Innovative Ritual: Adopting a Surrogate Parent as an Adult

A friend and Wexner classmate RJM posted to the Wexner listserve (which is pretty much the craziest font of eclecticity (not a word) I've ever seen) about an adult congregant who was looking to adopt her surrogate father in a formal way as a way of recognizing their relationship. I volunteered to help out with a ritual, and came up with a responsive reading based on the idea of choice in תנ"ך, Ruth-and-Naomi, and flipping the בר מצווה ritual on its head (where, traditionally, a father's obligation to rear his son has been fulfilled and his now exempt from responsibility for his son). I wanted to find a way to take about commitment and binding, but most of the texts I could think of were marriage related, using the language of קדושה or ארושה - and I didn't feel that adult woman + older adult man was a good place for marriage language.

Anyway, the ceremony was, according to my friend, a wonderful success. The final version she used is here. My original (similar to but somewhat different from the one she used) is here.