- Shelfmark:
-
Ms. Heb. 4=9822, Recto
The National Library of Israel, Jerusalem, Israel - Creator:
- Joseph Siprut de Gabay
- Date of Creation:
- c. 1734
- Dimensions:
- 87 × 69.5 cm
- Material:
- parchment
- Form:
- rotulus
- Handwriting:
- Sephardic
- Former Shelfmark:
- Tel Aviv, GFC, Ms. 028.012.024
- About the MS:
- This uniquely structured Great Tree was created by Joseph Siprut de Gabay in Amsterdam around 1734. Gabay made three such ilanot: a second is also held by the NLI (Ms. Heb. 4=1045) and a third is in the Lehmann Collection (K85, this witness being the only one bearing the author's signed colophon). Gabay took a novel approach to fashioning a Great Tree that included Vital's concentric circles (V). Instead of opening a long rotulus with V, which would then be followed by the other components, Gabay inserted a modified Great Tree within roughly 40 large circles—all on a single membrane. In doing so, he created the most ramified “Iggulim ve-yosher” (circles and straight [line]) diagram in the corpus. The use of phrases including “light that contains no thought” in the inscriptions suggests that Gabay was familiar with concepts associated with Nathan of Gaza.
- Type:
- Great Tree, Lurianic
- Research Literature:
-
- J. H. Chajes, The Kabbalistic Tree: Ha-Ilan ha-Kabali (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2022), 249–251, 355, 378. J. H. Chajes, "And Now I Will Draw You a Circle: Kabbalistic Diagram as Epistemic Image," Pe‘amim: Studies in Oriental Jewry 150–2018 (152): 235–288, esp. 271–273. [In Hebrew]
- NLI Record:
- NLI Record
- Hebrew Text:
- {prevLink} {text} {nextLink}
- Translation:
- {translation}
- Feature:
-
{feature}
{featureDefinition} - Parent feature:
-
{parentFeature}
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- Zone Name
- {zoneName} {relatedField}
- Similar Objects:
- {similar}