Q&A: In Your Opinion, How Reliable Is a Dream?
In Your Opinion, How Reliable Is a Dream?
Question
There is an entire topic in Jewish law about the reliability of dreams. There are the Ran, the Rashba, the Rogatchover, and many others. Some accept only excommunication in a dream, and there is also charity, and more.
Be that as it may, it seems that they all assume that the dream has some kind of objective dimension (on one level or another). How can this be understood today? It seems to me that you think a dream has no real dimension at all. Do you have a creative (rational) interpretation of those halakhic decisors, or of the Talmudic passage, or do you think this is simply a mistake—but this Jewish law is still Jewish law and one must not deviate from it?
Perhaps I wrote this unclearly, but I would be glad if you would expand on it.
Answer
I wrote about this in my article for Parashat Miketz, Middah Tovah 5767. See there.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0BwJAdMjYRm7IY0xlc1dmYTMweVE
Discussion on Answer
I don't know what "the way we understand things today" is. If you have a dream and it turns out in reality that there is something to it (as in the case of second-tithe money), that is an indication that there is something to it, no?
Okay, suppose so. And what about excommunication in a dream? Does it seem reasonable to you that there is a divine message here?
Of course, one cannot categorically rule anything out. But it seems to me you would agree that it is not likely, and that for the Sages it was probably once considered likely—isn't that so?
I don't know. Maybe there is a message here. I didn't understand the second question.
Thank you, I do indeed see explanations and interpretations of the Talmudic passage here. But the question of rationality has not been resolved.
That is, whatever the explanation of the Talmud may be, it is clear that there is some level of reliability to a dream (even in Maimonides' view, as you wrote). And that seems contradicted by the way we understand things today, no?