Dor Daim

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Dor Daim" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (July 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The Dardaim,^[1][2] or Dor Daim (Hebrew: דרדעים),^[3] are adherents of the Dor Deah (דור דעה, 'generation of knowledge') movement of Orthodox Judaism. Dor Deah is an allusion to the Israelites during the Exodus as recounted by the Hebrew Bible.

The movement was formed in Yemen by Yiḥyah Qafiḥ in 1912 and had its own network of synagogues and schools.^[4][5] The movement may have existed long before its 1912 formalization. According to ethnographer and historian Shelomo Dov Goitein, author and historiographer Hayyim Habshush had been a member of the movement before it had been given the name Dor Deah, writing, "He [i.e., Hayyim Habshush] and his friends, partly under European influence, but driven mainly by developments among the Yemenite Jews themselves, formed a group who ardently opposed all those forces of mysticism, superstition and fatalism which were then so prevalent in the country and strove for exact knowledge and independent thought, and the application of both to life."^[6] Years later, Qafih became the headmaster of a new Jewish school in Sana'a established by the Ottoman Turks, introducing a curriculum that included arithmetic and basics of Arabic and Ottoman Turkish. Yihya Yitzhak Halevi named Qafiḥ's movement Darad'ah, derived from an Arabic broken plural and based on the Hebrew Dor De'ah.^[7]

Its objectives were:

1. To combat the influence of the Zohar and subsequent developments in modern Kabbalah, which were then pervasive in Yemenite Jewish life and which the Dor Daim believed to be irrational and idolatrous.
2. To restore what they believed to be a rational approach to Judaism rooted in authentic textual sources, including the Talmud, Saadia Gaon, and especially Maimonides (also known as Rambam, רמב״ם).
3. To safeguard Baladi-rite prayer, which they believed to be based on their approach.

In the 21st century, there is no official Dor Dai movement. Still, the term is applied to individuals and synagogues within the Yemenite Jewish community, mostly in Israel, who share the original movement's perspectives. Some groups within and outside the Yemenite community hold a somewhat similar stance, describing themselves as talmide ha-Rambam (תלמידי רמב״ם, 'students of the Rambam') rather than Dor Daim.