Human life is fleeting. We are born, we age, we busy ourselves and we die. Viewed from the perspective of biology and materialism, our frenetic pace simply provides distraction before an inevitable doom. In that constricted space, our hearts yearn for something more – something significant and beautiful that can give life meaning and hope. Our lives are made full by our dreams.
Aspirations for a better tomorrow, hopes for a world of peace and plenty, of inclusion and freedom, of spirit and dance – these hopes keep us alive and help us to live our lives with purpose. Were it not for our dreams, the world would be too narrow and too cold to contain us. As Theodor Herzl observed, “Every creed of man was once a dream.” Or, to use more religious language, Rabbi Yehudah Ha-Levi exults, “A dream brought me into the sanctuaries of God.”
Through our dreams, we imagine a world worthy of our efforts and responsive to our needs. Through our dreams, we preview ourselves heroic, as larger than life in bringing that better tomorrow today. “A person’s dreams are an index to their greatness,” claimed the Hasidic sage, Rabbi Z. Rabinowitz, in the Pri Tzaddik. Dreams offer dress rehearsals for the reality yet to be.
Yet precisely because dreams provide a chance to see ourselves as significant, to view our contributions as substantial, they can also become vessels for our ambition, and sources of jealousy to those in whom we confide. Such was the case for Joseph and his brothers. Naturally gifted, ebullient and driven, young Joseph dreams a dream in which his brothers and his parents bow down to him, while he, standing tall and beautiful, receives their adoration in the center of their circle. Small wonder that they become enraged, exclaiming to him: “’Do you mean to reign over us?
Do you mean to rule over us?’ And they hated him even more for his talk about his dreams (37:8).”
Joseph was so captivated by the power of his dreams that he couldn’t stop himself from sharing them with his family, couldn’t stop to see those dreams from their perspective. And the brothers couldn’t help but read those dreams as reflections of Joseph’s vast ambition: Rabbi Ovadiah Sforno (15th Century, Italy) notes that “the details he told them proved to the brothers that Joseph was hoping that his dreams would be realized.” Filtered through the prism of Joseph’s pride and his brother’s fear, the dreams weren’t beautiful at all; they were unbridled expressions of raw ambition. As Rabbi David Kimhi (12th Century) teaches, “If you have dreams of this kind, this only reflects dreams of power you entertain during the day.”
The challenge to Joseph, and to us, is to take the time to see our dreams through the eyes of others. What may appear to us as a glorious future can seem to other parties involved as conquest, exploitation, or marginalization. We need to strive for a God’s eye view, in which how our dreams appear to everybody can be factored into the unfolding of the dream into a more welcoming reality.
A world without dreams is too small for the human soul. But a world in which our dreams are projected onto the world without making room for each other is too brutal. Ultimately, Joseph and his brothers learn to bring each other into their dreams, recognizing that the greatest dream of all is the one God dreams for us all: “On that day, all will be one, and God’s name: One.”
Shabbat Shalom and Simhat Hanukkah!
Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson is the Dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles. He is the author of The Bedside Torah: Wisdom, Dreams, & Visions (McGraw Hill).
Shabbat Shalom!