Rosh HaShanah Dreams
Sermon Rosh HaShanah Evening 5783
A question for you: do you have anything that you dream of doing? Is there something you’ve always dreamt about but not yet had the opportunity to experience? What are your dreams?
For example, my friends, when I was a child, I dreamed of becoming an astronaut. But sadly, my dad crushed those dreams years ago.
He'd always say, "For you, son, the sky's the limit!"
Sorry. OK, seriously now: What dreams do you have for your life that you have not yet fulfilled? Which of your dreams are you ignoring?
In our lives we function in pragmatic ways, deal with the problems and practicalities that take up most of our time. But within each of us, even the most prosaic, there are dreams. Over the course of our lives nothing may matter more than these. Yet often we simply bury these dreams.
Dreams can take many forms. Some are more fantasies than dreams: we can dream of being a rockstar or a ballerina or, if we are Elon Musk, of colonizing Mars. Or we can, I supposed, dream of being as rich as Elon Musk.
But alongside these fantasy dreams are other, more down-to-earth dreams: dreams of family reunification, of love, of children or grandchildren’s success, of travel to a new place, of learning a new language or skill, and perhaps most importantly, of making a positive difference in this world with our lives. And it is of those dreams that I ask again: which of your dreams are you ignoring? And what are the consequences of not living your dream? And how can you change that?
I wonder how many of you have a dreamcatcher or two somewhere in your homes? I know that many of our daughters—and sons—grew up sleeping under these Native American pieces here in Tucson. According to the guy who sold me one there is a belief among indigenous Americans that the night is filled with dreams, some bad, some good. The dreamcatcher’s design is supposed to catch bad dreams and allow only the good ones to come through to your child. Lovely.
Originally called a “spider web charm” by the Chippewa people of the Great Lakes, and hung over babies’ cribs, dreamcatchers became popular during the Pan-Indian movement of the 1960s and were adopted as New Age merchandise shortly thereafter. Whatever you feel about cultural appropriation, dreamcatchers are everywhere in Tucson and the west, on sale from museums to convenience stores, more popular even than kachinas. I have even seen dreamcatchers with Jewish stars woven into them. Perhaps next year for Rosh HaShanah we’ll have dreamcatchers with shofars woven into them. So goes American-Jewish merchandising.
But the original goal of dreamcatchers, to control the flow of dreams, is a window into a primal human need. The Hebrew word for dream is chalom, and in the simplest way dreams are the unconscious play of the mind while we are in REM sleep, the deepest form of sleep. According to scientists, dreams are an involuntary flow of emotions, images, sensations, and ideas.
We all have them, typically five to seven separate dreams a night, although lots of us don’t remember most of our dreams; some of us don’t remember any of them. And despite an almost obsessive scientific interest in them, we still really don’t understand the purpose of dreams.
From a scientific perspective, dream interpretation is still a mystery. “There’s no real consistent, scientifically proven theory linking specific content back to what a dream means,” says a noted behavioral sleep medicine expert.
Dreams also pose a problem. Dreams represent a time when our primary tool for exerting control, our minds, are literally out of control, when visions of potential disasters are allowed to freely roam through the unconscious mind, to be remembered the next morning, and when dreams untethered to the real world in which we are truly free can flourish.
There are many Jewish teachings that reflect a level of discomfort with dreams. In the Talmud the rabbis express fear that the “prison of sleep” is too much like our final prison of death. When we are asleep, we don’t have any ability to act; we are like a prisoner in jail. That is why our morning prayers, our Birchot HaShachar, say, “Blessed are You, God, Ruler of the universe, who frees the captive prisoner, matir asurim.” This is not a blessing about redeeming soldiers captured in war. It is a way of saying, “Thank you, Lord, for freeing me from the prison of lost control that is sleep.”
