Parshas Vayeishev: Joseph, Dreams, and Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

This week, I’ve had some pretty weird dreams.  The truth is, I think I have pretty weird dreams every week.  I’m one of those people whose dreams are frequent, vivid, weird… and memorable.  I almost always remember my dreams.

My cousin David was recently telling me about a woman he knows who is a famous dream interpreter.  She has even interpreted dreams for royalty!  She’s the kind of person most of us would like to meet because we would all like to have a better understanding of our dreams and what they mean.

However, we have to be very careful who is interpreting our dreams.  In Judaism, we learn that dreams follow their interpretation.  One famous rabbi in the Talmud consulted 24 different dream interpreters about one of his dreams – and all 24 interpretations came true.

We see the importance of this in this week’s parsha.  Joseph has two dreams and interprets them to mean that his brothers (and his parents, in one of them) will bow down to him… and indeed they do, many years later when he is viceroy in Egypt.  When Joseph interprets Pharaoh’s dreams, things came to pass exactly as he stated it would.  Most importantly, we can see this concept in the dreams of the cupbearer and the baker.  When Pharaoh’s cupbearer has a dream and Joseph interprets it favorably, it convinces his baker to ask for an interpretation of his dream, too.  The baker’s dream was not as encouraging as the cupbearer’s, so he only asks Joseph for an interpretation because he sees that Joseph’s interpretation of the cupbearer’s was positive.  The baker hoped that Joseph would give him a similarly positive interpretation.  Unfortunately, that wasn’t what he received – and that wasn’t what ended up happening.

From this we can learn just how important it is to interpret a dream positively.  Often, Jewish people won’t even tell over a nightmare or bad dream to anyone, out of fear that it might follow a negative interpretation.  Instead, when we wake from such a dream, we are supposed to remind ourselves that “all dreams are nonsense.”

And indeed, most dreams are nonsense.  Most dreams are based on things that have happened recently in our lives, books we’ve read, movies we’ve seen, or even nonsense as a result of something we ate before bed.  These dreams have no meaning and should be completely disregarded.

But then, there are those dreams that are tantamount to prophecy – or at least, as the sages say, are 1/60 of prophecy.  Usually these are the dreams that really stick with you.  You wake up remembering them vividly and you carry around strange emotions with you all day.  You just can’t seem to shake the dreams from your mind.  These are the dreams that follow their interpretation.

So what happens if you have one of these dreams?  Well, first of all, you can interpret it positively yourself.  And secondly, you can tell it over to a very trusted friend who is going to be sure to give you a positive interpretation.  When I was in seminary in Jerusalem, I once had a dream that someone close to me died. I told it over to my madricha (counselor), who promptly told me that when someone dies in your dreams, it means they will have a long life.  To this day, that is what I believe.

So this week, when I had a bad dream that scared me quite a bit, I decided to tell it over to a good friend of mine.  My friend promptly gave me a positive interpretation that rendered the nightmare benign, if not comforting!  But you must remember to be very careful who you choose if you feel you have to share a bad dream with someone… because interpretations are so very powerful.

And I think this is true in our entire lives.  It shows the power of our interpretations of the world.  In everything in life, we are susceptible to self-fulfilling prophecies.  We have to be very careful to interpret the world around us in the most positive light possible, if we want the most positive outcome.   If we believe we will be winners, we will be.  If we believe we will be losers, we will be.  Either way, we are right.  Either way, our “dreams” follow their interpretations.

In the coming week, let us focus on developing a positive outlook and positive interpretations of all our dreams… and everything else in our lives. Shabbat shalom!