Believe me it was no _Mitzvah_." _Mitzvah_ is a "portmanteau-word." It means a commandment and a good deed, the two conceptions being regarded as interchangeable.
"Nay, thou errest there," answered Moses.

"'Gittel was not a phoenix which alone ate not of the Tree of Knowledge and lives for ever.

Women have no need to live as long as men, for they have not so many _Mitzvahs_ to perform as men; and inasmuch as"-- here his tones involuntarily assumed the argumentative sing-song--"their souls profit by all the _Mitzvahs_ performed by their husbands and children, Gittel will profit by the _Mitzvah_ I did in bringing over my mother, so that even if she did die through it, she will not be the loser thereby.

It stands in the Verse that _man_ shall do the _Mitzvahs_ and live by them.
To live is a _Mitzvah_, but it is plainly one of those _Mitzvahs_ that have to be done at a definite time, from which species women, by reason of their household duties, are exempt; wherefore I would deduce by another circuit that it is not so incumbent upon women to live as upon men.

Nevertheless, if God had willed it, she would have been still alive.