Dear TBZ Community,
Parashat Vayeishev, the Torah portion read this Shabbat, marks the beginning of the longest continuous narrative in the Book of Genesis: the saga of Joseph. While Adam and Eve receive two chapters, Noah has four, and even Abraham spans twelve, Joseph’s story stretches across fourteen chapters. From this alone, the Torah is teaching us that the journey of healing and understanding is not a linear one, has many ups and downs, and takes time to unfold.
This week, the story begins with a moment almost every parent (or educator) recognizes: a teenager who cannot quite hold their tongue. Joseph dreams dreams, and he shares those dreams in detail, with flourish, and a lack of social awareness. I love how the commentators give beautiful reasons why Joseph told his brothers about the dream. Except for Sforno (16th-century Italian rabbi), who says, “No, that was a dumb thing to do” (my translation!). His brothers resented him already, and Jacob, his father, rebuked him for it, and yet the Torah hints that something deeper is happening.
וַיְהִי יוֹסֵף חוֹלֵם חֲלוֹם
Vayehi Yosef ḥolem ḥalom
Joseph dreamed a dream (Gen. 37:5.
The Talmud teaches: “A person is shown in a dream only what they think about during the day” (Berakhot 55b). On the surface, this is a comforting, rational explanation – especially to offer a child after a nightmare. Our minds, busy during the day, continue their work at night.
However, the doubled language suggests a dream that arises from beyond the ordinary. The Sefat Emet, a 19th-century Polish rabbi, suggests that the doubled language indicates Joseph’s soul was accessing a higher realm in that moment. Joseph was in a spiritual state in which a dream could descend into him, a dream that has its own gravitational pull.
The Sefat Emet believes that dreams can be glimpses of the neshamah (the soul), peering through the cracks of consciousness. “In dreams,” he writes, “a person can access the root of their soul, for the soul roams freely in the upper worlds.” Joseph’s dreams, in this reading, are not projections of his waking life but invitations from a higher one.
And still, not all dreams are mystical. Some are emotional overload, some are memory-processing, and some are the residue of too much dinner. The Torah’s brilliance is that it leaves us in the tension: dreams are both ordinary and extraordinary, both psychological and spiritual.
Joseph believes in the truth of his dreams, even when he does not understand them. That belief becomes his source of resilience. Through betrayal, slavery, and prison, his dreams accompany him like a quiet promise that his story is not finished. The Midrash (Bereishit Rabbah 84:19) teaches that in the pit, Joseph whispers the words of the dream to himself. The dream becomes a spiritual lifeline, lighting the darkness.
That sometimes the seeds of healing are planted long before we recognize them is a radical theological claim. Rebbe Naḥman of Breslov teaches: “Every descent is for the sake of ascent.” Joseph’s dreams contain the coded blueprint of that ascent, though he could not yet decipher it.
What distinguishes Joseph’s dreams, and our own, from mere fantasy? Many chassidic commentaries note that his dreams are relational, concerned with family, sustenance, and responsibility. Rabbi Noam Elimelech (18th-Century Poland) wrote that, “the righteous person (tzaddik) dreams not for themselves but for the collective, because their soul includes the souls of others.” Joseph’s dreams foreshadow not only his rise but his future role as a source of life for his family and for others. They contain the seeds of a future in which he nourishes nations during famine and reconciles a broken family. A dream, they teach, is not self-serving; it expands one’s capacity to serve others.
Rav Kook teaches that dreams and inner visions are not meant to pull us away from the world, but to open us to deeper dimensions within it. He writes: “Dreams expand the inner power within a person” (Orot HaKodesh I:230). For Rav Kook, a true dream reveals hidden spiritual capacity, possibility waiting to unfold. Seen this way, our parashah invites us to ask ourselves:
What are the dreams that expand our inner power?
Which dreams help us become more whole, more courageous, more compassionate?
And which dreams – fears, assumptions, inherited stories – must we release in order to grow?
The Torah’s dream-saturated opening to Joseph’s story mirrors its ending. Many years later, when Joseph finally reveals himself to his brothers, he says: “It was not you who sent me here, but God” (Gen. 45:8). This is not a simple theological statement. It is the culmination of years of wrestling with uncertainty, meaning, and hope.
Rabbi Levi Yitzḥak of Berditchev reads Joseph’s words as a declaration that life is always more layered than we can see. We are actors inside a story whose full contours are hidden from us. Dreams remind us of this. They are glimpses – not answers, but openings.
As we enter Shabbat, may we continue to cultivate the humility to sit with the unknown, the openness to notice the sacred threads woven through our lives, and the courage to follow the dreams that lift us toward service, healing, and compassion.
Shabbat shalom,
Rav Tiferet