The fourth blessing reads: You grace humans with the power to know, and You teach insight to frail mortals. Grace us that we may receive from You the power of knowing, insight and foresight. Blessed are You YHVH, who graciously bestows knowledge. The essence of each request is expressed in its final summation—the phrase that always begins, “Blessed are You…” Therefore, this first request is for knowledge (daat). Insight and foresight are only meaningful as stepping stones that lead to knowledge. Objective and holistic thinking is called in Hebrew chochmah. This is the power to conceive something in a general sense, to step back, observe and objectively grasp the whole picture, which is greater than the sum of its parts and details. Therefore, chochmah is also referred to as haskel—the word preferred by many prayer books—because the word kel means “all/whole.” Chochmah is also defined as foresight. The Talmud explains that those who have chochmah are able to see the consequences, the future outcome of their thoughts and actions. Subjective and analytical thinking is called in Hebrew binah. This is the power to perceive and distinguish. Instead of applying chochmah to understand from the outside as observers, we apply binah to understand from within, as participants. The Talmud defines binah as the ability to understand “something from within something.” Therefore, binah is the power of insight, which includes the ability to probe, investigate, elaborate, extrapolate and come to discern and formulate the details. According to Kabbalah, the male sperm cell symbolizes chochmah, and the female womb symbolizes binah. The man puts into the woman a microscopic sperm cell that she turns into a baby. Chochmah is an idea in its seed form. Binah develops that germ of an idea, formulating and elaborating it in full detail. Indeed, this is a process of conception. Let’s take smoking as an example. We all know that smoking is hazardous to our health. This general knowledge is an application of chochmah. But after doing more research and learning about lung cancer and emphysema statistics, we can say, “Ahh, now I understand.” This knowledge of the finer details is binah. However, even though we now have more insight into the matter, we continue to smoke. But then we visit a cancer ward and speak to patients dying from lung cancer. Now we really get it! We leave completely shaken up, fully realizing the dangers of smoking. And we commit to never smoking another cigarette. So what happened? Visiting the hospital didn’t give us any new ideas. We already knew that people were dying from cancer. The difference is that, after the visit, our knowledge became real. This point of realization is daat. We are deeply impacted by what we only thought about (chochmah) and understood (binah) previously. We have finally realized the danger of smoking, and we are moved to take action and stop. Daat, therefore, is realization—processing our thoughts and insights until they become real. First we have a general idea, then we formulate it in more elaborate detail, and then it hits us and we finally acquire it.