An Authentic Voice

by Jacob Neusner
National Jewish Post & Opinion
November 28, 2003

continued...

His basic thesis is, "In the Bible every dream of vision is a prophecy, but every prophecy is not necessarily a dream." He argues that "as individuals, when we record a dream, we are performing an act of creation…share our dreams with others, especially in the creativity we bring to interpreting our dreams and visions together." So he meets head-on the challenge of subjectivity and insists that he engages in a public act. Dreams are deliberately forced to serve our waking selves. In interpreting Jacob's dream, the sages wanted to know how it shapes the future of the people: "the Bible's most famous dream and the interpretations placed on it by the sages provide clues for how the interpretation of dreams may ultimately shape destinies." He expounds "paths of interpretation," and then illustrates the journey. Abraham and Jacob "sought divine answers to moments of uncertainty and distress by initiating the dream process in a ritual way…they sent a question upward…received the inspiration and guidance they were seeking…." "If Jacob's staircase dream dealt with estrangement, divorce, and the path to salvation, the story of Jacob's wrestling match deals with maturity, self-image, and reintegration."

Naturally, Joseph provides the occasion for much discussion, but in "From Scout to Seer" Rossel finds those who walked "in the footsteps of Joseph." Having explored the dreams of Genesis, he turns to two dreams from other biblical books. He concludes with two chapters: "The Potential for Healing and Transformation," "Out of the Dream Forest: The Meaning of the Spiritual Quest." In these chapters he focuses on the meaning for the present of the messages contained in dreams: how we can do for ourselves what here he does for us. This is comparable to Rabbi Gillman's essay, in his theological book, on how the faithful of Judaism can do theology for themselves--a tour de force.

What Rossel succeeds in accomplishing, therefore, is to make the most intimate and private experience, the dream, into the raw material of social culture. He has shown how to transform what is personal into what serves the public interest. This he has done through the force of intellect and the power of rigorous thought. That is why to the list of those who have met the challenge of writing books not about Judaism but of Judaism is added the name of Seymour Rossel.

Jacob Neusner, Bard College, is author of Judaism: An Introduction (London and New York: Penguin, 2003).