an excerpt from the Gal Einai website
Below, the article explains what the meaning of "Kabbalah" is. Obviously this word is bandied about these days by virtually anyone with an internet connection. It has mysterious and profound connotations. In reality, the word describes a special quality about the Kabbalah. Someone must explain it to you directly so that the concepts have their correct meaning. It's quite easy for these ideas to be misinterpreted and then re-transmitted, the result being a system of knowledge quite modified from it's original intent. What "Kabbalah" denotes is a tradition of reception. The Gal Einai website explains:
Nonetheless, an additional nuance of meaning can be derived from the association between the word Kabbalah and the first appearance of its root, k-b-l, in the Torah. In Exodus (26:5, 36:12), the root k-b-l (in the word makbilot)appears to imply a state of “corresponding” rather than “receiving.” It is used to describe the “corresponding loops” which, when clasped together, joined the two sections of the overhang covering the Tabernacle.
How did the grammatical root of “correspondence” later come to denote the act of “receiving”? The implicit message is that in order to fully receive some essence, there has to first be a proper calibration, or “correspondence,” between giver and receiver; otherwise what gets transmitted is not the essence, but tangential elements. Proper correspondence is what enables the receiver to fully assimilate the essence of the giver, in the sense implied by the Biblical expression panim b’fanim (“face to face”), describing the “correspondence” between God and Israel at the time when the Torah was given.
Thus Kabbalah more rightly means "correspondence" perhaps the English word "cable" is related to word as is suggested above in the description of the tabernacle.
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