Rabbath was born into a Syrian family of musicians[1] but his only instruction came from a book written by a Parisian bassist Edouard Nanny.
In 1955 he went to Paris, hoping to meet Nanny, who had died nearly ten years prior to his arrival, but he continued to study, and in 1964 recorded for the first time.
Rabbath's major contribution to the field of bass pedagogy is represented in the three-volume Nouvelle technique de la contrebasse.
A pivot is a rocking of the hand to reach a new note where the thumb remains stationary but all fingers gain the technical freedom to move anywhere else possible/required.
Some small examples can be found in method books such as Simandl, but it is a point of contention whether these were intended as crabs or shifts as they do not contain textual explanations.