These Dreams

Sermon, Shabbat Ki Tavo, Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon

Congregation Beit Simcha, Tucson, Arizona

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?  And 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, of winning the $1.7 billion lottery, or, if we are tech billionaires, of colonizing Mars. 

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?

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.

In our Zohar class recently we explored the question of dreams, a complex and fascinating issue for mystics.  The goal of almost all mysticism is to enhance our awareness of the presence of God, however we conceive of God, everywhere in our lives.  The best way to do this is to create a greater level of intentionality in our thought, to become clearer and more conscious of what we are thinking about at all times.  The fundamental idea of all mystical work is to learn how to become more mindful of everything going on both inside of us and around us, to be increasingly attentive to both our inner and outer worlds.  Meditation seeks to help us harmonize those worlds, and contemplation tries to train us to focus on certain ideas or habits that improve our opportunity to sense God everywhere.

Mysticism pushes us to be intentional in our thoughts and perceptions, and so become cognizant of just how much holiness there is all around us, within us and within everyone and everything else.  As Jacob famously says in the story of the angels on the ladder, “Truly, God was in this place and I, I did not know it.”  Through mysticism we are trying to know it.

No matter how carefully we work to train our minds to experience the mystical presence of the divine, whether we call that presence God or Shechinah or Ribono Shel Olam or by another name, no matter how much time we spend focused on controlling or shaping our spiritual impulses, thoughts, and feelings, no matter what techniques we employ, when we go to sleep we lose all of that control.  Sleep is the great equalizer.  It’s simple, really: when we sleep we lose the ability to direct our thought processes.  We are helplessly subservient to the unconscious flow of images, ideas, and experiences that cascade 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 or meditative monk has no more volition than a 2 year-old baby does.  Once we close our eyes and drift off to REM sleep, we are at the mercy of processes beyond our control.  And then, without any ability to channel or direct the process, we dream…

This is a profound problem for mystics.  The mind, the conscious self, is the whole enterprise for those who focus on the deeply spiritual. And yet this extraordinary vessel of divine connectivity simply shuts down every night, and we are blessed or cursed with all kinds of other forms of nocturnal communication that have nothing to do with the training and meditation and contemplation that mystical tradition believes to be essential.  It’s very subversive to mystical ideals: our brains, so carefully cultivated during waking hours, turn traitor on us as soon as we enter the realm of Morpheus, exactly at the time we close our eyes.

It is no wonder that those who follow Kabbalah decided to invent something called a Tikun Chatzot, a midnight awakening and meditation that interrupted this process of dreaming and sought to create a time for deeper mystical awareness and connection with God at just the time dream-sleep would be most intense.  In a way, this month of Elul is testament to the anti-sleep aspects of Jewish tradition.  In those Jewish movements most identified with Kabbalah, the Sephardim and the Chasidim, this period of the year, the last month of the Jewish year, Elul, is the time when we begin our Teshuvah, our repentance with Selichot, prayers of apology.  While we Ashkenazic Jews have Selichot prayers at midnight, we only do this the Saturday night prior to Rosh HaShanah.  And by the way, here in Tucson where midnight comes early, we have our Selichot service at 10:30 PM, tomorrow night.  It’s a beautiful, mystical, powerful experience, preceded by a Kabbalistic study session this year on change.

But it’s not just a one night experience for many Jews.  Observant Sephardim and Chasidim hold an entire month of late night Selichot services, getting up from their beds in time to be at temple at midnight every weekday of Elul, interrupting their dreamtime to offer deeply personal prayers of repentance.  And the Selichot prayers, while filled with confessions and requests for forgiveness, are also intensely mystical.  In other words, they seek to stop the flow of dreams so that we can assert a level of control over the thoughts, and hopefully the actions, of each person. That way we can focus on teshuvah, repentance, which surely must be a conscious, waking process.

Now, when we sleep we are quite impotent to control or prevent dreams.  As Hamlet puts it, “For in that sleep of death what dreams may come”; What dreams may come, because indeed, bidden or not, they do come.  And that means that there is an entire realm of intellectual and spiritual experience over which we have no control, and never will.  It is beyond our spiritual discipline to manage this, mystically or otherwise.

There are many Jewish teachings that reflect this discomfort with dreams.  In fact, there is a certain fear, a sense that the loss of volition that occurs when we lose consciousness, 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, in a way, like a prisoner in jail.  This is why our morning prayers, our Birchot HaShachar, include a passage that says, “Blessed are You, God, Ruler of the universe, who frees the captive prisoner.”  It is not a blessing about redeeming soldiers captured in war, or about freeing hostages.  It is actually just a way of saying, “Thank you, Lord, for freeing me from the prison of lost control that is sleep.”

But in Zohar, the greatest work of Jewish mysticism, and in all Kabbalah more generally, dreams play a complex and ambivalent role.  Failing to dominate the world of sleep through mystical, intellectual, or spiritual training, the Kabbalists eventually give up, and explore just what dreams actually are, and what really happens when we fall asleep. 

They begin with a midrash about what happens to our souls when we fall fully asleep.  According to tradition, when we sleep deeply, just 1/60th of our souls remain in our bodies.  Almost every part of our individual souls journeys to Gan Eden, the Garden of Eden, where they commune directly with God, in a blissful experience 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. 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 tells us that dreams are also 1/60th prophecy, that is, that when we dream we are receiving a form of communication directly from God.  The hard part is knowing how much of the dream is revelation and how much 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, in the Talmud Rav Hisda says, (Brachot 55a) “A dream uninterpreted is like an unopened letter.”  Quite a statement.  A letter from whom?  From God, of course, sent through the filter of your own unconscious. In other words, a Divine message told in the unique language of your own unique soul.

We should not ignore such powerful potential communication, whether fully divine or just unconscious in origin.  We may not invite dreams, we may even find them disturbing at some level, we may go so far as to try to prevent ourselves from having them, but once they come, according to Jewish teaching, they must be treated seriously. 

R. Hiya and R. Jose used to study with R. Simeon. R. Hiya once put to him the following question: ‘We have learnt that a dream uninterpreted is like a letter undeciphered. Does this mean that the dream comes true without the dreamer being conscious of it, or that it remains unfulfilled?’ R. Simeon answered: ‘The dream comes true, but without the dreamer being aware of it…”

So, if dreams are so important, what do you dream about?

I don’t know if any of you have ever kept a dream journal, a record of what you dreamt about each night, best recorded immediately after awakening. I’ve tried it, and found it interesting, if not always illuminating.  But I do know one thing: dreams can sure seem real when you have them, and even shortly after you wake up.  And they can open your mind to strange and sometimes beautiful possibilities.  They may or may not be a path to divine inspiration, or to various parts of our unconscious minds.  But they can indeed prove to be powerful.

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 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.  Seven 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.  We are now close to achieving a part of that dream, a permanent home.  As a congregation we will continue to flourish so long as we remain true to our central dream of a shul 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, my friends, on a personal level: what are your dreams for yourself?  Which of them are truly divinely inspired, and which are not? 

What can you do in this coming year to realize your essential dreams, the heart of your dreams for yourself?

In this month of Elul, and in this coming 5786 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.