Our Parashah is “bookended” with stories about dreams; both stories featuring Joseph as the central character. At the end of our Parashah, we are told about Joseph’s success in the prison of the court of Egypt – and of his insightful explanation of the dreams of two of his fellow prisoners: Each of the two men – the butler and the baker of the king of Egypt, who were being held in prison – had a dream the same night, and each dream had a meaning of its own. When Joseph came to them the next morning, he saw that they were dejected. So he asked Pharaoh’s officials who were in custody with him in his master’s house, “Why are your faces so sad today?” “We both had dreams,” they answered, “but there is no one to interpret them.” Then Joseph said to them, “Do not interpretations belong to God? Tell me your dreams.” (gen 40:5-8)

Dreams appear in the book of Genesis on a number of occasions. The first dreamer is almost incidental to the narrative, when Avimelech King of Gerar (Gen 20:3-7)  is warned by God in a dream to return Abraham’s wife to him after he has taken  her for himself when Avraham had said that Sarah was his sister in a bid to save his own life. The next dreamer is Jacob who dreams twice, the first time when leaving the land as a young boy afraid for his future, and his dream of the ladder with angels ascending and descending and the presence of God comforting him with the declaration that God would be with him and stay with him until his return to this land. The second dream while he is still with Laban but aware that the tide of hospitality is turning and he must return to the land. (Gen 31:10-13). After this God appears to Laban in a dream (31:24) in order to warn him not to attack Jacob who has prospered greatly at Laban and the family’s expense.

Within the Joseph narratives, there are three couplets of dreams. Joseph as a young boy dreaming of both the sheaves of corn and of the stars all bowing down to him; the dreams of the butler and the baker, servants of Pharaoh, And finally the two dreams of Pharaoh himself. Each of these dreams contains a message about the future, and seem to be dependent on interpretation in a way that the earlier dreams do not.

Joseph is confident about his ability to explain their dreams – and that confidence is quickly validated, as each of his explanations is played out in Pharaoh’s court. The butler is restored to his position and the baker is hanged. (40:21-22)

Where did Joseph get this confidence; indeed, where did he get the ability to interpret dreams? The earlier dream sequence in the beginning of our Parashah, involving Joseph, posits Joseph not as a dream interpreter; rather, as the dreamer. His brothers and father are the ones who make inferences from his dreams – but he just reports them. When did he learn how to explain dreams?

And why does the butler “finally” remember Joseph and report his successful dream interpretation abilities to Pharaoh. This ability will lead not only to Joseph’s rise to greatness (as a result of his explanation of Pharaoh’s dreams), but ultimately to our terrible oppression and slavery in Egypt. (See BT Shabbat 10b)

Dreams can bring about powerful events. As Bradley Artson wrote, ‘our lives are made full by dreams” “Aspirations for a better tomorrow, hopes for a world of peace and plenty, of inclusion and freedom, of spirit and dance – these hopes keep us alive and help us to live our lives with purpose. Were it not for our dreams, the world would be too narrow and too cold to contain us. As Theodor Herzl observed, “Every creed of man was once a dream.” Or, to use more religious language, Rabbi Yehudah Ha-Levi exults, “A dream brought me into the sanctuaries of God.”

Through our dreams, we imagine a world worthy of our efforts and responsive to our needs. Through our dreams, we preview ourselves heroic, as larger than life in bringing that better tomorrow today. Dreams offer dress rehearsals for the reality yet to be.

Yet precisely because dreams provide a chance to see ourselves as significant, to view our contributions as substantial, they can also become vessels for our ambition, and sources of jealousy to those in whom we confide. Such was the case for Joseph and his brothers.  “

Joseph’s dreams may well have been prophecy. They may well also have embodied the sibling rivalry between him and his older brothers. He was, after all, ben zekunim, the child of his father’s old age, and therefore a favoured child. He was certainly the child of the favoured wife. His dreams and the way he presented them to his brothers were offensive to them, and quite rightly so.  The brothers were offended not so much by the dream itself as by the apparent cause for this dream. They clearly thought that Joseph must be thinking about his takeover of the family so much that these thoughts have entered his dreams.  Jewish tradition knew early on that not all dream was prophecy, but that it may be the expression of what we today would describe as subconscious desires and repressed urges. So for example the Talmud (Berachot 56a) records two incidents where the local (non-Jewish) governor challenged one of our Sages to predict the content of his dreams of the coming night. In each case, the Sage described a detailed and horrific dream – which so preoccupied the governor that he did indeed dream about it that night.

So the brothers must have thought at first that the dream was an expression of Joseph’s ambition, and they rightly would have hated him for that. But why did they keep silent at the second dream?  There was a tradition that although a single dream may be caused by internal thoughts and ruminations, if that same dream (or the same “message” clothed in alternate symbolism) occurs twice, it is no longer a happenstance – it is truly God’s word. We find this approach explicitly stated by Joseph when he explains Pharaoh’s doubled dream:

The reason the dream was given to Pharaoh in two forms is that the matter has been firmly decided by God, and God will do it soon. (Bereshit 41:32)

So to return to Joseph in the Egyptian prison, when he learned that both butler and baker had experienced significant and terrifying dreams in the same night, he understood that these were more than dreams. Just like a dream that occurs twice to the same person is more than a dream, similarly, if two men sharing a fate have impactful dreams on the same night, their dreams must be divine messages.

His response: Do not interpretations belong to God? Tell me your dreams – is not presumptuous. He was telling them that their dreams were more than “just dreams” – they were in the province of God and, as such, would not need sophisticated interpretation (as is the case with a subconscious-based dream). They would be fairly easy to understand – as indeed they were. Joseph earned his reputation as an interpreter of dreams – and his ultimate freedom and final rise to power by remembering the lesson from his father’s house – that the “doubled dream” is a mark of prophecy, and by applying it intelligently years later in Egypt. This is what gave him the confidence to interpret first for the butler and baker and then for Pharaoh himself.

Joseph’s dreams were easy to read, and they did of course, ultimately come true when his brothers were forced to bow down to him upon soliciting food in Egypt. But we should never forget the pain that was caused by his telling of them, and the circumstances that were set in motion because of that pain. 

We too may have our dreams and our visions, and see them as being somehow stamped with the approval of the Almighty. But we, like Joseph, should take the time to see our dreams from a different perspective, to look at how they look through the eyes of others. For what may appear to us as a deservedly great reward may seem to other parties involved as conquest, exploitation, or marginalization. We need to strive for a God’s eye view, in which how our dreams appear to others can be factored into the unfolding of the dream into a more welcoming reality. Because our dreams don’t have to pan out exactly for them to come true, and we certainly have a role to play in bringing them forth. As we begin chanukah we should remember not only the dreams of the Maccabees, but the dreams of all who yearn for self determination and religious and national autonomy,

Bradley Artson wrote that “A world without dreams is too small for the human soul. But a world in which our dreams are projected onto the world without making room for each other is too brutal. Ultimately, Joseph and his brothers learn to bring each other into their dreams, recognizing that the greatest dream of all is the one God dreams for us all: “On that day, all will be one, and God’s name: One.”