Are you able to sleep well these days? Has COVID entered into your dreams? I know that I have periods of time when I remember my dreams vividly, and other times not at all. These days, interestingly enough, it’s been a hybrid. I wake up just knowing that I have been dreaming, but I have no clue what the dream has been. Nothing. Not the feeling, not the characters, not the plot.
Maybe that makes me lucky. I know that at the very least I have been sleeping well. How about you? Maybe you are sleeping better because, without that commute to work, you get to sleep later than usual. Then again, maybe not. Maybe you are racked with anxiety dreams. You sure do have every right to those, as we are now in the 10th straight month of mask-wearing and social-distancing. In some ways, the anxiety increases as we begin to believe that there may be a finish line. I think of Dorothy on her way to the Emerald City, all her friends wanting to give up. “But we’ve come so far, already,” Dorothy says in an effort to cheer them on and lift up their spirits.
Surely it is the Biblical Joseph who is most famously associated with dreams. Earlier in his life, Joseph’s dreams got him into trouble. They were the source of his misfortune as his brothers threw him into the pit. But when Pharaoh starts having strange dreams, Joseph rises in power because of his ability to interpret them.
When we speak of dreams, we mean different things. On the most literal level, dreams are what we do in our sleep. But to dream has a higher meaning as well. To dream can imply a sense of a larger vision of life, a sense that things could somehow be better than they are at present and a direction for how to advance toward that goal.
We have been doing a lot of dreaming these days. Right here at TBT, we dream about the future in our new building, safe and sound. As we prepare to celebrate Cantor Boyle’s installation as TBT’s Cantor, I know I also dream – on her behalf – for the day when she can engage with our congregation in the physical space of our newly renovated and beautified sanctuary. And if that’s not enough: We dream too about who the next rabbi of TBT will be. I know I dream of passing that torch to the perfect rabbi for the next chapter of TBT’s life. I dream too, of being in our new space, of looking back upon a successful capital campaign, so we can not only dream dreams, but pay for those dreams so we can live the dream.
About dreams, the midrash teaches: it is “true that everyone dreams, but a leader’s dream embraces the whole world.” And so, first and foremost, our greatest dream right now is to live in a world where we can touch and gather and embrace without risking our lives to do so.
I say: let us dream on, of a world not only free of the corona virus, but a world where we are free to heal the sick and comfort the bereaved, to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless, to reach for the stars and to hold each other tight. Hold fast to dreams for dreams do come true.
Rabbi Offner