The Torah describes the stirring moment when Jacob reunites with his long-lost son Joseph. Few scenes in the Torah evoke such quiet pain. After 20 years of longing and uncertainty, an aging father and the son who has risen to power in Egypt meet again. They draw close, embrace, and rest on each other’s shoulders.
When the Torah describes the tears in that embrace, it states that one of them cried – as if the other did not. The midrash addresses this irregular phrasing: Joseph wept on his father’s shoulder, but Jacob did not. Overwhelmed by emotion, Jacob directed that moment toward “Shema,” reciting the opening verse and channeling his joy into religious worship.
There are moments when emotion gathers – joy, relief, fear, or gratitude – and a religious personality seeks to direct that inner tide toward expression rather than be carried away by it. Jacob, overwhelmed by the return of a son he had assumed dead, channels his feelings into worship. Though the formal verse of “Shema, Israel” would only be inscribed later in Torah, Jacob sensed its truth centuries earlier.
This scene leaves us with a resonant image: a human being directing emotion toward a steady relationship with God. In that moment, Jacob places his awareness of God before his feelings for Joseph.
Torah or tears
This portrait raises a question. What of Joseph? Are we to imagine that because he was not reciting “Shema” but simply weeping on his father’s shoulder, he stands on lesser spiritual ground? If the ideal response is embodied in Jacob’s “Shema,” does Joseph somehow fall short?
If Joseph did not recite “Shema,” his response is no less legitimate. Jacob turns the moment into ritual, but Joseph simply weeps on his father’s shoulder. He has lived for two decades without a father’s warm shoulder and without the reassurance that only a father can provide. He allows himself to feel love and longing directly rather than translate them into “Shema.” The Torah preserves his tears, and his response carries integrity.
This scene contains two legitimate layers. It validates two pathways for navigating an emotionally charged encounter. One channels feeling through ritual – in this case, reciting “Shema.” The other allows emotion to remain human and unfiltered – the love of a son reclaiming a father. Jacob recites “Shema.” Joseph cries. Each response holds integrity.
By presenting these responses side by side, the Torah affirms that healthy relationships and the emotions they awaken are part of religious life. The capacities that animate our relationships were planted in us by God. Bonds between parent and child – longing, reunion, and restored closeness – are fashioned by the divine will. When those emotions surface honestly, they, too, give expression to what God placed within human experience.
Standing alone, standing together
This scene raises a religious question. What room do we make for relationships within a life of avodat Hashem? How often do we stand before God as solitary individuals – engaged in ritual, studying Torah, fulfilling obligation – and how much time and energy do we devote to building relationships with family, friends, colleagues, and the people who populate our days?
Religion often asks us to transcend our surroundings and stand before God in solitary submission. The Talmud even advances a jarring image: A person seeking mastery in Torah should be as indifferent to one’s spouse and children as a raven to its young. Even if we treat that line as hyperbole – and some did not – it points to a sober truth: Moments of ascent may demand a temporary sacrifice of affectionate bonds. Relationships, even with family, do not exhaust religious life. In the end, religion demands those silent moments in which we stand before God alone.
At the same time, we pour energy into human attachment – shaping families and friendships that occupy large parts of our emotional lives. This, too, is not peripheral to religious experience. Our tradition surrounds relationships with safeguards – prohibitions against deceit, humiliation, exploitation, or injury. But the legal boundaries only hint at something deeper. We cultivate relationships not merely to avoid sin but because loyalty, love, empathy, and responsibility enlarge the religious self. Standing alone before God is indispensable – but so is the labor of standing with one another.
Why are relationships integral to religious experience? Why should we pour time, attention, and emotional resources into bonds that seem to siphon energy away from ritual, study, and inward ascent? Why should human attachment be counted among the labors of religion?
The first classroom
Firstly, because the bonds we build with others become templates for the relationship we hope to cultivate with God. One might expect Sefer Bereishit to unfold as a treatise of theology, yet explicit theology is almost absent. We receive no full account of creation and no systematic defense of monotheism. Instead, the narrative lingers over the strains of family – competing wives, rival siblings, succession anxiety, honor, betrayal, and protection.
The implication is clear: The family is our first school of avodat Hashem. The traits we refine in human attachment – honesty, trust, devotion, loyalty, selflessness – are the traits we later bring to our encounter with God. When we treat relationships as religious labor, we turn human connection into preparation for standing before God.
Without gaps
Secondly, we must frame relationships as part of religion so that our inner world does not become bifurcated. Bifurcation occurs when we act religious in select settings yet feel spiritually neutral across much of life. The result is a choppy interior landscape – brief peaks of piety interrupted by hollowness.
Ideally, religious experience is holistic. We stand before God in every setting, though our awareness is expressed differently across the varied frames of experience. The goal is not unending ritual but steady religious consciousness.
If we cannot breathe religious meaning into relationships, then portions of life fall outside our religious horizon. If we treat relationship-building merely as avoiding harm rather than as investment, we leave countless hours untouched by religious purpose – and for long stretches we are nowhere near religious ground.
Emotional grounding
Finally, relationship-building is crucial to religion because religious meaning rests on emotional stability. If the inner structure of a person is brittle, religious achievement cannot endure; it bends and snaps under pressure. Relationships steady the inner life. They are harder to build in the modern world, yet are more necessary than ever in an age of strain and anxiety.
In the modern context, the strain on relationships begins with practical pressures. The pace of contemporary living has become relentless, and screens have become ubiquitous. We used to sit and talk comfortably, looking each other in the eye. Now screens tug at our attention, and the pace of daily life leaves little room to slow down and invest in one another.
A second pressure is ideological. The rise of individualism places a strain on family life. Families demand compromise rather than constant self-assertion, and that runs against the cultural mood. And the erosion of boundaries compounds the problem. The workplace follows us into our homes and leaks into private spaces. We no longer work nine to five; the thin line between vocation and home makes sustaining relationships difficult.
Joseph’s tears remind us that emotional health and human attachment are not distractions from religion but part of its hidden architecture. His tears teach that standing before God sometimes begins with standing alongside those we love.
The writer, a rabbi at Yeshivat Har Etzion (Gush), was ordained by Yeshiva University and has an MA in English literature. His books include To Be Holy but Human: Reflections Upon My Rebbe, HaRav Yehuda Amital. mtaraginbooks.com.