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When David Jacobson became a bar mitzvah five years ago at Oakland’s Reform Temple Sinai, Rabbi Steven Chester addressed his mother, Denise Sherer Jacobson, and said in front of everyone, “Now it’s your turn.”

At the time, Jacobson didn’t take him seriously. After all, her own parents didn’t think of giving their daughter a Jewish education, why should her rabbi?

But the idea stuck in her head.

So, this summer, the Oakland resident became a bat mitzvah. For Jacobson, 55, who has cerebral palsy and uses a motorized wheelchair, the rite of passage was highly symbolic.

“It meant making a public commitment and being able to do now what I couldn’t do when I was young,” she said. “It wasn’t only that I could learn Hebrew and the prayers, but it was also important for the congregation to see what was possible; that it wasn’t just that I who has a disability could do this, it was about what possibilities we all have when we work together.”

Jacobson grew up in the Bronx. Students with disabilities were segregated from the others. She felt envious of her older sister, who attended religious school.

“There was a synagogue right down the block, but I guess nobody thought I could be included,” she said in an interview in the Rockridge home she shares with her husband, Neil, and their son, David. Referring to both the synagogue and her parents, she said, “I don’t think it ever entered their minds that I could go.”

When her sister left her Bible stories textbook lying around, Jacobson read it. “I read those stories over and over again, but never asked my parents to send me,” said Jacobson, who has bright blue eyes and a sense of humor that comes across instantly.

There was a period of time when Jacobson was not particularly involved with Judaism.

But, just as many adults return to Judaism when they have a child, Jacobson and her husband — who also has cerebral palsy — were no exception. After they adopted David, they eventually joined Temple Sinai.

Slowly, Jacobson began getting more involved in congregational life. She spoke to her son’s religious school class about disabled issues. She attended services more often. She helped him study for his bar mitzvah. And even though she couldn’t read or write Hebrew herself, she began picking up some of the prayers.

She recalled taking David and one of his friends to eat at McDonald’s after they’d had a soccer game. They were about 11 at the time, and for some reason, the topic of their Hebrew studies came up. They began chanting the Ve’ahavta prayer right there, in McDonald’s. Seeing her son do such a thing was a pivotal moment for Jacobson.

“It struck me that they felt so comfortable and had no shame in what they were doing,” she said. “I realized that David had a real Jewish identity.”

Not long after David’s bar mitzvah, Rabbi Andrea Berlin, Temple Sinai’s new assistant rabbi at the time, gave a Rosh Hashanah sermon about how the Bible’s Isaac might have had a developmental disability. She spoke of how her own family felt isolated in the Jewish community since she had a brother who was disabled.

That her rabbi would devote her most important sermon of the year to disabled issues was monumental to Jacobson.

“That was exactly my experience,” she said. “My people are supposed to be experienced in dealing with oppression and prejudice, but when it comes to people like me who are different, it’s somehow not so accepting. I found her sermon was a way of opening the door, and once it was open, it was time for me to go through it.”

Jacobson’s activism went from helping coordinate a Shabbat focused on disabilities to chairing a committee specifically instructed to make the synagogue friendlier to the disabled.

She started taking more classes and attending more services, until it seemed time to take Chester up on his challenge.

It took three years of studying, plus voice lessons, but she did it all, including chanting from the Torah and talking about her disability in her speech.

Mary Triest, who worked with Jacobson for a year and a half, said their sessions included breathing exercises. And the two sang very slowly, with time for Jacobson to repeat each phrase.

“We laughed and cried and got through it together,” said Triest, adding that she misses their weekly sessions. “I knew her previously, but we forged this amazing relationship through Judaism and the music.”

Chester said that he was proud of the bat mitzvah because it “takes our synagogue a step further in saying that we’re a synagogue for all people; that Judaism is a religion for anyone who wants to participate and go through a lifecycle event.”

Jacobson, who with her husband and son went to Israel with their synagogue for the first time earlier this summer, said that not crying at her bat mitzvah was her greatest challenge, since everyone else there could not keep their eyes dry.

But clearly still emotional after the event, she said, “I’ve always been a spiritual person, but with Judaism, I feel like I came back home to my roots, to what I always knew in my guts was inside myself.”