Dreams Matter

Vayeshev

Genesis 37:1 - 40:23

Précis: The story of Joseph begins with the words “And Jacob dwelt (vayeshev) in the land of his father’s travels.” We learn that Joseph is Jacob’s favorite son. Joseph receives the famous coat of many colors, and dreams strange dreams and relates them to his brothers and father, creating additional concern (jealousy) on their part. The sons conspire to do away with Joseph, but before he dies, they sell him into slavery. Jacob is devastated when the sons present evidence of Joseph’s “death.” 

            Joseph becomes a servant in the household of Potiphar, an Egyptian official. Potiphar’s wife attempts to seduce Joseph but he refuses her advances. She accuses him nonetheless of attempted rape, and Joseph is tossed into prison. There, he meets jailed servants of Pharaoh, for whom he interprets dreams successfully. When the chief butler is restored to his post, he promises to “remember” Joseph, but the parasha ends with the words, “but he forgot him.”

Gen. 37:5-8  “And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it to his brothers, and they hated him even more. And he said to them, ‘Listen, I ask you, to this dream I have dreamed. For lo, we were binding sheaves in the field, and my sheaf arose, and your sheaves came around and bowed down to my sheaf.'”

           

This parasha is much about dreams. Joseph’s dreams, at the outset, are the cause of his trouble, and at the end, point to his eventual salvation. Dreams are strange things. They can be energizing, terrorizing, pleasurable or troublesome. Joseph is a dreamer. He dreams of sheaves of wheat, stars, and sun and moon. Later, he will deal with dreams of fat cows and thin ones, years of plenty and years of starvation. Dreaming is a leitmotif of Joseph’s story (perhaps the longest story about an individual in the 5 Books of Moses).

            At the beginning, his dreams result in hatred from his brothers (who already resent him for being the father’s favorite son). This hatred results in his sale into slavery. Later on, the dreams will become the source of his salvation, raising him from prison to the heights of power in Egypt. Ironically, Joseph’s dreams save his family, but eventually result in centuries of slavery. Nevertheless, the moral of the story is that dreams were needed to secure the survival of the Jewish People.

            Almost 3,000 years later, another dreamer had a dream. He lived not in the Middle East, but in Vienna. He dreamed that the Jewish People, scattered for millennia, could be redeemed in a new state, and restored to the Land of Israel. His name was not Joseph, but rather Theodor Herzl , a founder of modern Zionism. Herzl, like Joseph, was more than a dreamer: he acted and organized the first World Zionist Congress. This was the embryonic instrument which would turn into a world-wide movement and which would, within 50 years, result in the creation of the modern state of Israel. As he famously stated, “If you will it, it is no dream.”

            Today, the Zionist enterprise is militarily and technologically strong, with a vitality and democracy all too rare in the world. At the same time, Israel faces existential threats from its neighbors, and is used as an excuse for the reemergence of Anti-Semitism in much of the so-called civilized world. Internally, Israel's politics are terribly splintered. The long-standing basis of Israeli politics (the left believing that they could find Palestinian partners for peace, and the right believing that settlements and occupation could last forever) has been shattered. Few believe that any resolution is possible, and Israeli politics seem to be more and more splintered with an American-like polarization of the leadership. Things seem bleak and unpromising.

            Yet the stories of Joseph and Herzl offer a thin reed of hope. Dreams can come true, whether in ancient Egypt or today’s Israel. We must continue to dream and act so that the current years of difficulty will be transformed into an era of peace and security.