I want to talk about a specific concept in Jewish mysticism but I want you all to understand that I'm neither married nor over 40 and so you should not take what I am saying very seriously.

Before you read the rest of this thread, understand that part.

(Aside: the more I study this stuff the more I am convinced that, while the men-only restriction is not only misogynist but in fact self-defeating, the age and marriage restrictions on mystical study are there for fairly good safety reasons.)

Okay, so, the tree of life is probably something you've all seen, if not in a religious/mystical context then in some new age or geek shit.

There are these ten nodes of on the tree of life, called Sefirot.

The sefirot get called all sorts of things, particularly in the pop-culture versions disconnected from Judaism, but the way that I currently understand them is that they are emotions and viewpoints; the ways that we relate to the divine and the divine relates to us.

There are ten sefirot, but when you look at the tree of life and county them, there are eleven locations. This is one of those mystical contradiction things, and it has to do with Da'at.

Da'at is not a sefira. It is _the absence of a sefira_. But it is still part of the tree.

This is presented in pop-culture shit in very reductive ways, often as something that was destroyed or wrecked or ruined or lost. I think that this is because pop mysticism loves secrets.

But that's not how I understand Da'at at all. It is, like the others, an emotion and a viewpoint; a way that we relate to the divine and the divine relates to us.

The characteristic of this particular sefira is _absence_ and _emptiness_ and _lack_.

The world is not perfect, and one of the tasks we are given as Jews is to work towards perfecting the world.

Also, we are not perfect, and one of the tasks that is given to us is to work towards perfecting ourselves.

It is important that we have this task because we are the image of ---- in the world.

One of the fundamental attributes of the divine is the act of creation. Since we are divine images, we also have the capacity for creation.

If the world was perfect from the moment of creation, with no place for us to perfect it, then we would be unable to express this fundamental attribute and we would be lesser for it.

But sefira are not merely about our relationship with the divine, they're about the divine's relationship with us!

So there is a second half.

Another fundamental attribute of the divine is that divinity is merciful and grants us grace.

And if the world were made perfect, if we were perfect, there would be no place for the divine to grant us that mercy and that grace and those miracles.

So (like all sefirot) Da'at allows us to express our own divine nature, and allows the divine nature to be expressed towards us.

And the way that it does that is through its absence.

In the perfect world which may yet come to pass, would there be eleven sefirot? Would da'at be replaced be some other experience?

I can't begin to answer that question.

Da'at is neither vestigial nor debased. It is central to the tree of life, and directly below Keter (the fullness of the divine in its complete and absolute being!) It -- or rather, the absence of it -- is absolutely necessary to come to an understanding of the divine.

Leonard Cohen discusses Da'at when he sings "there is a crack in everything / that's where the light gets in." There are fundamental aspects of divinity -- both in ourselves and in the divine -- that are only possible in an incomplete world.

I've had PTSD from early childhood. I have always had a very cracked, fragmentary experience. My life has been and still is very much about trying to assemble these fragments, in order that I might create myself.

It is so important to me to have my experience not only reflected in a religious cosmology, but central to the whole of it.

(reminder to not take this seriously: I am sure that in some years my understanding of Da'at will have changed entirely.)

One more thing! By the time that these mystical concepts were compiled, Jews had already lived under brutal oppression and exile for centuries.

I don't think it's an accident that part of our mystical and emotional understanding of the universe includes the emotions that modern society labels PTSD.