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Of Dreams and VisionsNovember 2005From the Desk of Rabbi CohonTo
imagine the unimaginable is the highest use of the imagination.
-- Cynthia Ozick Our
aspirations are our possibilities. --
Robert Browning To
pray is to dream in league with God. --
Abraham Joshua Heschel When Rosh
Hashanah and Yom Kippur fall in October, as they did this year, there is a
stronger carry-over effect that lasts throughout the autumn. For one thing, there was simply more preparation time for the
Days of Awe—we are currently lobbying God to have every holiday season
begin in October from now on—and, consequently, a slightly less intense
but longer period for personal and communal reflection.
In other words, there was more time to dream. Dreams were an
important subject over the recent holiday season, and they remain a focal
point as we move through the Jewish-holiday-free zone of the Hebrew month of
Cheshvan, our November. For
dreams, and the vision and aspirations they can inspire, should not be
restricted to the holidays. They
should be part and parcel of our everyday existence, a continual reminder of
what we wish our lives to become. I asked during
the Kol Nidrei service, what are your personal dreams? What do you still wish your life could become?
How can you begin to live that dream? Each of us has
the opportunity to explore those dreams, those highest conceptions of what
we might accomplish in life. More
importantly, each of us can and should take steps to bring those dreams
closer to reality. That is, we
must pragmatically work towards our ideals. As a
congregation, too, we need to continue to seek our highest vision of what
Temple Emanu-El can be, and to act in ways that will enable us to make those
dreams into a reality. The
quest for a perfect synagogue—every Jew’s express desire, by the way,
although no two Jews agree on what that means—is important not because it
can be achieved, but because that aspiration causes us to act with vision,
and makes us better, and holier. The Torah
portion of Vayera, which we will chant on November 19th, includes
the Akeidah, the story of the
binding of Isaac. Abraham is
asked by God to sacrifice his beloved son and end his dream of fathering a
chosen people. At the very last
moment God reverses the order, and Abraham declares, “b’har
Adonai yeira’eh, on the mountain of the Lord there is vision.”
It is an object lesson in reverse. That is, we
will never again be asked by God to sacrifice our dreams, for dreams are the
building blocks of vision, and vision is God’s gift to us.
The vision of what we can each be; the vision of what our
congregation can become. The lesson of
the Akeidah is simply this: do not sacrifice your dreams. Dreams are the fabric of which vision is made, and without
vision the people perish, as Proverbs says.
But when you dream, when we allow ourselves
to really dream together, we come to share that most precious gift of all,
vision. And then we can reach
towards the heavens. On the
mountain of the Lord there is vision; in your own life, and in our
temple’s life, there also must be such vision. As
the prophet Joel promised, “Your old shall dream dreams, your young shall
see visions.” May this month
bring, for you and for our congregation, practical steps to live out that
highest vision, and to make those dreams real. L’shalom
v’rei’ut, in
peace and friendship, Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon
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