Vayeshev
Genesis 37:1-40:23
Amos 2:6-3:8
The Book of Dreams, the subtitle of Genesis, is derived from Vayetze, Vayeshev and Miketz, Torah portions read during the Hebrew month of Kislev when Chanukah is celebrated. Just as ancient Israelites attached great importance to dreams, modern Jews fix their eyes on Chanukah candles and recall how their dreams turned out.
“Sequel,” a poem by Sara Henderson Hay, captures the practice of matching dreams and their outcomes:
And there, in the Beast’s place, stood a handsome Prince!
Dashing and elegant from head to toes.
So they were married, thus the story goes,
And lived thenceforth in great magnificence,
And in the public eye. She christened ships,
Cut ribbons, sponsored Fairs of Arts and Sciences;
He opened Parliament, made speeches, went on trips…
In short, it was the happiest of alliances.
But watching him glitter, listening to him talk,
Sometimes the Princess grew perversely sad
And thought of the good Beast, who used to walk
Beside her in the garden, and who had
Such gentle eyes, and such a loving arm
To shield her from the briers, and keep her warm.
Rabbis and cantors often see what happens to people’s hopes and dreams at life’s highpoints: a bar/bat mitzvah, college, marriage, childbirth, career paths, good fortune, charmed lives. But they also are present when hopes are dashed: failed marriages, ill-fated choices, poor judgment, unsuccessful ventures, premature death. They listen to people who say: “I dreamt that one day … ” or “I thought it would turn out to be different than … ”
Why don’t people ever get to see what happens before it happens? Why doesn’t Beauty ever get to know what will happen when the Beast becomes the handsome prince? In her book “The Growth and Development of Mothers,” Angela McBride mourns the loss of the dreams she brought to marriage and to motherhood:
I have a loving, understanding husband, two pretty and bright children, and I regularly feel like screaming: “Why didn’t anyone ever tell me that no one lives happily ever after?” Why do fairy tales always end with the prince and princess marrying? Why don’t they tell you what happened to the couple in the next 50 years? How did the prince and princess feel when the babies started coming? Did Cinderella ever wake up in the morning to the cry of her baby, feeling as evil and fussy as her stepsisters? How much growing up did the prince and princess have to do to help their children grow up?
In the final bicycle race in the film “Breaking Away,” a competitor thrusts a stick into the spokes of the young cyclist’s bike and shatters his dream of victory. The boy’s plaintive cry to his father, “I didn’t know that people cheat,” reveals his sorrow at his lost dream and lost innocence. Like the film’s protagonist, people do not always get what they want in life. Nevertheless, what matters most is what they do when dreams are shattered and lives are in need of repair.
Divinity students learn how to officiate at lifecycle ceremonies, what one rabbi once crassly suggested was a guide to how to “hatch ’em, match ’em and dispatch ’em.” But young rabbis are not provided with a guide to how to help people survive lost hopes or a ceremony for dreams that die. The prophet Zechariah (9:12) referred to the Israelites as “asirei tikvah” — prisoners of hope. The challenge of this title is to find hope among ashes, to dream new dreams on graves of yesterday’s disappointments.
At this season of the year when Jews gaze into the Chanukah candles and recall Joseph and his dreams as well as the Maccabees’ vision of freedom, it is instructive, no matter how bleak things may seem, to take a page from the Book of Dreams and thereby provide a blueprint for a better life, a better world, and miracles in our own time.
Former j. Torah columnist Rabbi Stephen S. Pearce substitutes this week for new mother Rabbi Karen Citrin. He is the spiritual leader of Reform Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco.