Rebecca, at a Bat Mitzvah, it's traditional for a Jewish father to give a short speech telling his daughter what a wonderful young woman she's become, how smart and pretty and caring she has grown to be and how proud she has made him.

Consider all that said, and let's move on. 

My speech is not going to be short because I I know this may be the last time in your life that you have to sit and listen to me. So get comfortable.

At first, I thought of talking about Jewish ideas of pre-destination, and how those ideas echoed an old Chinese legend that there's an invisible red thread that connects people on this earth who are destined to meet, a thread that can twist and turn, but never break.

But you've already said so beautifully what we both believe: That you and I did not become a family by chance.  We were brought together - for a reason.

But - what reason? As I thought about it over the past year, a vision slowly started to form in my mind.  It seemed to explain why that guardian angel of yours was kept so busy straightening our tangled red thread, making sure that you and I should eventually find each other.

My vision goes back over 50 years to when I was a small boy and my father sat me on his knee, took my hand and divided my small fingers this way and said: "This is the sign of the Cohen. You're a Cohen, as I am, as my father was, and as his father was...It's our family tradition, passed along from father to son for a thousand years, that our forefathers, the Cohanim, were priests of the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, descended from the first High Priest of Israel, Aaron, the brother of Moses."

That was a romantic story that thrilled me as a boy - until, when I was older, I discovered that being a Cohen, a kind of Jewish nobility by inheritance, didn't mean much in a modern democratic world.  In some congregations today, a Cohen is given the honor of being the first person called up to the reading of the Torah, as I was here today.  In a much smaller number of synagogues, on the High Holy days of Rosh Hashonah and Yom Kippur, the Cohanim stand before the congregation, with their hands held before them like this, and they bless the people, chanting the ancient Priestly Benediction found in the Torah. 

Like my father before me, I've never taken part in that ceremony, because I felt I wasn't devout enough to deserve the honor. But I was still proud of my inheritance - even if it was just a legendary tradition that I was descended from ancient Priests.

Then ten years ago, Jewish scientists and doctors in America, Europe and Israel conducted DNA tests of thousands of men who shared the oral tradition of being Cohanim - and found an identical pattern of 12 markers on the male inherited Y-Chromosome in over 80% of these men, no matter what their last name might be, no matter from what part of the world their family came. All shared this same uncommon genetic pattern.

As you now, I took a DNA test last year - and, yes, I have the same 12 markers  - the exact same genetic pattern as a Jewish journalist in Casablanca, a psychiatrist in Stockholm, a Doctor in Rio De Janeiro. The scientists said it was possible that we were all descended from someone who lived in the days of the Exodus,  but it was even more likely that our common ancestor went back further - as much as 5000, even 10000 years.

What does all this have to do with you and your Bat Mitzvah?

After that test, something occurred to me - something that once would have saddened me.  If I'm the descendant of a single strand of the human tree, going back 5000 years, then I'm also - the last leaf on that strand. I have no biological son, no biological children at all, so I'm the end of that ancient line.

But now, I don't find that sad at all. Because now I know that there's something much better than looking back into a dim past.  Now I can look ahead into a hopeful future, because I've been given the privilege of helping to bring into being an entirely new strand in the long history of the Jewish people.

Rebecca, that strand begins with you. 

On your Bat Mitzvah website, there's a just-for-fun poll in which you ask visitors to vote on the question: "What will I be 10 years from now?"  The choices are veterinarian, which has the winning vote, with playwright and lawyer-politician, as runner-ups.

There was a fourth choice, but it only got one vote - mine. That last choice was - MATRIARCH. 

Now I know what you're thinking: You can relate to treating little puppies and maybe writing theater scripts in your spare time. But the dictionary defines Matriarch as "a woman who is the head - and the ruler - of her family and its descendants" - I know: That sounds just too, too - AWESOME.

Well today I'd like to lay out for you the simple six-step process by which you could become a Matriarch, let's just call it - "a Founding Mother" -  among our people.

You probably don't realize that you've already taken 3 of those 6 steps, and have started the fourth.

You took the first step on December 20, 1996.  That wasn't the day I adopted you, but 72 long hours later, when you first smiled at me, kissed me, and called me "father".  That was the day you adopted me - and took the first step.

You took the second step four months later - though that time you had no choice. In April 1997, we drove up to San Francisco to the Mikveh, the Jewish ritual bath, where your Auntie Margie took you into the pool and dunked you in the water while three Orthodox Rabbis stood there chanting in Hebrew and then pronounced you officially Jewish, a daughter of the children of Israel, even under the strictest ritual law.

That wasn't a common ceremony.  It happened only because of the peculiar circumstances of your life and mine.  Jewish identity descends through the maternal line. If a mother is not Jewish, then for a child to become "legally" Jewish, the mother must convert, which means a very long process of study and reflection.

