There is a book that I’d like to write one day. It will be called “Hasidic Tales of Jewish Psychoanalysts” and the first story would be the account of Freud’s analysis of the second Lubavitcher Rebbe. The second chapter would be the story of the psychoanalyst who went to Boro Park to shop for a wedding dress with her future daughter-in-law. The saleswomen at the store, upon learning that she was talking to a therapist then explained that she had experienced indescribable trauma and tragedy in her life. She had psychological scars, she told the psychoanalyst, that “you couldn’t possibly understand.” Without missing a beat, the psychoanalyst – who happens to be my mother – responded, “no, but you could.”
An interpretation is only an act of self-discovery. A dream can only have meaning for the one who interprets the dream.
Can you recall a moment around which the narrative arc of your entire life pivots? Perhaps a conversation with someone who became a professional mentor? Perhaps a glance across a crowded room and catching sight of the person you would marry? Or, perhaps being asked to interpret a dream, and instead offering a famine survival plan…
After rising to a position of privilege within his family and sharing dreams in which he is the center of the universe, the heavenly bodies circle around him, Yosef is thrown into a pit and sold as a slave to Egypt. Yosef then rises within the household of Potifar to a position of privilege, only to be thrown into prison. In Yosef ’s words, כִֽי־שָמ֥ו אֹתִ֖י בַבֽור, he recognizes that he’s back in the pit.
And then, Yosef has an audience with Pharaoh, a combination of parole board hearing, job interview, and therapy session all at once. Pharaoh shares his dreams with Yosef: Seven thin cows consume seven fat cows. Seven sickly sheaves consume seven healthy sheaves. Yosef then offers a correct interpretation of the dreams’ meaning. There will be seven good years and seven bad years. And then Yosef does something else! He offers advice to Pharaoh! Save food during the seven good years for the seven lean years. Find someone you trust to oversee this process.
A wise woman once told me that “everyone knows that unsolicited advice is resented and not appreciated, but it takes real wisdom to realize that solicited advice isn’t appreciated either.” Yosef, an imprisoned slave, pulled out of the “pit” to interpret Pharaohs’ dreams, deigns to offer advice on policy and politics to an absolute monarch who had not asked his opinion. And, hard as it is to imagine, it works! Pharaoh accepts Yosef ’s plan and appoints Yosef himself to be the one in charge of gathering and distributing food.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe, not the one who met with Freud, but a descendant through marriage, suggested that Yosef did not speak out of place because the solution to Egypt’s predicament was inherent in the dream itself. The seven fat cows and seven lean cows stood together in the dream at the same time. There could be planning for the lean years during the fat years and there could be a remnant of the fat years during the lean years. Yosef offered advice because the advice was there in the dream itself that he had been asked to explain.
Rabbi Tamir Granot, of the hesder yeshiva in Ra’anana, noticed that Yosef ’s decision to share a response to Pharaoh’s dream was a moment fraught with religious significance. Pharaoh understood dreams to be messages of fate to be accepted passively. Once a dream is interpreted, there is nothing one can do other than prepare for one’s coming fate. Yosef had absorbed a Jewish notion of prophetic destiny. The future can always be shaped. In response to a prophetic warning, we can change course and take control of our destiny.
Yosef was therefore teaching Pharaoh the meaning of Pharaoh’s dream, and also teaching him the meaning of dreams.
Yosef understood that passivity was the wrong response to Pharaoh’s dreams because the themes of Pharaoh’s dreams, food and power were familiar to Yosef from his own life and his own dreams. Rabbi Nachman Levine, a Tanakh scholar of under-appreciated brilliance, (from Milwaukee of all places) points out numerous allusions to Yosef himself within Pharaoh’s dreams. Pharaoh dreams of cows grazing in the marsh
וַתִרעֶ֖ינָה בָאָֽחו
This is precisely how Yosef himself is introduced by the Torah
.רעֶ֤ה אֶת־אֶחָיו֙
The cows are described as being יְפ֥תו מַארֶ֖ה and being וִפיֹ֣ת תֹ֑אַר which is a description used in the Torah for only two people, Rachel, and Yosef himself!
The interpreter is always in the dream. All six dreams in the Yosef story tell of one larger theme, the relationship between חלום and לחם —the same letters in the Torah. Food is linked to power which is linked to dreams. When Yosef ’s brothers object to his first dream, about cutting wheat (again, food connected to power in a dream) they cry out:
אִמ־םָש֥ול תִמְשֹ֖ל בָ֑נו
which is the Torah’s language for what the heavenly bodies are supposed to provide—governance of the cosmos
אֶת־הַמָא֤ור הַגָדל֙ לְמֶמְשֶ֣לֶת הַי֔ום וְאֶת־הַמָא֤ור
הַקָטֹן֙ לְמֶמְשֶ֣לֶת
And, indeed, the very next dream in the very next verse has those same heavenly bodies serving Yosef.
But whereas Yosef ’s first dream was one in which he worked in the field to harvest food and that was his source of power, Yosef is entirely passive in his second dream. The sun and moon and stars bow to him as he sits motionless. That dream of passivity leads in short order to Yosef being thrown into a pit.
The two dreams that Yosef hears in prison have a similar pattern. The butler dreams of activity, going about his job, moving and doing. The baker is passive as birds eat his food. Things turn out well for the butler, not so well for the baker.
Yosef understands that the meaning of all six dreams is that he, Yosef, must not be passive, in using food as a means to secure his future and protect his family. Yosef speaks up with a bold plan for surviving and thriving in the face of famine because the entirety of his dreams push him to understand that nothing is left to fate and everything depends on his willingness to seize the moment and take advantage of every opportunity provided to secure a better and different future.
That’s a message of Hanukah as well. The Maccabees faced an onslaught of challenges. Against overwhelming military, political, economic, and religious power in the hands of our enemies, they sought to reassert control over our destiny as a people. That Hanukah message is one that seems quite apt this year as well. Looking at the challenges facing our community, there is much cause for pessimism and little basis for naive optimism that everything will work out OK in the end. But naive optimism did not fuel the Maccabees victory and naive optimism did not lead to Yosef ’s own triumphs. The path to a better future, now as well as back then, can be found in rejecting passivity, finding arenas where one can be active, and insisting on taking responsibility for writing our own future.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 