A Home in Winter

The winter solstice is Homeless Person's Memorial Day. I was invited to speak at the annual memorial service for clients of Housing Forward, our local service provider for people struggling with housing insecurity, who had died in the past year. I decided to include these remarks in my Shabbat sermon, which I dedicated to deepening our awareness of local homelessness.

A Home in Winter
 
Yesterday was the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year and the beginning of the winter season. Many religions, including our own, celebrate festivals of light roughly in the wintertime; but Judaism does not actually mark the solstice itself as a holiday. Two thousand years ago, the Rabbis observed Romans celebrating festivals before and after the solstice and accounted for that practice with this midrash (BT Avodah Zarah 8a):
 
When Adam the first man saw that the day was progressively diminishing, he said: Woe is me; perhaps because I sinned the world is becoming dark around me and will return to tohu vavohu, chaos and disorder. … He arose and spent eight days in fasting and in prayer.
 
Once he saw the season of Tevet, [that is, the winter solstice] and saw that the day was progressively lengthening, he said: This is the order of the world. He went and observed [another] festival for eight days.
 
Upon the next year, he observed both [eight-day] festivals. Adam established them for the sake of Heaven, but they [the gentiles of later generations] established them for the sake of idol worship.
 
Even though a solstice holiday doesn’t make its way into our own calendar, the Rabbis nevertheless see the appeal of celebrating holidays around the winter solstice. Exposure to the elements makes us vulnerable and the sense that the world as we know it is fading away can be scary. Even Adam, protected in the Garden of Eden, is worried for his safety; how much the more so should his descendants worry about their own survival.
 
/
 
We are blessed, most of us, with stable shelter from which to observe the changing seasons. But we also know that this is not a universal blessing. December 21, the first day of winter, is observed by many communities as Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day. Each year, our own Housing Forward marks this occasion with a memorial service honoring their clients who have died in the past year. I have been privileged to speak at this service for the past two years as part of our congregation’s commitment to Housing Forward and its mission to end homelessness.
           
I’d like to share with you tonight the comments I made yesterday, to extend into our own community the spirit of commemoration of some of those who have died in the past year after struggling with hardships that kept them from stable shelter.
 
/
 
In the stories we tell our children, characters are often symbolized by their homes. Each of the three Little Pigs, for instance, is known by their houses of straw, sticks, or brick; and the seductively sweet cottage Hansel and Gretl discover reflects the monstrous appetite of the witch within. Heroes in such stories live comfortably in palaces while the wicked prowl the swamps or hide away in dark, foreboding castles.
​
These stories are portraits of the way we think the world should work: We want people of good character to have good homes. But as noble as this fantasy might be, we know it falls far short of the real world. Good, wise, hardworking people can struggle to find a home of their own; and their challenges are only harder because of our society’s association of good homes with good people.

We can find a wiser and more compassionate lesson in a well-known story, common to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, a story that Jews around the world are reading in our weekly Torah cycle at this time of year. I refer to the story of Joseph, son of Jacob, proud owner of the coat of many colors and famous interpreter of dreams. Joseph never owns a home of his own, and he faces many, many hardships before achieving independence and success. As a tormented younger brother in his childhood home and as a slave in an Egyptian officer’s manor, in the dark pits of Pharaoh’s prison and in the opulence of his palace, Joseph is always the same. He works hard, tells the truth, and searches for the good in every situation. We cannot judge Joseph by where he lives, only by how he lives—and as one of the Bible’s greatest heroes, we can only conclude that Joseph lives well.

And when it is time for Joseph to die at last, we gain one last insight about the meaning of “home.” Joseph has spent his entire adult life in Egypt, where he has achieved phenomenal success. And yet, on his deathbed, he adjures his brothers to swear that they will bury his bones in the Promised Land. With his dying wish, Joseph tells his family—and all of us—that “home” is a sacred place, built of memory and hope, a place that we can call our own even if we don’t live there.

Today, we gather to remember clients of Housing Forward who faced many hardships, hardships that distanced them from shelter and brought them into a life of uncertainty. And yet we know that their character was not defined by where they lived but by the hopes and dreams they lived by. Their real lives were far different from the fairytales we dream about, but though our society may have called them “homeless,” we remember that each of these lost loved ones made untraditional “homes” even throughout the most difficult stops along their life journeys. Their legacies live on, and we pray that their memories always be for a blessing for those who now bear their stories.
 
/
 
May we keep the lesson of Joseph alive in our own hearts, seeing value in others not for where they live or what they have but rather for who they are. May we remain ever thankful for our own stable shelters, leveraging our many blessings for the benefit of others. And though the winter ahead of us will get colder before it gets warm, let us take heart that each day brings more light than the last, reminding us never to lose sight of hope.