Sanctuaries of love and devotion

There is no place like home for the holidays, and as another new year now dawns, signaling the close of the holiday season, it is remarkable just how these special and concluding weeks of our calendar year reunite and restore families in the warm reaffirmation of love and affection.

The primacy of familial love and devotion just happens to be the central theme of the section of the Torah (the Five Books of Moses) that is ritually read this morning in synagogues throughout the world.

According to the Book of Genesis, Jacob’s son Joseph had long been separated from his entire family. A decade or so earlier, his resentful brothers decided it best to spare his life by selling the precocious lad into slavery in Egypt as a caravan headed that way just happened to pass by.

Initially, life for Joseph in Egypt was traumatic. Falsely accused of making unwanted, inappropriate advances by the wife of his master, Potiphar, Joseph found himself summarily thrown into prison where he languished for years.

It was, however, his inherent and uncanny ability to correctly interpret dreams — and Pharaoh’s dreams in particular — that enabled Joseph overnight to rise from the squalor of the prison dungeon to his preeminent stature of being second only to Pharaoh in the powerful monarch’s court.

And now, seated unrecognizable by his brothers who stood before him in the royal court, a warm and poignant healing and reunification of this ancient family ensued when Joseph — now the most powerful among them — cleared the room and revealed: “I am your brother Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. Now, do not be upset or blame yourselves because you sold me here. It was really God who sent me here ahead of you to save people’s lives and to rescue you in this amazing way in order to make sure that you and your descendants survive.”

Ever since that time, Jewish faith and tradition have always regarded the home and family as the primary, indispensable locus of human life and society, as well as the very essence of human civilization itself.

It is within this sacred familial unit that a child receives his or her first impressions of human life and destiny, and obtains the basic layers of his or her educational, cultural and spiritual life. Here, principal habits and values are transmitted from one generation to the next, and the attributes of unbounded and reciprocal love that we deem to be divine are exemplified best.

So, there really is no place like home for the holidays. Joseph knew that as he embraced his brothers in the royal court long ago, and you and I know it still.

As another new year is upon us, let us always be mindful of the words of the ancient psalmist who wrote that if God does not build the house, they that build it simply labor in vain, for if we do allow God to do the building, our families and homes will be the sanctuaries of love and devotion that they are intended to be.

This story was originally published January 4, 2017 at 11:12 AM with the headline "Sanctuaries of love and devotion."