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.	kabbalist - an expert who is highly skilled in obscure or difficult or esoteric matters cabalist expert - a person with special knowledge or ability who performs skillfully
	2.	Kabbalist - a student of the Jewish Kabbalah Cabalist Judaism - the monotheistic religion of the Jews having its spiritual and ethical principles embodied chiefly in the Torah and in the Talmud bookman, scholar, scholarly person, student - a learned person (especially in the humanities); someone who by long study has gained mastery in one or more disciplines

Mentioned in

References in periodicals archive

Attempting to establish an affinity between the prominent Safedian kabbalist Isaac Luria and the Renaissance Italian interest in kabbalah is not a simple historical task.

Safed Kabbalah and Renaissance Italy

The report focused on two rabbis, Kabbalist Rabbi Yehuda, and his aide Rabbi Moshe, whose full names were withheld.

Did IDF use Kabbalist Rabbis to Locate Terror Tunnels?

Idel address the preeminent status of the divine feminine power, also referred to as Female, within the theosophical structures of many important Kabbalist, Sabbatean thinkers, and Hasidic masters.

The Privileged Divine Feminine in Kabbalah

Abraham Isaac Kook (7 September 1865--1 September 1935) was an Orthodox rabbi, the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of British Mandatory Palestine, the founder of Yeshiva Mercaz HaRav Kook (The Central Universal Yeshiva), a Jewish thinker, Halakhist, Kabbalist, and a renowned Torah scholar, and arguably one of the most celebrated and influential rabbis of the 20th century.

Song of Teshuvah

Spock's "Live long and Prosper" gesture is taken directly from Jewish priestly traditions and often can be seen on Jewish headstones and Kabbalist texts.

Hands on

In fact, if Schulz was primarily a literary Kabbalist--that is to say, someone who was more interested in the literary than in the religious aspect of the Word per se--as I have argued in "Bruno Schulz: Literary Kabbalist of the Holocaust" (2002)--so indeed was Borges, as Edna Aizenberg has pointed out in Borges: el tejedor del Aleph y otros ensayos (1997).

Borges and Bruno Schulz on the Infinite Book of the Kabbalah

She often also mentions the great kabbalist, poet, first chief Rabbi of Israel, and giant of modern Jewish thought, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935).

Western Art and Jewish Presence in the Work of Paul Celan

The short essay, "Abraham Abulafia, Gershom Scholem and Walter Benjamin on Language," presents a comparative reading of Benjamin and Abulafia, a thirteenth-century kabbalist. Idel forwards this reading because Scholem was studying Abulafia's Sheva' Netivot ha-Torah when Benjamin was writing "On Language" and in correspondence with him.

Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life

She is being courted by two utterly different men: Simon Appel, a descendent of the kabbalist Isaac Luria who covers Vatican affairs for the New York Times, and Armando Pierleoni, the heir to an ancient Italian aristocratic family with strong ties to the Vatican.

Revelations of the Ruby Crystal

Borges concludes his section of El libro de los seres imaginarios on the Golem with a second variation of the myth, explaining that Eleazar de Worms, a Kabbalist who promoted the concept of mystical feats that could be accomplished through the letters of the alphabet, had conserved the formula for creating a Golem.

The absolute text: flawed creation and flawed semiotic systems in Borges's "El Golem"

Maimonides, the great twelfth century rationalist literally worshipped a different God than Nahmanides, the pivotal thirteenth century kabbalist, yet no one today would doubt the Jewishness of both, or question the seminal importance of each in the development of authentic Jewisl thought.

The questioning jew and the Jewish question

"Rabbi Ykov Abu Hasira is the grandfather of Rabbi Yisrael Abuhatzeira, or the Baba Sali, the noted kabbalist who died in 1984 and whose own grave in Netivot, Israel, is also revered by Jews.

Beheira activists oppose Abu Hasira festival