Shalom and welcome to Meaning and Mitzvah!

I thought that we could begin with a brief thought about the meaning of the word mitzvah, especially given the name of this section of the website.

Mitzvah is a noun and is most often understood to mean “a commandment.”  Not surprisingly, mitzvah comes from the Hebrew root tzavah, a verb, which means “to command.”   This in itself is interesting because many Hebrew nouns are built from verbs and in this way Hebrew language is very different from English.  Hebrew is a language of movement, action and, for the more mystically inclined, of energy.  Mitzvah or commandment usually refers to one of the 613 mitzvot (plural of mitzvah) in the Torah. Read more →