Joseph the Dreamer
Rabbi Margaret
Our friend Joseph is a dreamer — we know that from our first meeting with him. He announces to his brothers: “Hear, if you please, this dream which I dreamt: Behold! we were binding sheaves in the middle of the field, when, behold! — your sheaves gathered around and bowed down to my sheaf.” (37:6-8)
His brothers respond: “Would you then reign over us? Would you then dominate us?”
Soon after he dreams another dream and again shares it with his brothers and this time his father as well: “Look! I dreamt another dream. Behold! The sun, the moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” (37:9)
His father Jacob scolds him: What is this dream that you have dreamt?! Are we to come — I and your mother and brothers — to bow down to you to the ground?” (37:10)
Joseph in response might well have said something like, “Who said anything about you bowing down? It was stalks of corn. It was the lights in the sky…”
There is a section of several pages long in Talmud, in tractate Brachot, talking about dreams and dream interpretation. On page 55b a provocative claim is made:
It is said that Rabbi Bizna bar Zavda said that Rabbi Akiva said that Rabbi Panda said that Rav Naḥum said that Rabbi Birayim said in the name of one elder, and who is he, Rabbi Bena’a: There were twenty-four interpreters of dreams in Jerusalem. One time, I dreamed a dream and went to each of them to interpret it. What one interpreted for me the other did not interpret for me, and, nevertheless, all of the interpretations were realized in me, to fulfill that which is stated: All dreams follow the mouth [of the interpreter.]
״כׇּל הַחֲלוֹמוֹת הוֹלְכִים אַחַר הַפֶּה״.
“To fulfill that which is stated…” This axiom must have been around, widely accepted. I went to 24 interpreters. They all said different things in response to my dream. And they all happened. Because, you know, ״כׇּל הַחֲלוֹמוֹת הוֹלְכִים אַחַר הַפֶּה״. All dreams follow the mouth…
A midrashic story elaborates this idea. Here’s a slightly shortened version:
There was once a woman who came to Rabbi Eleazar so he could interpret her dream:
She told him, “I dreamt that the beam of my house was split.” He told her, “You will give birth to a son.” She departed and it happened, just as he predicted.
Once again she came to Rabbi Eleazar and said, “I dreamt that the beam of my house was split.” Once again he told her, “You will give birth to a son.”
She came to Rabbi Eleazar a third time. But this time, she found all of his students assembled but Rabbi Eleazar himself was not there. She asked the students to interpret her dream: “I dreamt that the bream of my house was split.” They replied, “You will bury your husband.”
When she left the students she began to cry. Rabbi Eleazar returned and asked his students, “Why is this woman crying?” The students answered, : “She came looking for you but you were not here. So we interpreted her dream for her.” The students told him what they had said. He told them, “You have killed a man, for a dream follows the mouth.” (Eichah Rabbah 1:18)
It’s not the corn, not the sun, moon and stars, not the split beam, but how they are interpreted that is consequential.
Many years ago now I heard a teaching from my teacher Rabbi Laura Geller, who suggested that we might look at Torah as a dream. Only this isn’t a dream dreamt by one person in their bed. It is a dream dreamt by an entire people. Imagine, she said, seeing a friend and saying, “I had this amazing dream…” And your friend saying, “I had the same dream!” Laura talked about the language and images of Torah — how, not unlike our personal dreams, Torah includes both mundane and fanciful elements, recognizable times and places but sometimes in strange orders, people who really lived and others who probably did not. And, like our own dreams, Torah has a feeling of depth which isn’t always right on the surface of what is going on in a passage. Torah, like our personal dreams, is a portal to something deeper and more mysterious.
I loved that idea of reading Torah as a dream. This was long enough ago that I was reading Fritz Perls’ Gestalt Therapy Verbatim. Perls teaches a practice of dream interpretation in which every character of the dream is an aspect of the dreamer. I remember trying to do Gestalt sessions with stories in Torah: ‘So you are all eleven sheaves of wheat bowing down and also the one standing straight. Which part of you is the bowing sheaf? Which the one being bowed to? Talk to each other.” it was fun and interesting. Something like this practice of interpretation has been elaborated more deeply by the Storah Telling folks and others.
At that time that I was trying to do Gestalt therapy with Torah I wasn’t familiar with the idea that ‘all dreams follow the mouth.” But now I am.
So here is a syllogism:
If all dreams follow the mouth; AND
If Torah can be seen as a kind of shared dream of the Jewish people;
THEN there is great moral weight on how we interpret.
