"And Yosef dreamed, and he told his brothers, and they hated him even more." How frustrating it is when someone has a dream, some vision beyond what currently exists, beyond what a situation is capable of yielding.
Maybe you have a vision of how our relationship should be better, or more fulfilling. Meaning, maybe for you, right now, I am not good enough. And if you do have a dream, which I can sense by the way you talk to me, by the way you look at me, I can see you know that there can be more - deeper. But don't tell me. Your communication of your ideas, your visions, will create a new paradigm for us automatically, a new vocabulary of relationship that I am not ready for yet, and every time I see you I will see someone who wants me or expects me to be something I am not.
Yosef's dream, his first dream, - we don't hear what it was. If you look closely, you see Yosef had three dreams. But the first one, empty, just the fact that he dreamed was seen as such chutzpah - how dare he imagine anything beyond the status quo! And he was hated. And all of the vehement opposition that ensued from his brothers, that's the real story of Yosef and his brothers. Their real point of disagreement is how to relate to a dream, to a vision, to a future that will require us to be different than who we are now.
Kislev is the month of sleep, and therefore the month of dreams. It is in our deepest sleep that we have the deepest dreams. Our dreams this month, sleeping and waking, which come from a deep place of rest, are our possible futures, are how far we can go when we rise up from our sleep. We should be taking our dreams very seriously this month. We should let our imaginations soar. Let us envision ourselves as individuals and as community, totally new, doing what we should be doing, realizing our potentials and beyond.
Rav Gavriel Goldfeder
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Rav Gavriel Goldfeder is one of the first semicha recipients of the yeshiva. A graduate of Drew University in Religious Studies, he came to Bat Ayin after stints in other yeshivot and found a spiritual and intellectual home. Here he met his wife, Ketriellah, who was a student in our short-lived Women's Yeshiva. Upon graduation, Gavriel took the position of rabbi of the Aish Kodesh Congregation in Boulder, Colorado and together with Ketriellah and their growing family, they are busy creating (in Gavriel's words), "a community infused with Torah values, passion for learning and prayer, consideration of one another, and action, as well as deep celebration of the joys of life." |