rabbi
/ˈrabʌɪ
/noun (plural rabbis)
1A Jewish scholar or teacher, especially one who studies or teaches Jewish law.With my rabbi teaching me Torah and how to ask the big questions, it became harder and harder to travel and feel good about it....
- The ideal rabbi is a Torah scholar who guides the members of the Jewish community he serves.
- The interviewee began to study with a rabbi and to consider conversion to Judaism.
1.1A person appointed as a Jewish religious leader.When a community accepts a rabbi as their religious leader, his decisions are binding in all cases....
- Every now and then the loudspeakers burst into life and one of the rabbis or the religious leaders inside relays a message to those outside to tell them to keep up the fight, to keep being strong.
- Those rabbis, priests, imams, gurus and other religious leaders have had it good too long.
Derivatives
rabbinate
- This party promoted Jewish religious education, established religious schools and strongly promoted the authority of the chief rabbinate over all Jewish matters such as marriage and divorce.
- Until the late nineteenth century, with few rabbis to offer spiritual leadership, the rabbinate in England resolved questions of Jewish law.
- After 1878 a chief rabbinate was created, headed by a chief rabbi.
Origin
Late Old English, via ecclesiastical Latin and Greek from Hebrew rabbī 'my master', from raḇ 'master'.