In our Zohar classes we’ve been exploring how dreams are a challenge for mystics, too. You see, a primary goal of all mysticism is to enhance our awareness of the presence of God, to find the divine everywhere in our lives. The best way to do this is to create a greater level of intentionality in thought, to become clearer and more conscious of what we are thinking about at all times. Mystical work seeks to make us more mindful of everything going on both inside of us and around us, to be increasingly attentive to our inner and outer worlds. Meditation helps us harmonize those worlds, and contemplation trains us to focus on ideas and practices that improve our opportunity to sense God everywhere.
As Jacob famously says in the story of the angels on the ladder—also known as the Stairway to Heaven tale—“Truly, God was in this place and I, I did not know it.” Through mysticism we try to become aware that God is in this place, and in every place; to “know it,” if you will.
But no matter how carefully we train our minds to experience the mystical presence, whether we call that presence God or Shechinah or Ribono Shel Olam, no matter how much we focus on controlling or shaping our spiritual impulses, thoughts, and feelings, when we go to sleep, we lose that control, including the ability to direct our thoughts. We are helplessly subservient to an unconscious flow of images, ideas and experiences cascading through our sleeping brains. In sleep, the best-trained mystic, the most advanced practitioner of the most sophisticated form of spirituality, the greatest Kabbalist or Guru has no more volition than a 2-year-old. Once we close our eyes and drift off to REM sleep, we are at the mercy of processes beyond our control. Without any ability to channel or direct the process, we dream.
It is no wonder that those who follow Kabbalah invented the Tikun Chatzot, a midnight awakening and meditation that interrupted this process of dreaming and created a time for deeper mystical awareness and connection with God at just the time dream-sleep would be most intense.
In a way, the month of Elul is testament to the anti-sleep aspects of Jewish tradition. In Jewish movements most identified with Kabbalah, the Sephardim and the Chasidim, the the month just past, last month of the Jewish year, is the time when we begin our repentance with Selichot, prayers of apology. While we Ashkenazic Jews have Selichot prayers at midnight, we only do this once, on a Saturday night prior to Rosh HaShanah. But the more mystical Sephardim and Chasidim hold an entire month of Selichot services, getting up from bed in time to be at temple at midnight every weekday of Elul, interrupting their personal dream-time to offer prayers of repentance. And the Selichot prayers can be intensely mystical. In other words, they stop the flow of dreams so that they can assert a greater level of control over thoughts and actions. That way, they can focus on teshuvah, repentance, which surely must be a conscious, waking process, not some dreamy experience.
The Zohar has a midrash about what happens to our souls when we fall fully asleep. According to tradition, just 1/60th of our souls remain in our bodies. All the rest of our soul travels to Gan Eden, the Garden of Eden, where it communes directly with God in a blissful foretaste of paradise. That means that when we start to wake up, our souls must return to our bodies, or we won’t wake up at all and will die. The beautiful, poetic morning prayer Elohai Neshama, which thanks and praises God for restoring our pure souls to us and allowing us to live another day, is an almost practical statement of gratitude based on this remarkable teaching.
The Zohar then quotes the Talmud and tells us dreams are also 1/60th part prophecy, that is, when we dream we are receiving a form of communication directly from God. The hard part is knowing which part of the dream is revelation and which isn’t. Or, to put it another way, which part of what we dream comes from God and which part comes from a weird movie we saw before drifting off, or from eating too much garlic at dinner. 1/60th part prophecy sounds both too important to ignore and much too ambiguous to believe in.
And yet, the Zohar also says, “An un-interpreted dream is like an unopened letter.” We should not ignore such powerful potential communication. We may not be able to invite or cultivate dreams, we may find them disturbing at many levels, we may even try to prevent ourselves from having dreams, but once they come they must be treated seriously. The Zohar goes on to explore just what dreams may mean, if they are true or false, if they are favorable or unfavorable, and, most importantly, what this process is all about. And perhaps that is where all of this dream exploration leads.
