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    Dreams – Vayyeshev

    Nobody sleeps without (at least sometimes) dreaming.

    Don’t believe it when someone tells you that they never dream. They do, even though they wake up without a memory of the episode. The Torah is certain that dreams come from God.

    In ancient times there were dream-interpreters like Joseph who had the gift of explaining and applying dreams, whether those of Pharaoh or anyone else. Not that Joseph’s explanations were contorted. Somehow he had the knack of knowing what was obsessing the dreamer’s mind and finding a link between the daytime obsessions and the adventures of the night-time mind.

    In the Talmud and Midrash there are so many dreams that prove this point. For example, when a person was constantly thinking of a particular patriarch or other eminent person, the subject of their cogitation often came to them in their dreams.

    Some of the rabbis were alarmed at how seriously their contemporaries took their dreams, and the critics kept saying that “As there is no grain without chaff, so there is no dream without strange things that have to be pushed aside”.

    People who have bad dreams are warned that they need to attend to their sins and repent, since the bad dream may be an admonition to recognise and mend the possibly hidden thoughts that have to be addressed.

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