In Miketz Joseph is in prison in Mitzrayim after a long chain of events all touched off NOT by his earlier dreams but by the ways his family chose to hear them.
In response to the dream of the sheaves of corn, the brothers could have said, “That is beautiful! You are feeling the ways that we honor you, even though you are the youngest of us.”
In response to the dream of the sun, moon and stars, Joseph’s father could have said, “You have the light of God within you — the same light as the heavens have. How wonderful that you feel yourself in relationship with the cosmos!”
They could even have offered eleven, twelve, thirteen different interpretations: “We honor you; but you must be careful not to let it go to your head; you have the power in you to help what is bent over stand straight; you will be a great gardener; eat more corn…” All could have been true. Joseph’s family interpreted his dreams in the bitterest possible way. And, chapters later, they end up bowing down to Joseph in the most painful and humiliating circumstances.
Later Joseph himself, in the prison, interprets the dreams of fellow prisoners. Of the dream of the Chamberlain of the Cup he sees a happy outcome, which occurs. Of the dream dreamt by the Chamberlain of the Bakers he sees misfortune; this also occurs as interpreted. If dreams follow the mouth, we might wonder whether the Chamberlain of the Bakers might have had a more desirable fate if Joseph had read the symbols of his dreams in a more positive way. We can’t possibly know. Or maybe we can — maybe we can ask ourselves: What in our collective inner life as a Jewish people is like the dream elements of the Chamberlain of the Bakers? What are the baskets on our heads? What is the food inside? What are the birds eating the food out of the baskets? What does this Torah image tell us about ourselves as a tribe in this moment that we are reading and interpreting these words?
Our parshah begins with an additional consequence that comes from the dreams of the two prisoners. Pharaoh has a puzzling dream, and the Chamberlain of the Cup tells Pharaoh about Joseph’s acumen as an interpreter of dreams. Joseph is brought from the pit to the Pharaoh to hear the dream. And now Joseph as an interpreter spins out a large vision of the future which enables the sustenance of the entire Near East — and, not incidentally, Joseph’s own elevation from the dungeon to the pinnacle of power.
Whereupon there begins this remarkable story of the original dream interpreting brothers. Now Joseph has organized food provisions in Egypt. Meanwhile up in Canaan the brothers and their father face famine. Jacob sends them down to Mitzrayim to buy grain. They end up face to face with the Viceroy dispensing grain — none other than Joseph. Joseph recognizes the brothers, but they do not recognize him. Joseph torments the brothers. He imprisons them. He forces them to send one brother back to fetch their youngest sibling, Benjamin, and bring him down to Mitzrayim. That’s where we pick things up in our fifth aliyah.
And as we arrive at this moment I would like to try an experiment here: let’s take a look at a little bit of our aliyah. We are going to try a little dream interpretation:
On the third day Joseph said to them, “Do this and you shall live, for I fear God.
אִם־כֵּנִ֣ים אַתֶּ֔ם אֲחִיכֶ֣ם אֶחָ֔ד יֵאָסֵ֖ר בְּבֵ֣ית מִשְׁמַרְכֶ֑ם וְאַתֶּם֙ לְכ֣וּ הָבִ֔יאוּ שֶׁ֖בֶר רַעֲב֥וֹן בָּתֵּיכֶֽם׃
If you are being honest, let one of you brothers be held in your place of detention, while the rest of you go and take home rations for your starving households;
וְאֶת־אֲחִיכֶ֤ם הַקָּטֹן֙ תָּבִ֣יאוּ אֵלַ֔י וְיֵאָמְנ֥וּ דִבְרֵיכֶ֖ם וְלֹ֣א תָמ֑וּתוּ וַיַּעֲשׂוּ־כֵֽן׃
but you must bring me your youngest brother, that your words may be verified and that you may not die.” And they did accordingly.
Genesis 42:19-21
Imagine that these verses are a dream which the Jewish people dreamt this morning right before we woke up, on the last day of Kislev in 5783, on the sixth day of Hanukkah, also known as December 24, 2022.
What might this set of events say about us as a Jewish community here on the Coast?
As a Jewish people?
Remember that dreams follow the mouth, and that therefore there is responsibility on the interpreter for outcomes. Remember too that many interpretations can all be true at once.
Just to wind things up I want to remember that, whether we think of Torah as a dream or not, being an interpreter is a responsibility. It can lead to consequences. It matters how we decode the symbols and stories of Torah and how we teach them. But of course we can’t know the full extent of the consequences of any interpretation. It could go on for generations. In fact, in some mysterious, dreamlike way, it almost certainly does.