kabbala


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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)
n.
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:
Noun1.kabbala - an esoteric or occult matter resembling the Kabbalah that is traditionally secret
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
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
Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. © 2003-2012 Princeton University, Farlex Inc.
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."
He studied philosophy, logic, Islamic history, the Muslim Sufi tradition, Muslim religious sciences, Western literature, and Kabbala.
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.
The poet studied philosophy, logic, Islamic history, Muslim Sufi tradition, Muslim religious sciences, Western literature, and Kabbala.
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.
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.
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.
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.
(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.
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.