According to ethnographer and historian, Shelomo Dov Goitein, author and historiographer, Hayyim Habshush had been a member of this 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] It was only some years later, when Rabbi Yihya Qafih became the headmaster of the new Jewish school in Sana'a built by the Ottoman Turks and where he wanted to introduce a new curriculum in the school whereby boys would also learn arithmetic and the rudiments of the Arabic and Turkish languages that Rabbi Yihya Yitzhak Halevi gave to Rabbi Qafih's movement the name Daradʻah, a word which is an Arabic broken plural made-up of the Hebrew words Dör Deʻoh, and which means "Generation of Knowledge.
Since the early Middle Ages the Yemenite Jewish community followed the teachings of Maimonides on almost all legal issues, and their prayer book was substantially identical to the text set out in his "Sefer Ahavah".
In the 18th century, Yemen produced an influential Kabbalist in Shalom Sharabi, who headed the Beit El Synagogue in Jerusalem, the elite seclusion centre for developing and praying in the Lurianic system.
Over time more and more Kabbalistic practices became popular among the Yemenite Jews to the point that the Baladi community became localized as a significant population only around the area of Yemen's capital city, Sana'a.
For example, Rabbi Yosef Qafeh relates one of many Yemenite customs for "חינוך הבית" whereby they would bake plain bread without salt and prepare "the table of appeasement.
[citation needed] Some of the original Dor Dai synagogues in Israel survive, but have moved nearer to the mainstream Baladi tradition in the same way as Rabbi Yosef Qafiḥ.
Dor Daim place particular importance on the Jewish doctrine of the absolute unity of God, which they believe has been compromised by the popular forms of Kabbalah prevalent today.
In support of this, they appeal to the philosophical writings of various Geonim and Rishonim such as Saadia Gaon, Rabbenu Bahya ibn Paquda, Rabbi Yehuda Halevi and Maimonides.
The following points concerning the Almighty's Unity are in particular emphasized both by Dor Daim and talmide ha-Rambam: Note: None of these is controversial, as mainstream Judaism has substantially the same beliefs.
In the book Milhamoth HaShem, one finds that possibly the most fundamental issue the Dor Daim had (and have) with the popularly accepted understanding of Kabbalah concerns the absolute transcendent Singularity/Oneness of the Creator and the laws against avodah zarah (forbidden forms of devotion/idolatry).
The Dor Daim believe that the popular forms of Kabbalah prevalent today are contrary to the absolute and incomparable Unity of the Creator and violate various laws against idolatry and polytheism, in particular the prohibition against Ribbuy Reshuyoth (worshipping or conceiving of a multiplicity of reigns) referred to by Maimonides in his Mishneh Torah.
[citation needed] In the Sefer Yetzirah, unlike in later Kabbalah, there is no question of the Sefirot being Divine entities or even attributes: they are simply the numerals, considered as the dimensional parameters used in the creation of the world.
A figure spoken of frequently in the esoteric works on Kabbalah, particularly in the Zohar, is what has come to be known as the "lesser countenance" (Aramaic: זעיר אנפין), which term and its usage is believed to have been of Gnostic origin, although in later years was seen by the kabbalists as one of the angels in heaven associated with the emotive faculties of the soul and with the concept of "finite power."
Dor Daim, indeed all Meqoriim, consider such practices absolutely antithetical to the most essential principles of what they believe to be historical Judaism: to serve the One Incomparable Creator without joining partners or mediators together with Him in our prayers and worship.
[citation needed] Basing themselves on Talmudic sources codified in the Mishneh Torah, they believe this to be a prohibition instituted by the Sages of the Great Court established under Moses - the Sanhedrin.
[22] However they did believe, in reliance on old authorities such as Joseph Caro[23] and David ibn abi Zimra, that the views of Maimonides ought to be authoritative not only in Yemen but also in Eretz Yisrael, Egypt and the Near East generally.
[citation needed] Others may accept the Lurianic version of Kabbalah but retain the ancestral liturgy on the ground that, even according to Luria, this is the Kabbalistically correct thing to do.
[citation needed] It is undeniable that, while there are sometimes differences between Dor Daim and talmide ha-Rambam as a whole—over certain details of practical Jewish law and the issue of the Zohar—the two communities continue to have strong links.
[citation needed] The dispute between Dor Daim and Aqashim has some similarities to that between Mitnaggedim and Hasidim, with the Vilna Gaon and his heirs standing for Talmudic intellectualism and a Halachic worldview like Rabbi Yiḥyah Qafiḥ.
Although proficient in, and recommending the necessity for mathematics and sciences to understand the Talmud, and highly astute in lower textual critical emendation of Judaic texts, while revering Maimonides for his holiness and legal greatness, the Gaon berated Rambam for being "misled by the accursed philosophy" in rejecting demons, incantations and amulets.
The Baal Shem Tov himself declared that esoteric study of Kabbalah symbolism outside his Hasidic inner soul holiness experiential psychologisation of it, by those not purified, was forbidden and lead to the Sabbatean false physical anthropomorphism of it by their impure desires, the cardinal conceptual sin in Kabbalistic understanding.
In his Nefesh HaHayyim, Chaim of Volozhin, founder of the Litvish Yeshiva movement and main theorist of Mitnaggedism, responds to the theology of Schneur Zalman's Tanya based on different interpretation of the same Kabbalistic sources.
When however it came to practical legal rulings, an activity of which they steered clear when possible, they adhered to the normative Ashkenazi version of Halakha, as set out in the Shulchan Aruch and the glosses of Moses Isserles.
Some thinkers of a Modern Orthodox mitnagged cast of thought, however, such as Yeshayahu Leibowitz, reject Zoharic Kabbalah and praise the work of Rabbi Yiḥyah Qafiḥ.
However, they cannot be classified as "Rambamists" in the sense required, as their religious law is based squarely on the Bet Yosef of Joseph Caro, subject to certain liturgical customs peculiar to themselves.
Rabbi Yiḥyah Qafiḥ, for instance, held that one must not use parchments written by, or eat meat slaughtered by, believers in Kabbalah because these are dedicated to Zeir Anpin (one of the partzufim of the 10 sephirot), a concept apparently distinct from the Unfathomable Almighty Creator.
Kabbalah, in its most literal and "realistic" sense, has in fact been extensively popularised, with the result that many otherwise pious Jewish groups are now permeated with superstition, so that the whole enterprise is now more trouble than it is worth.
Further, the claim that these works, on their true interpretation, are harmless metaphorical imagery fully compatible with monotheism is disingenuous: the origins of most Kabbalistic concepts in pagan systems such as Neoplatonism and Gnosticism are too glaringly obvious to be ignored.
Both started out as modernising movements designed to remove some of the cobwebs and allow the religion to compete in the modern world, and both have ended up as fundamentalist groups lending themselves to alliances with political extremism.
Both disapprove of mysticism (Kabbalah or Sufism) and praying at tombs; both tend to dismiss more moderate coreligionists as unbelievers (see Takfir); both cut out centuries of sophisticated legal scholarship in favour of an every-man-for-himself "back to the sources" approach.