Boulder Aish Kodesh

In honor of the passing and burial of Ivy Steinmetz-Tansman

The Talmud says that the righteous are called ‘living’ even when they have passed, and the wicked are called ‘dead’ even when they are alive.  When someone righteous passes, particularly someone who is meaningful in our lives, we may well have a sense that they live on with us through our memories of them.  But the Talmud may mean it literally.

Rebbe Nachman unpacks the concept by telling us that we perpetually impart da’at onto one another, and it is through this da’at that we actually continue to live long after our body as expired. Da’at is one of those tricky words that cannot be quite translated.  You know what they say about Eskimos and how many words they have for snow.  Well, Jews have lots of words for the various functions of the mind – chachmah, binah, da’at, ratzon, sechel, machshava, hirhur, and more.  So da’at is a function of the mind – sort of.  It is actually associated with the spinal chord – mind in body.  Embodied intelligence – as opposed to abstract or head-intelligence.

Da’at is how we live in our ideas.  It describes the relationships and experiences that we have in context of our awareness of the world.  So, for example, if I figure out that kids react better when they are treated with respect rather than talked down to, and I build my relationship with my kids around that idea, then the experience I have of those relationships – the bodily, sensed feeling of those relationships – is my da’at.

And da’at can to some extent be give over.  It might even be infectious –  if I live my life in an admirable way, the people around me will attach not only to me but to the way I live.  They will want to live that way themselves.  They will open themselves up to receiving da’at.  A true teacher is living it and teaching it at the same time – living a certain life and explaining why it is so and how it can be emulated.  A false teacher teaches one thing and does another.  He might says ‘do as I say, not as I do’, but this is not possible in Jewish life – we need a model to emulate. Da’at happens mostly by osmosis.  Perhaps this is why the person who was said to emulate da’at more than anyone else was Moses.  (Get it?)

So when a person lives a life of da’at and give it over, that da’at is a part of who they are.  And inasmuch as it is absorbed by others, that person literally lives on through the da’at they have imparted.    Their approach to life, which is the core of who they are, continues to live on in others.

Interestingly enough, Rebbe Nachman writes that da’at that lives in others is not fully aroused until the person dies.  We may not feel a need to truly emulate that person’s da’at while they are alive because, in a sense, we can count on them to do it for themselves.  But when they pass, we realize that we have to take up the mantle and bring it out in our own lives.

Back to that Talmudic passage, the wicked are not even alive when they are alive.  What happens to them?  It is possible they have no da’at at all.  They are not actually relating to the world or having experiences of connection – they are stuck in their own illusory worlds, as the verse on Proverbs says ‘the fool seeks not understanding, but rather the revelation only of his own heart.’

In our Parsha, Ya’a;kov lived.  He spent the remaining years of his life imparting the da’at he had acquired from years of facing challenges and struggling through them.  He gave over the da’at that the Jews would need in order to make it through the exile.  And then, though the Parsha tells us quite clearly that Ya’akov passed away, the Talmud tells us ‘Ya’akov did not die.’  How?  He lives on through our individual and collective capacity to navigate exile and other difficult situations, to build relationships, to stay open to Hashem.  Ya’akov lives in us.