When we speak of dreams, we mean two different things. On the most literal level, dreams are what we do in our sleep. Psychologists tell us that our dreams reflect the workings of our unconscious mind, sorting through our fears, wishes, and desires, attempting to resolve whatever was not clarified in the day that just passed. Our dreams often take the forms of weird narratives and juxtaposed images, all of which seem bizarre to our waking mind, but which adhere to a logic of their own. Dreaming is something that virtually all people do, and the vast preponderance of us can remember some of what we have dreamt the night before.
But to dream has a higher meaning as well. To dream can imply a sense of a larger vision of life, a sense that things could somehow be better than they are at present and a direction for how to advance toward that goal. One mark of leadership is the ability to dream in that second, more profound way, and to be able to persuade others to share in that dream, to make it their own.
After tracing the arrival of the new slave, Joseph, in the land of Egypt, the Torah tells us that he winds up in the house of Potiphar, where he gets trapped by the illicit lusts of Potiphar’s wife. Condemned to prison, Joseph is more than just a model prisoner, he is also an inspired interpreter of dreams. Eventually, he gains quite a reputation for the accuracy of his interpretations. What he interprets as about to happen always materializes with the passage of time.
Then the Torah relates, “Pharaoh dreamed.” The Torah could have said that Pharaoh was puzzled by his most recent dream — that would tell us something we do not already know. But to simply tell us that “Pharaoh dreamed?” As the rabbis of Midrash Bereshit Rabbah comment: “And don’t all people dream?” Of course Pharaoh dreamed, everybody does. So why does the Torah waste precious words to tell us something we could guess from common experience?
Obviously, the Torah must be hinting at some deeper meaning. Our tradition must be telling us something unique about the nature of his dream. And what special message did that pasuk (verse of Torah) transmit? In the words of the midrash, it is “true [that everyone dreams] but a king’s dream embraces the whole world.”
The dreams of a monarch are different than the dreams of most of us, because the sovereign dreams about matters that effect entire populations. In our sleep, we may dream about a fight with our boss, an upcoming simcha, or someone we find attractive. But the dreams of kings are their visions. And their visions transform our lives and our world.
When the late Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., wanted to train us to see the world through his visionary eyes, he told us “I have a vision.” His dream was of an America in which children of all races and creeds were free to make friendships and to nurture each other without regard to the color of their skin or the contours of their faith. By using the biblical language of dreams, Dr. King made it impossible not to be infected by his enthusiasm, his faith, and his righteousness.
The Torah uses dreams to give us new visions, to broaden our horizons beyond the limits of habit, convention, and expectation. To Torah trains us through its stories and its commandments, its aggadah and its halakhah, to see the world not merely as a place where different species wage an endless war for evolutionary supremacy, but also as a place where humanity, as God’s messengers, bring all of God’s creation closer to a time of universal harmony, security, and love.
In the transforming vision of another of the great men of the Torah, Moses, we learn that the rituals of Judaism are the essential tools for integrating the moral expectations of our tradition. The rituals teach us to remember to redeem the world and to love our fellow human beings. The stories teach us who we are and where we have come from. They connect us to our most distant ancestors and unite us with them and each other in a common cause and a shared destiny.
If great men and women have great dreams, then imagine just how grand must God’s dream be. Perhaps we can also read the Torah and the words of the Prophets as the expression of God’s great dream — an age in which all humanity unite in the service of God, the inauguration of an age of justice and peace, using our minds to heal the sick and comfort the bereaved, to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless. Perhaps God’s great dream, of a humanity that reflects God’s image, not merely in potential but in actuality, is within our grasp.
If we but dare to dream.
Shabbat shalom.