The figure most closely associated with dreaming in Jewish tradition is our ancestor Joseph, the great dream interpreter of the Torah. His brothers derisively call him “Ba’al hachalomot”, the master of dreams. Joseph rises to great prominence because of his ability to interpret the Pharaoh’s bad dreams. And his unique ability to leap to the top of the heap relies primarily on an extraordinary talent for understanding and explaining dreams. So how does he do it? What can Joseph teach us about dreams?
It is apparent in these sections of Genesis that Joseph is able to probe the unconscious imaginings of the minds around him—and of his own mind—and discern the parts that are truly divine prophecy from all the rest. He has the uncanny ability to find the 1/60th part of true golden revelation in dreams and filter out the 59 out of 60 parts of dross that surround them.
I think Joseph is so successful in interpreting dreams because he is very good at putting aside what really doesn’t matter. Joseph ignores the aspects of the dreams that aren’t important. He finds the kernel inside the husk, filters out the chatter, hears the central melody within the noise. In Talmudic terms, he goes straight to the ikkar, the root, the heart of the matter. He understands the one thing that is really important and focuses his attention on exactly that. When people listen to Joseph and come to understand his emphasis on priorities, that ability to do what is most urgent first, they succeed beyond their own dreams. When they can’t do that, when they are distracted by their own ego needs or busyness or resentments, they miss out.
Perhaps that is what dreams, or at least our Jewish approach to dreams, can teach us best: how to focus on which parts of our dreams really matter. That is true of what we imagine when we are awake, also, what we more generally call our dreams, our goals in life. These can be filled with images of fame and fortune, of beachfront relaxation or new homes or cars or children’s accomplishments or winning the lottery, even of sports teams winning championships. But how many of these are really not true dreams at all but just the 59 parts out of 60 that are just, well, stuff, and I don’t mean “the stuff that dreams are made of?”
Perhaps the greatest modern dreamer in Jewish history was Theodore Herzl, father of Zionism, who helped dream the State of Israel into existence. His most famous quotation is, of course, im tirtzu ein zo aggadah; if you will it, it is no dream. More than anyone, he was able to focus a disparate and divisive group of Jews into a movement that led to the modern miracle of a Jewish state.
You might say that Congregation Beit Simcha, similarly, is a kind of dream. Four years ago we agreed to create a congregation, a synagogue committed to high Jewish standards and a true, loving community where everyone pitched in. That dream, through much labor, has become something very real and very precious. It will continue to flourish so long as we remain true to our central dream of a congregation committed to Jewish excellence, warmth, and creativity, and to demonstrating respect and kindness to all members and guests of our community. This synagogue is a dream in the making.
So, I’ll ask you tonight, on a personal level: what are your dreams for yourself? Which of them are truly divinely inspired, and which are not?
A friend recently told me that her greatest dream was of material success, really making it financially. Yet everything she is most interested in doing now is related to spiritual growth, not money. Another friend spoke of his dream of becoming free of encumbrances, being able to travel and move without hindrance. Yet he has since entered into a serious relationship that limits that. I know people who dream of making aliyah to Israel when that is not a genuine possibility for them, who dream of making it in Hollywood and yet remain anchored in Tucson.
And I know of other people whose dreams are of repairing breached family relationships, of spending more and better time with those they love, of working to heal the world and help the homeless and hungry. Who dream of deepening Jewish knowledge and commitment or seek to find greater joy and meaning through service.
What can you do in this new year to realize your essential dreams, the heart of your dreams for yourself?
My friends, in this 5783 year, may we each commit ourselves to finding the worthy, divine dreams that lie within us, the truest of our own dreams. And may we learn to filter out the others so that we can make those very real, holy dreams come true.
In America on January 1st we make New Year’s resolutions. But in Judaism, at Beit Simcha, on the 1st of Tishrei we have a different goal: to make our New Year’s dream commitments come true.
May it prove to be so for you in this brand-New Year; and for us all. L’shana Tova.