Simhah Bunem of Przysucha (1765-1827), Qol Simhah to Gen. 1:26 (Jerusalem, 1992), p. 3
[The word] ’adam (man) is derived from ’eddammeh [i.e., I will imagine]. After God made everything beautiful and glorious He wanted to display His actions so that one would see everything. But those who exist, apart from human beings, do not comprehend anything but themselves. God created man and he is the power that is comprised of the upper and lower realities which all can be imagined in the soul of a person. This is the essence of man that he sees, comprehends, and imagines, like no one else. This is [the import of] “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness (kidemutenu), by the power of imagination (kaf ha-dimyon).
Translated by Elliot Wolfson in Through a Speculum that Shines- Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism, Princeton- Princeton University Press, 1994.
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