Dominika Górnicz

The kabbalistic doctrine of cosmic cycles (shemittot and yovel) or worlds periodically created and returning into the state of chaos has been fully developed in the treatise entitled Sefer ha-Temunah, composed by an anonymous author probably in the mid-fourteenth century within the areas of the Byzantine Empire. The allusive style of the text is balanced by its clear structure, which constitutes the framework for the doctrine of cosmic cycles. This paper investigates the cluster of motifs exposed in the introduction to Sefer ha-Temunah and further developed in the treatise: (a) sefirah Binah and its symbolism, (b) ascension of the vital soul (nefesh) to Binah as a place of its origin, and (c) the concept of primordial Torah (Torah elionah) as a tool by which Binah affects each of the following worlds. The article reveals the relation between these motifs as organized around the notion of sefirah Binah, which is the crucial concept in the process of creation and destruction of worlds presented by the anonymous author of Sefer ha-Temunah.

In recent decades, there has been increasing criticism of the dichotomy which is deeply rooted in research on religion and Judaism, namely the dichotomy between linear and cyclical notion of time with categories of history and myth respectively related to them. The aim of this article is to point out how in one religious tradition different models of time can coexist and be inextricably intertwined. The text which supports this idea is the anonymous kabbalistic treatise entitled Sefer ha-Temunah, probably composed in the mid-14th century within areas of the Byzantine Empire. The main topic of this treatise is the kabbalistic doctrine of cosmic cycles (shemittot and yovel), which is an idea of worlds periodically created and returning into a state of chaos. In this work I adapt Moshe Idel’s view, according to which the elementary structure of time in Judaism in its ritual dimension is based not on relations between precisely defined events, but on the central role played by the number seven and the process of counting to seven itself. The paper examines what role is played by the number seven and the system of associations constructed over it in the cyclical concept of time presented in Sefer ha-Temunah. I also adopt the assumptions of theory of ritual by Roy A. Rappaport to indicate that the source of the idea of cyclical time in cosmic scale is the experience of repeatability of events in ritual. This view is confirmed on the basis of the hermeneutics of Sefer ha-Temunah and allows a better understanding of this text.