive within us — transformed from external weight into inner truth.
LET YISHMOEL KEEP THE DONKEY
There is a bitter twist of history here. The first recorded use of “a donkey carrying books” as an insult is not in our seforim, but in the Quran — mocking Jews as base, worthless, even beneath Yishmoel. How piercing, given that Chazal had already compared Yishmoel to a donkey — am hadomeh lechamor. Now, in cruel irony, Yishmoel hurls that slur back upon us.
In these days of struggle with Yishmoel, we dare not be the chamor nosei seforim. Let them keep the title. Let us reclaim our crown — the gadlus ha’adam, the greatness of man — by ensuring our Torah penetrates, transforms, and elevates us. Not a load we carry, but a life we live.
THE FINAL DANCE OF DAAS
All through Sukkos, we circle the sefer Torah with the arba minim, exclaiming “lema’an daas kol amei ha’aretz ki Hashem Hu HaElokim ein od” — praying that the world will come to daas. On Simchas Torah, we rise higher: we circle not with minim but with the Torah itself, proclaiming “Atah hareisa ladaas ki Hashem Hu HaElokim ein od milvado” — we have seen it, we know it. Two years ago, on Simchas Torah, Hamas struck us to break that daas; this year, on Simchas Torah, we answer by dancing as living sifrei Torah, crowned with joy, proving that we are not donkeys burdened by scrolls but a people whose very life is Torah — carrying the daas Elokim with happiness and joy, until all creation declares with us: ein od milvado.
EPILOGUE
The greatest investment you can ever make is in yourself — cultivating your inner gadlus and becoming the adam hashaleim you were meant to be. Life is not about the device in your hand; life is about you.
This alone is reason enough to stay far from these technologies and instead toil to refine our Daas Elyon, so our vision remains clear, deep, and wholly shaped by Torah truth. Every moment spent with a device in your hand is a moment you are not becoming who you were created to be. The world was made for you — for your greatness, your Torah, your neshomah. Don’t trade it for flickering pixels and empty noise. Put it down. Walk away. Return to yourself. Your mind, your heart, your soul — your tzelem Elokim — are waiting. And Hashem is waiting, too.
