Sweet Dreams

Question

Dear Rabbi,

According to Judaism, do our dreams have special meanings and are there ways to interpret them?

Thank you

0

Answers

  1. The Just Ask! - AskTheRabbi.org Team

    Sometimes dreams have a true meaning but many times they are just plain old dreams. And even when they are meaningful, we are never sure of the correct interpretation and it may even be preferable to not interpret any dreams ever.

    We are taught that many dreams are caused by physical influences, such as the food we eat and what we do and think during the day. Once, the King of Persia, who was at war with Rome, approached a great Rabbi and said, “You Jews are supposed to be very clever, so tell me what I’ll see in my dream.” The Rabbi said, “You’ll see the Romans taking you captive and making you grind date-pits in a golden mill.” The king thought about it all day, and, sure enough, he dreamed of it that night.

    Other dreams are caused by spiritual influences. The Zohar states that while people sleep, the soul rises to a higher plane. There, it encounters either negative or positive forces. This experience is transmitted to the imagination and perceived as a dream. An experience with a negative force results in an untrue dream, of which the Torah says, “Dreams speak falsehood.”

    On the other hand, interaction with a positive force results in a true dream, as the Torah says, “In a dream, in a vision of the night…God opens the ears of man.”

    Personally, I was told not to try to interpret dreams, nor pay much attention to them, since the source and reason for having any particular dream is unknown and uncertain. Only if a dream is particularly disturbing, I was told, should I give it enough consideration to take steps to nullify any potential impact.

    Best wishes from the AskTheRabbi.org Team