Monford Harris explores how the Ashkenaz Pietists viewed dreams in his article “Dreams in the Sefer Hasidim”. Harris begins by briefly exploring Rabbi Moses ben Jacob of Coucy’s halachic work the “SeMag”. Although that work primarily deals with non-dream issues it does eventually deal with dreams. The one question that R. Jacob was never able to satisfactorily answer is why dreams flow from the mouth from the interpreter and why is it said that people should only ask for dream interpretation from somebody that will be favorable to the dreamer.
The answer that R. Jacob found was that some people are predestined, by luck, to be dream interpreters and it is only those predestined people that the Berakhoth 55b refers to and the reason you should only go to a dream interpreter that’s likely to be favorable to you is that the dream interpreter has an angel on either side of him and if he says a good interpretation the good angel will take the good interpretation and make it so and the same is true for the bad interpretation.
The thirteenth century Ashkenaz Pietiest also addressed the issue of dream interpretation as well as other aspects of dreams and visions in the Sefer Hasidim. For the Pietiest there was a distintion between dreams and visions. Visions were seen while awake and dreams were seen while asleep. Dreams were always talked about in terms of “seeing” the dream.
The answer the Pietiest find to what Berakhoth 55b means is different from what R. Jacob found. The Pietiest said that nothing happens to a man that doesn’t first reveal itself in a dream, however nobody is pious enough to receive direct revelation so the symbols in our dreams are vague an allegorical. Also the dreams of regular people intermingle with the words of demons, the body and desires also influences dreams, so the interpretation of dreams is very important to try to figure out the meaning of dreams. Therefore not all dreams about God are said to be purely prophetic or angelic because if somebody spends their days being pious its only natural that they will have a dream about God that comes from their desire and not from angels.
This dichotomy of internal verses external dreams is important in the Sefer Hasidim for figuring out the meaning and source of a dream. Internal dreams, those influenced by the body, desire, and the mind, will be of things that person has been thinking about recently. If you dream about something that’s been on your mind lately then it is safe to assume that this dream is an internal dream without much meaning.
Dreams are not ruled by reason, it is said that in Psalms 16:7 that at night during a dream the reins instruct, therefore a man’s reason is not turned on during dreaming. Most though, be they good, bad, true, or false are not intended. They just kind of happen. The chaotic thoughts we have while dreaming have their own momentum and sometimes dreams are random and akin to when somebody throws a ball and it rolls where you didn’t expect it to roll.
Besides reason, our sense of self is distorted in dreams as is evident by the fact that people can do lewd thing in our dreams and not feel embarrassment. However a pious person can maintain their sense of embarrassment in dreams.
External dreams are usually about thing that are alien to the dreamer. External dreams can have three sources: angels, demons, and the ba’al halom. External dreams are recognizable as external because they will contain themes, images, teachings, etc that are completely alien or beyond the capabilities of the dreamer.
Dreams from demons are said to happen when one is not quite asleep, but only kind of asleep. The demon whispers into your ear and influences what you think. The demon does now, however, control you or directly give you a bad dream. Another external figure that gives dreams is the ba’al halom, Harris brings up scholarship about but remains neutrual about whether or not ba’al halmom is a crossover a Babylonian god that made into the Babylonian Talmud. To me it seems likely.
Harris comments that Gershon Scholem and himself agree that the Sefer Hasidim has many original ideas that it proposes, such as the idea of dream images having their own momentum, but it never develops the ideas much. The criticism is that it says what it says and then moves on even though the reader may want more about a certain insight.
Harris comments that the he thinks one of the most unique and interesting approaches to dreams the Sefer Hasidim offers is its interpretation of Berakhoth 55b. How is it that dreams flow from the mouth of the interpreter and yet different people can find different interpretations to dreams? Unlike R. Jacob the Pietist don’t postulate that some people are predestined to be dream interpreters and that their interpretations will be carried out by angels. The Pietist propose that like the Torah, dreams can interpreted multiple ways and multiple times, as long as the interpretation holds true to the contents of the dream, without all of their meaning being extracted.
Dreams and scripture are truly multilevel and need to be interpreted in terms of Oral Torah and Torah. Harris makes the claim that because both scripture and dreams are divinely inspired and flow from the mouth of the interpreter that dreams are a kind of scripture (63). However I don’t think he provides enough evidence to make his case convincing because I could imagine somebody arguing that dreams and scripture are similar but not the same thing.
Because of the emphasis placed on dream interpretation and the multilevel meaning of dreams, Harris argues that it would be logical to assume that dream interpretation and the meaning of symbols would of played a large part in lives of Pietist but Harris says that the Sefer Hasidim is surprisingly quiet on cases of dream interpretation and has very few symbols in it except for an ark representing death. Harris argues that a reason for this may be that the Pietist would have been so steeped in Biblical and Talmudic lure and associations that symbolic interpretations would of been clear and uncomplicated.
So then whose dreams need to be interpreted? Harris says the the only two real examples of somebody going to get their dreams interpreted in the Sefer Hasidim is when gentiles go to get their dreams interpreted. Harris argues that while this may seem unusual it fits in surprisingly well the Biblical precedents of Joseph and Daniel who were both strangers in a foreign land interpreting the dreams on foreigners.
To “interpret” a dream to the Pietist meant more than to simply give an analytical reading of the dream. The interpretation of dreams was said to have a therapeutic effect on the dreamer. Similar to ancient Near Eastern ideas about dreams the Pietiest thought dreams came with secret messages that needed to be decoded and that decoding the dream was very important. For the Pietist decoding a dream was even more important than whether the dream was true or not. Sometimes somebody is shown a harsh dream so that he may investigate his conduct (69). If somebody receives such a dream fasting may be done in the stead of animal sacrifice. Figuring a dream out or “solving it” cancels out any bad effects the dream has.
Harris relies heavily on a Hebrew copy of the Sefer Hasidim and also draws in some modern work took. He cited Leo Oppenheim’s “The Interpretation of Dreams in the Ancient Near East” and argues that there are enough parallels between thirteenth century German Jewish ideas about dreams and ancient Near Eastern ideas to make the comparison valuable.
The rest of this paper has been lost and for the time being I'm not terribly interested in going out of my way to either find the finished version of this paper or try to redo it. Although one day I do hope to revisit this subject.
No comments:
Post a Comment