But you had no mother - none at all.  Not only were you an orphan, but your adopted father was a bachelor, one of the very few single men who'd been allowed to adopt a Chinese baby girl.  I had never been married and I had no intention of getting married in the foreseeable future.  And so those Rabbis sighed with relief. You were that rarity - what the old Black spiritual called a "motherless child".  And so the moment you came crying out of the water, you became instantly part of the Jewish people.

And so you took the second step. But at age 2 it wasn't your decision or with your consent.  I made that decision - just as I then kept my promise to the Rabbis - to raise you in the Jewish tradition.

But the third step was very much your choice  - which you made just a few minutes ago, when you become a Bat Mitzvah.

When we started to study for this 3 years ago - even 10 years ago, when I first taught you to read Hebrew letters - I took today for granted.  And so did you.  You did it to make me happy.  But as you discovered how much work it would really be, you started to have doubts.  We had some royal fights when I got mad because you weren't sticking to your Torah studies and I went off ranting and raving, "Forget the whole thing! The Bat Mitzvah's off!" 

But then one day, a remarkable thing happened.  You announced to me, "We will not discuss this any more. I WILL have a Bat Mitzvah.  And it's not to make you happy.  It's because - I - want - it." It was your decision, and an important one. It was Rebecca deciding to stand up before all the people who love her and declaring her identity: "I am Chinese", you were saying. "And I am Jewish. And today, I become a Chinese Jewish woman."

And so you took the third step - and started the fourth.  Because the fourth step is simply continuing to grow up - into that loving, joyful, kind, sensitive and caring young woman that we've seen standing here today, who will one day go off on her own into a sometimes frightening world, armed with all the loving-kindness in your heart and under the protective wing of your special guardian angel.

The fifth step? Well, thirty years ago, I would have said:  "Rebecca, now that you've been Bat Mitzvah, I live for the day when I will see you happily brought to the Chupah, to the marriage canopy."  But I won't say that today, because as a bachelor father, I'm the last one who has the right to tell you that marriage and parenthood go together like a horse and carriage.  Sometimes you have to just take the horse and get where you're going a lot faster.

So while I wish you the future happiness of finding a loving partner, a soul-mate in life, that isn't the fifth step. It's becoming a mother, on whatever path God may lead you.  And knowing you as I do, I feel certain it will happen.

After that, there's only one step left - and we finally come to that vision of mine.

This is my vision: When you have a child, let's say it's a daughter - I'd like that, though I'm not changing any more diapers - you'll sit her on your lap, and you'll tell her the fairy tale you told us today, the same one I told you when you were little - about the angel, and how, by the Grace of God, we became a family.

You'll tell her that story again and again, until she knows it by heart, and then - as my father once told me the tradition of the Cohanim - you'll tell your daughter that she must tell this same story to HER children and her children's children, so that it's passed on and on and on. And over time, as the generations and centuries go by, our fairy tale will become a new oral tradition, and then, a legend, the Jewish legend of the descendants of Rivka Channa Lisha - the Matriarch.

And a thousand years from now - if the human race survives that long - I can imagine thousands of little boys and girls all over the world who will know the tale of the orphan Baby Rebecca, who was sent forth from China to become the Founding Mother of an entirely new branch on the Tree of Life of the children of Israel.

And I like to think that just one of those thousands of children, maybe a little girl very much like you once were, will be curious enough to ask her mother,

"Who was that man in the story - the father of our dear Rebecca?".

And her mother will say, "No one really knows. After all these centuries, who remembers? He wasn't famous, he wasn't rich, he wasn't even a Tzaddik, a righteous man.  We only know that he was proud to be the last of 100 generations of Cohanim.  And, according to our legend, on the day of our Rebecca's Bat Mitzvah, he told her that he truly believed that it was for the sake of all those more worthy ancestors, that God chose him, and led him far to the East - and there, gave him the greatest gift and the greatest blessing of his life."

Rebecca, the only gift I have for you today is my cloudy vision of the future.  And my blessing for you is nothing new.  In fact, it's the oldest blessing in recorded human history, the oldest words of the Bible ever discovered by archaeologists. It's the blessing entrusted by God to my ancestors. You've heard it almost every night of our life together - from that very first night in China - but today I give you this blessing, the Benediction of the Cohanim, for the last time as a child, and the first time as a woman. 

And if you close your eyes and listen very carefully, with your wonderful imagination, you may hear the voices of all those Cohanim who have come before me since the Exodus, all those whose blood I share, standing with me today as I bless you according to the ancient tradition.

Yivorechcha...
Ya-ehr...
Yi-sah...

Rebecca, wherever you may go and whatever you may do in the years ahead, may the God of my ancestors always bless you and protect you.

May God's countenance shine upon you and be gracious unto you.

May God turn his countenance unto you and always bring you Peace.

And let us all say - AMEN!