Bar and Bat Mitzvah "son" (), while "bat" () means "daughter" in Hebrew, and "mitzvah" () means "commandment" or "law" (plural: "mitzvot"). Thus "bar mitzvah" and "bat mitzvah" literally translate to "son of commandment" and "daughter of commandment". However, in rabbinical usage, the word "bar" means "under the category of" or "subject to". "Bar mitzvah" therefore translates to "an [agent] who is subject to the law". Although the term is commonly used to refer to the ritual itself, in fact the phrase originally refers to the person. The modern method of celebrating becoming a bar mitzvah did not exist in the time of the
Homosexuality and Judaism Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote the foreword to Rabbi Chaim Rapoport's book "Judaism and Homosexuality: An Authentic Orthodox View". In the foreword, Rabbi Sacks has written: "Compassion, sympathy, empathy, understanding - these are essential elements of Judaism. They are what homosexual Jews who care about Judaism need from us today." Modern Orthodox leader Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein is reported to have said that the intensity of Orthodox community's condemnation of homosexuality goes beyond what its status as a religious transgression warrants, and that he feels toward homosexual people "criticism, disapproval, but tempered with an element of sympathy". In both the United States