The Dardaim, or Dor Daim (Hebrew: דרדעים), are adherents of the Dor Deah (דור דעה, 'generation of knowledge'). Dor Deah is an allusion to the Israelites during the Exodus as recounted by the Hebrew Bible.

The movement was formally formed in Yemen by Yiḥyah Qafiḥ in 1912 and had its own network of synagogues and schools. 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." 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.

Its objectives were:

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.

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". This is attested by the writings of several well known Rabbis such as Nahmanides, Obadiah of Bertinoro, and Yiḥyah Salaḥ. The Yemenite tradition is therefore separate from both the Sephardi and the Ashkenazi streams in Judaism.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, the teachings of Kabbalah, especially in the form advocated by Isaac Luria and his school, became increasingly popular in Yemen as in other countries. This did not always mean a change in the liturgy; Luria himself held that it was essential to keep to the form of prayers inherited from one's ancestors to reach the gate in Heaven appropriate to one's tribe. However, many individuals and communities around the world (principally Mizrahi Jews but also Ḥasidim) discarded their ancestral rites in favour of the modified Sephardic rite used by Luria and his immediate circle, on the reasoning that this form of prayer reached a "thirteenth gate" for those who did not know their tribe.

This division would be reflected among the Yemenite Jews. The Shami sub-group adopted a Sephardic-influenced rite, in no small part due to its essentially being forced upon them. Others retained the Yemenite ancestral liturgy, whether or not they accepted the Zoharic/Lurianic Kabbalah theologically. In the 18th century, to ensure the continued use of the Yemenites' original text, Yiḥyah Salaḥ promoted compromise and introduced a new edition of the Baladi-rite prayer books he created. It substantially followed the traditional Yemenite itual but made some concessions to the Kabbalists, for example, by incorporating the hymn Lekhah Dodi. This new standard became known as Baladi "of the country" (referring to Yemen), in contrast to the adopted Lurianic Sephardic ritual, which was known as Shami"northern," (meaning Palestinian or Damascene). The distinction also affected questions of Jewish law; the Baladi community continued to follow Maimonides almost exclusively, while the Shami community also accepted the Shulchan Aruch.

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, 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. Today, as the majority of Yemenite Jewry are outside of Yemen and in closer contact with Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews, it could be perceived that the proportion with which the Dor Daim perspective is spreading (though in a different form than the original) is not much different from the rate at which Yemenite Jews as a whole are giving up their unique traditions and assimilating into mainstream Judaism.