THE POWER OF DREAMS

Moshe Kempinski

Since the first handshake with the arch terrorist Arafat on the lawn of the White House we have been living in a strange almost surrealistic nightmare. Truthfully the nightmare has been going on for a very long time. It actually began with the destruction of the Temple and the long night of exile. A long night that included pogroms, crusades, forced conversions, expulsions and gas chambers. Yet when an Israeli Prime Minister shook the hand of the devil in Washington, the nightmare became even more intense and frightening. The handshake symbolised the beginning of a time when nothing made sense anymore. The enemy ceased to only lie in waiting outside the ghetto walls or in the other part of the village. The dangers began from within the very body of the Jewish people.

The mystery and power of dreams lies in the fact that all things can coexist in a dream. Emotions that contradict each other can permeate a dream where even the impossible co-exists with the possible. They seem to come out of the deepest parts of our souls and whisper of hopes and hidden desires. Yet at the same time they rage with the passion of the greatest fears along with the most delicate of hopes.

The first exile of the Jews began with dreams. The dreams of Jacob followed by the dreams of Joseph and pharaoh all culminated in the long exile of Egypt.Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi , the Baal haTanya explains that exile was born out of a succession of dreams because exile is the ultimate dream.

It is in this world of spiritual exile wherein white is seen as black and black is seen as white. It is a situation where opposites reign and seven fat cows in Pharaoh’s dream can be eaten by seven lean cows and the lean remain lean. It is a state that, in our days ,allows a politician whose life has become embroiled in petty theft and illegal activity to continue to believe that he retains the right to be a the Prime Minister of this country. Rabbi Yehoshua of Ostrova said that s vain person is worse than a liar. A liar knows he is lying, whereas someone who is absorbed in his self-image of greatness, firmly believes in his delusions.
Spiritual exile is exile from simple unadulterated truth just like a dream. It is a dream that is cluttered with unwarranted exaggeration, muddled and confused metaphors with consistent inconsistency. In essence this dream state describes painfully the state of affairs in the world in general and in Israel in particular. In such a state, the Defense Minister of Israel can call the not responding to daily acts of violence against Israel's citizens as a moral and courageous stance. In such a spiritual environment the Prime minister can decry the actions and jail young people passionately in love with their land calling them a threat to Israel's democracy while releasing blood stained terrorists from jail even though they are a threat to its very existence. A woman running for Prime Minister can arrange for a song “Livni-boy” to be created by her staff and not be mortified that is but a pathetic copy of a successful ploy of Obama's campaign.

Everything is possible in a dream.

Yet as Rav Kook writes everything is possible in a dream, both the negative and the positive. A single dream may contain conflicting messages, since it reflects the conflicting qualities within each soul.Such is true of the collective soul of a people as well. When the wine butler tells Pharaoh about the unusual slave he met in prison called Joseph he says;""Just as he interpreted, so (my dream) came to be" [Gen. 41:13]."

This prompted our sages to declare a fact that has been increasingly adopted by modern psychology; "Dreams are fulfilled according to the interpretation" [Berachot 55b].

The interpreter does not refashion the future but rather he reaches into the positive depths of each conflicted dreamer and empowers the dreamer to live up to those qualities. There are those in this country that will interpret the dream that is our reality with predictions of doom and gloom. There are others , though, who will reach deeper and find the qualities of hope and vision that will lead this people into safe harbor.

In a time of elections where confusion reigns, search out for the dreamers who interpret the strengths of this people and not their weaknesses. Reach out, not to those who tear down and declaim even if their motives are pure, but rather those who have not lost hope. Leaders who may not all be cognizant of the spiritual heart that burns within them , yet nevertheless offer voice to those exact yearnings. Look to the dreamers who may be found in all the vrious political parties and constellations. People like Uri Ariel , Rabbi Hillel Horowitz ,Aryeh Eldad , Benny Begin and Uri Banks are deeply aware that the future is all in the hands of the interpreter of the dream.

A Song of Ascents When HaShem brought back those that returned to Zion, we were as dreamers ( Psalm 126:1)