kab·ba·lah

or kab·ba·la or ka·ba·la also ca·ba·la or qa·ba·la or qa·ba·lah (kăb′ə-lə, kə-bä′lə)

1. often Kabbalah A body of mystical teachings of rabbinical origin, often based on an esoteric interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures.

2. A secret doctrine resembling these teachings.

[Medieval Latin cabala, from Hebrew qabbālâ, received doctrine, tradition, from qibbēl, to receive; see qbl in Semitic roots.]

kab′ba·lism n.

kab′ba·list n.

Usage Note: There are no less than two dozen variant spellings of kabbalah, the most common of which include kabbalah, kabala, kabalah, qabalah, qabala, cabala, cabbala, kaballah, kabbala, kaballah, and qabbalah. This sort of confusion is frequently seen with Hebrew and Arabic words borrowed into English because there exist several different systems of romanizing the Hebrew and Arabic alphabets. Often a more exact or scholarly transliteration, such as Qur'an, will coexist alongside a spelling that has been heavily Anglicized (Koran). The fact that the Hebrew and Arabic alphabets do not as a rule indicate short vowels or the doubling of consonants compounds the difficulties. Spellings of kabbalah with one or two b's are equally "correct," insofar as the single b accurately reproduces the spelling of the Hebrew, while the double b represents that it was once pronounced with a double b.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun	1.	kabbala - an esoteric or occult matter resembling the Kabbalah that is traditionally secret cabala, cabbala, cabbalah, kabala, kabbalah, qabala, qabalah arcanum, secret - information known only to a special group; "the secret of Cajun cooking"
	2.	Kabbala - an esoteric theosophy of rabbinical origin based on the Hebrew scriptures and developed between the 7th and 18th centuries Qabbala, Qabbalah, Cabala, Cabbala, Cabbalah, Kabala, Kabbalah theosophy - a system of belief based on mystical insight into the nature of God and the soul Judaism - the monotheistic religion of the Jews having its spiritual and ethical principles embodied chiefly in the Torah and in the Talmud

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

Pray, sir, upon an average what proportion of these Kabbala were usually found to be right?"

"The Kabbala, as you properly term them, sir, were generally discovered to be precisely on a par with the facts recorded in the un-re-written histories themselves; -- that is to say, not one individual iota of either was ever known, under any circumstances, to be not totally and radically wrong."

View in context

He studied philosophy, logic, Islamic history, the Muslim Sufi tradition, Muslim religious sciences, Western literature, and Kabbala.

Famous poet Jaun Elia remembered

He acquired knowledge of philosophy, logic, Islamic history, the Muslim Sufi tradition, Muslim religious sciences, Western literature, and Kabbala. Elia's poetry is full of references to communist revolution and class consciousness.

Jaun remembered

The poet studied philosophy, logic, Islamic history, Muslim Sufi tradition, Muslim religious sciences, Western literature, and Kabbala.

Famous poet Jaun Elia remembered on 16th death anniversary

Scholem was primarily a critic and commentator on the Kabbala and on other literary and philosophical texts, which is very apparent in the poetry in Greetings from Angelus.

Gershom Scholem: Greetings from Angelus: Poems

To illustrate the necessity of the courts as oversight body for the IRSSA, Ontario Court of Appeal Justice Paul Perell offered the analogy of "the kabbala, which has ten emanations of the godhead," to describe the diverse, omnipresent, and conflicting emanations of "Canada" in the settlement (Fontaine v.

Settler Governance and Privacy: Canada's Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement and the Mediation of State-Based Violence

Tras mencion la Kabbala Denudata de Rosenroth, dice en efecto este narrador haber comprado allAaAaAeA "algunos libros de Ginsburg y de Waite", que en la traducciAa inglesa del cuento se convierten en "books on the Kabbalah", presumiblemente The Doctrine and Literature of The Kablah de Waite (donde Eliseo ben Abuya es mencionado como "the Talmudic R.

Conjeturas sobre una omision deliberada: una lectura de "El indigno"

On this matter, Castaldini reaches the Talmud and Kabbala to confront his arguments, but equally suggests an ethical perspective, which he determines with the help of P.

The light beyond the clouds

(13.) Some other confessional narratives and works of fiction that represent Jewish male same-sex desire in the context of yeshiva or hevruta, or in a larger context of Jewish learning and scholarship, include Jiri Mordechai Langer's Die Erotikder Kabbala (1923), Aryeh Stollman's Far Euphrates (2002), Maggie Anton's Rashi's Daughters.

THE JEWISH QUEER CONTINUUM IN YESHIVA NARRATIVES

"The Kabbala, Jung, and the Feminine Image." In Jung and the Monotheisms.

"Offerire a Dio il nostro corpo come vittima mortificata": violenza mistica in Isabella Cristina Berinzaga (1551-1624), Maria Domitilla Galluzzi (1595-1671) e Chiara Isabella Fornari (1697-1744)

To some observers, the Sabbatean movement and Sabbateans were the forerunners of Zionism and hence Jewish nationalism; to some others, they were the actors behind Jewish and Turkish modernity and secularism; yet to some others, they were the founder of a new form of Islamic Sufism and Jewish Kabbala.

Sabbatai Sevi's Conversion to Islam