Dear Friends,
I am still fascinated by my nighttime dreams – when I remember them. From time to time, I linger in bed, eyes closed and on the edge of awakening, and I savor my dreams. Sometimes I see them as plots to novels I might someday endeavor to write. But, commonly, as soon as I stir and begin thinking of my day, the dreams fade and dissolve into daylight.
That doesn’t mean that my dreams aren’t telling. When I have a dream which upsets me – I am chasing or being chased, threatened or alone, I awaken knowing that my anxiety dream results from some upset stirring just under the surface of my consciousness. Usually, I can associate that angst with something that I must address in my life or work.
Hence, I find this week’s Torah portion delightfully compelling. It includes the narratives of Joseph’s dreams, as well as the dreams of two co-prisoners of Joseph when he was cast into prison in Egypt, falsely accused of a dalliance with his master.
Torah states, “Joseph dreamt a dream,” (Genesis 37:5), and then, a little later, “He dreamt yet another dream” (Genesis 37:9). As we know, in each of the dreams, he was lording his position as the favored son over his discontented and detesting brothers. The dreams were not only literary mechanisms to demonstrate the unequal station among the brothers and the attendant tension generated thereof, but they were windows into both Joseph’s growing psychological identity and his nascent relationship with the Divine.
Joseph was growing into an adult, and he was on the border of childish imagination and the demands of adulthood. Hence, his dreams could not be dismissed as youthful fantasy, but they were anchored in a palpable filial dissimilarity. Rightfully, his brothers despised him and even feared him and his professed, emerging power. Thus, they feigned his death and sold him into slavery down to Egypt, where he ultimately was imprisoned.
Yet, behind the entire episode, like a quiet patriarch observing the scenario, was God. The ancients – before Freud or Jung – held that God issued messages through dreams, thus according them inordinate meaning and resonance. It wasn’t merely Joseph’s active unconscious which was generating the nighttime images, but it was God instructing and directing him, and eventually guiding him to Pharaoh’s side, where Joseph would amass unequalled power. For Joseph, it wasn’t but a dream, but fate.
Thus, a little encouragement to ponder our dreams…
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Douglas Kohn
I am still fascinated by my nighttime dreams – when I remember them. From time to time, I linger in bed, eyes closed and on the edge of awakening, and I savor my dreams. Sometimes I see them as plots to novels I might someday endeavor to write. But, commonly, as soon as I stir and begin thinking of my day, the dreams fade and dissolve into daylight.
That doesn’t mean that my dreams aren’t telling. When I have a dream which upsets me – I am chasing or being chased, threatened or alone, I awaken knowing that my anxiety dream results from some upset stirring just under the surface of my consciousness. Usually, I can associate that angst with something that I must address in my life or work.
Hence, I find this week’s Torah portion delightfully compelling. It includes the narratives of Joseph’s dreams, as well as the dreams of two co-prisoners of Joseph when he was cast into prison in Egypt, falsely accused of a dalliance with his master.
Torah states, “Joseph dreamt a dream,” (Genesis 37:5), and then, a little later, “He dreamt yet another dream” (Genesis 37:9). As we know, in each of the dreams, he was lording his position as the favored son over his discontented and detesting brothers. The dreams were not only literary mechanisms to demonstrate the unequal station among the brothers and the attendant tension generated thereof, but they were windows into both Joseph’s growing psychological identity and his nascent relationship with the Divine.
Joseph was growing into an adult, and he was on the border of childish imagination and the demands of adulthood. Hence, his dreams could not be dismissed as youthful fantasy, but they were anchored in a palpable filial dissimilarity. Rightfully, his brothers despised him and even feared him and his professed, emerging power. Thus, they feigned his death and sold him into slavery down to Egypt, where he ultimately was imprisoned.
Yet, behind the entire episode, like a quiet patriarch observing the scenario, was God. The ancients – before Freud or Jung – held that God issued messages through dreams, thus according them inordinate meaning and resonance. It wasn’t merely Joseph’s active unconscious which was generating the nighttime images, but it was God instructing and directing him, and eventually guiding him to Pharaoh’s side, where Joseph would amass unequalled power. For Joseph, it wasn’t but a dream, but fate.
Thus, a little encouragement to ponder our dreams…
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Douglas Kohn
