How to Use mitzvah in a Sentence

mitzvah

noun
  • The young man orders the bar-mitzvah boy off the bimah.
    — Peter Orner, The New Yorker, 12 Aug. 2021
  • And to Kevin, for a gift even greater than the mitzvah of matchmaking.
    — Sari Botton, Longreads, 15 Feb. 2018
  • Waving the four species is a mitzvah according to the Torah.
    — Jamie Kravitz, Woman's Day, 24 Aug. 2023
  • If William O’Haire was going to take the legal road with him, well, goodbye to the mitzvah.
    — Ben Kesling, WSJ, 28 May 2021
  • Thank you, God, for the mitzvah [commandment] of lighting the candles.
    — Mary Beth McCauley, The Christian Science Monitor, 8 Nov. 2019
  • By the Great Synagogue, a bald guy with a big black yarmulke stops us and mumbles something about a mitzvah.
    — Etgar Keret, The New Yorker, 20 June 2022
  • These three different messages of kol are echoed in the mitzvah of shofar.
    — Rabbi Avi Weiss, sun-sentinel.com, 23 Sep. 2019
  • The aid is not viewed as an impediment to fulfilling the mitzvah.
    — Rabbi Avi Weiss, Sun Sentinel, 3 Oct. 2022
  • Gun violence in America has risen to the point where anything short of a massacre seems like a mitzvah.
    — Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 19 Apr. 2022
  • Harold Katz didn't require a crash course in Hebrew before his bar mitzvah next week in Wilmette.
    — Ron Grossman, chicagotribune.com, 24 May 2017
  • Rabbis in the camp decreed that even one minute spent inside was a sufficient mitzvah, or good deed.
    — New York Times, 21 Sep. 2019
  • For Wolf, this mitzvah was personal for him because Zarchi is his brother-in-law.
    — Sergio Carmona, Jewish Journal, 20 Oct. 2017
  • In Judaism, it would be called, for those who heard it and those who played and those who will hear it in the future (microphones hung over the stage), a mitzvah — a divine good deed.
    — Los Angeles Times, 19 Jan. 2023
  • All this may have been particularly hurtful to a boy who, on the day of his bar mitzvah, sat on the roof of his house and pelted his parents’ guests with oranges.
    — David Denby, The New Yorker, 16 Jan. 2017
  • On the individual level, as the Talmud states, there is no reward for doing a mitzvah in this world – that comes in the world hereafter.
    — Rabbi Avi Weiss, Jewish Journal, 15 May 2017
  • There’s also the mitzvah of the joy that this brings, not only for Joey, his mother and us at Giborim U, but also the entire community.
    — Sergio Carmona, sun-sentinel.com, 29 Aug. 2019
  • Ari, once named Ali, wants to perform the funeral service and dreams of becoming a rabbi, but will need a pan-gender bart mitzvah first.
    — Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 26 Sep. 2019
  • Sherry and Christian Rauh's 13-year-old son Julian recently had his bar mitzvah through the program.
    — Sergio Carmona, Jewish Journal, 30 June 2017
  • Each Shmita year, the entire Jewish people would gather in Jerusalem to perform the mitzvah of Hakhel — gathering.
    — Jacob Gurvis, sun-sentinel.com, 7 Sep. 2021
  • On the individual level, the Talmud states, there is no reward for doing a mitzvah in this world; that comes in the hereafter (Kiddushin 39b).
    — Rabbi Avi Weiss, Sun Sentinel, 23 May 2022
  • The shofar is an ancient musical horn typically made of a ram's horn and is the central mitzvah, or observance, of Rosh Hashanah.
    — Evan Casey, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 17 Sep. 2020
  • From Israel, a comedy about a bar mitzvah gone horribly wrong.
    — Chris Hewitt, Twin Cities, 11 June 2017
  • Sharing hamantaschen is one interpretation of the Purim mitzvah (good deed).
    — Joan Elovitz Kazan, Journal Sentinel, 27 Feb. 2023
  • But a bat-mitzvah would mark a young woman’s exit from participation.
    — Lisa Fishbayn Joffe, The Conversation, 15 Mar. 2022
  • In the end, Beethoven’s relation to the bar mitzvah or to the Beckett work which received its world premiere after intermission was irrelevant.
    — Marcus Overton, sandiegouniontribune.com, 8 June 2017
  • In Judaism, tzedakah—roughly, charity—is a moral obligation, a mitzvah.
    — Magda Teter, The New York Review of Books, 29 Apr. 2021
  • In Judaism, tzedakah—roughly, charity—is a moral obligation, a mitzvah.
    — Magda Teter, The New York Review of Books, 29 Apr. 2021
  • In Judaism, tzedakah—roughly, charity—is a moral obligation, a mitzvah.
    — Magda Teter, The New York Review of Books, 29 Apr. 2021
  • In Judaism, tzedakah—roughly, charity—is a moral obligation, a mitzvah.
    — Magda Teter, The New York Review of Books, 13 Apr. 2021
  • While donors perform a mitzvah in giving, recipients play no less a role in the mitzvah by providing the opportunity to give.
    — Rabbi Avi Weiss, Sun Sentinel, 14 Nov. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'mitzvah.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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