On Dreams and Hearing Voices — Kendell Pinkney

Every now and then, there are times of the year where the various Torah readings for a holiday serendipitously dovetail with the weekly parasha. This week, thankfully, is one such week, where the juxtaposition of Hannukah and our parasha, Miketz, bring together interesting snippets of Torah that feel as if they speak to each other in timely, profound ways. Let’s start with the parasha. 

In parashat Miketz, we cover the story of Joseph, his interpretation of the Egyptian Pharaoh’s dreams which enable Joseph’s rise to power, and his testing of his brothers. In the scene where Joseph interprets Pharaoh’s dreams, we find a verse that catches the eyes of the ancient interpreters: 

Genesis 41.1

וַיְהִ֕י מִקֵּ֖ץ שְׁנָתַ֣יִם יָמִ֑ים וּפַרְעֹ֣ה חֹלֵ֔ם וְהִנֵּ֖ה עֹמֵ֥ד עַל־הַיְאֹֽר׃

After two years’ time, Pharaoh dreamed that he was standing by the Nile...

There initially doesn’t seem to be anything interesting about this verse. It is simply an introduction to the actual dream of Egyptian famine that will come in the next verse. However, for the rabbis, every moment is a chance to create meaning. This means that they are not above atomizing a verse - breaking it up in ways that seem to disrupt the narrative flow for most modern readers - in order to say something occasionally profound. For this verse, they halt us in the midst of our reading in order to draw our attention to the clause “Pharaoh dreamed.” In the ancient midrashic work, Genesis Rabbah, the sages write:

ופרעה חלם (בראשית מא, א), וכל הבריות אינן חולמין, אתמהא, אלא חלום של מלך של כל העולם כלו הוא
“And Pharaoh dreamed…” Don’t all people dream? Indeed, but the dreams of a king encompass the whole world.

The sages bring this observation in order to stress the importance of Joseph’s forthcoming interpretation. In certain parts of the ancient world, dreams carried significant meaning. What is more, the king was anxious about the dream and his inability to understand it. From within this context, we can understand that the power of the king to improve, or harm the lives of those within the land depends on an advisor who can interpret and mediate the meaning of his dreams. In this case, Joseph rises to the occasion. Now, let’s bring our second piece of Torah into the conversation.

In the reading for the final day of Hannukah, we read the final verses of Numbers 7 - a scene where the leaders of various Israelite tribes bring gifts for the dedication of the tabernacle after the altar was consecrated. Following this long string of offerings, Moses walks into the tent of meeting to speak with Hashem, and hears Hashem speak back to him. It is here, when the Divine speaks to Moses, that the text uses a very strange verb. Instead of using the verb that we might expect for the word ‘speak’, medaber (מְדַבֵּ֣ר), the text reads middaber (מִדַּבֵּ֣ר). This might not seem significant to us as English speakers, however, the change of a few vowels and “dots” makes a ton of difference in the Hebrew. According to the ibn Ezra, this change in the vowels transforms the meaning from active to reflexive/internal, and this means that Moses didn’t literally hear G-d’s voice speak out to him, rather he was so attuned to G-d that he could perceive G-d’s message inside himself. This is a nice observation, because it might also suggest that as descendants of the same covenant as Moses, we ourselves might have occasional access to Hashem’s voice when we attune our spiritual selves to what Hashem might be striving to communicate.

It is here between these two texts, the story of Moses hearing Hashem’s voice in his inner mind, and Joseph interpreting the massively consequential dreams of Pharaoh that I see a dynamic interplay that relates to a common theme of Hannukah - “giving light”. During this season, I am sure that you have received any number of inspiring (and annoying) emails proclaiming Hannukah as a time to “give light”. While this is often tied to donating money to some Jewish-life campaign, this notion of “giving light” ties these two disparate texts together for me: Moses is attuned to the point where he can hear G-d’s voice; Joseph is attuned to G-d’s message, and thus he can interpret Pharaoh’s deeply consequential dreams and save his own life, save his family, and save Egypt. Thus, in both of these texts that we read in this week of Hannukah, we have a pair of our ancestors interpreting the messages of G-d either in order to manifest a holy reality out of a difficult past or to divert an ominous future. Between these realities, it is spiritual attunement that gives Moses and Joseph the capacity to “give light” to their people and bring about the change that is needed. 

As we say goodbye to Hannukah and barrel towards the end of the year, I wonder how we might embody the kind of spiritual light that Moses and Joseph displayed in the above texts. While I do not know exactly what that looks like for us, it strikes me as a worthy goal to pursue, because in seeking it out we might even be able to cultivate a bit of Divine presence that can help us heal the past wounds of this year, and vision a more prosperous future. 

Many thanks to Rabbi Daniel Nevins of JTS for his lovely insight and drasha on Numbers 7.

Kendell Pinkney is the Rabbinic Fellow at Ammud: The Jews of Color Torah Academy