mitzvah
Americannoun
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any of the collection of 613 commandments or precepts in the Bible and additional ones of rabbinic origin that relate chiefly to the religious and moral conduct of Jews.
-
any good or praiseworthy deed.
noun
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a commandment or precept, esp one found in the Bible
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a good deed
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of mitzvah
First recorded in 1720–30; from Hebrew miṣwāh “command, commandment”
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
You usually go there for something—a birthday, a bar mitzvah, a special family Saturday-afternoon outing.
From Slate ● Jun. 25, 2026
Despite the success, he was ousted from Columbia when the company accused him of using company funds to pay for personal expenses, including his son's bar mitzvah.
From BBC ● Jun. 22, 2026
Jacobs: I started my first business when I was 23 years old in 1979 with $5,000 left over from my bar mitzvah money, and that business grew to a billion dollars.
From MarketWatch ● May 6, 2026
Bandel came with his entire family to celebrate his grandson's upcoming bar mitzvah, the Jewish coming-of-age ritual.
From Barron's ● Apr. 9, 2026
And with a deep breath, I launch into my bar mitzvah.
From "Linked" by Gordon Korman
Bar mitzvahs were often marked by expensive parties.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 23, 2026
But the great, and sociologically accurate, joke about bar mitzvahs among the Jewish has three rabbis at lunch each discussing his problem with mice in his synagogue.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 23, 2026
"He said he had the bar mitzvahs covered but I have the weddings covered with Love is All Around. "
From BBC ● Oct. 26, 2024
In its heyday, Sportsmen’s Lodge was a movie studio hangout and a popular venue for weddings, bar mitzvahs and New Year’s parties.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 3, 2024
I’ve skipped every single dance since we grew out of bar mitzvahs.
From "Leah on the Offbeat" by Becky Albertalli
Few Jews follow every letter of Jewish law, choosing to perform those mitzvot, or commandments, which best fit their lifestyle.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 3, 2021
The Torah contains hundreds of commandments, or mitzvot, for Jews to follow in their everyday lives.
From Reuters ● Aug. 25, 2021
She pointed to the Jewish concepts of tikkun olam, meaning “repair the world,” and observing mitzvot, or commandments.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 21, 2019
That’s when she learned about mitzvot as a commandment — and, prodded by class conversations, began studying what the Torah and the Talmud, a book of Jewish oral law, said about abortion.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 6, 2019
The immediate aim of the young men in the Mitzvah Mobiles is to persuade Jews to return to observance of five basic mitzvot that, they say, epitomize the 613 commandments of traditional Jewish Law.
From Time Magazine Archive
Similarly, the Maharsha says the Torah’s 613 mitzvoth are only perceived as a plurality because we’re time-bound humans, even though they together form a singular truth which is indivisible from He who expressed it.
From Salon ● Oct. 22, 2023
Accordingly, his document commits Reform to continuous study of "the whole array of mitzvoth," acknowledging that certain of them "demand renewed attention."
From Time Magazine Archive
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
