Literary Review 4: A Hasidic View of Dreams, Torah-text, and the Language of Allusion

Citation:

Wineman, Aryeh. “A HASIDIC VIEW OF DREAMS, TORAH-TEXT, AND THE

LANGUAGE OF ALLUSION.” Hebrew Studies, vol. 52, no. 1, National Association of Professors of Hebrew in Institutions of Higher Learning, 2011, pp. 353–62, doi:10.1353/hbr.2011.0031.

Summary: This text gathers different Hasidic views and sources on dreaming. For example, there's various superstitions such as being asleep is equal to being 1/60th dead. There is also cases discussed from the Zohar and the Ohr Yitzchok, two Jewish texts which are extremely important to the Hasidic community. It goes over the text in the Torah as well, and discusses Hasidic views of the dreams that appear in Genesis.
Author: Aryeh Wineman has written several books about hasidic Judaism. Many of them focus on more spiritual and mystical interpretations and stories. He is also a rabbi, which makes him something of an expert.
Key terms: hasidic judaism, kabbalah (Jewish mysticism), zohar (book of Jewish mysticism)
Quotes:
". . .when a person sleeps, his soul roams through the world, and what one sees in dreams is really what the soul perceives in its journey." (p. 1)

". . .it might be suggested that the subject and presence of dreams in Hasidic texts and stories reflect something significant concerning the core-nature of eighteenth-century Hasidism which centered its sense of reality not within the external "objective" world, but rather within a person's own inner interiority and consciousness." (p. 2)

" . . .Pharaoh, in his sleep, also saw the truth on that same higher level, but upon awakening he perceived that truth only as expressed and clad in a physical, figurative manifestation." (pg 3).

Value: This work has a lot of information that Freud would have been learning in his studies. Drawing on what he learned, I can improve my argument that Freud's dream theory was based in Judaism. For example, that dreams contain truths that can only be discerned upon awakening. Additionally, Freud was very interested in the human psyche and consciousness, an interest that he may have gained from hassidut. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Literature review: Freud's Dream of Interpretation

Image
  Citation: Frieden, Ken.  Freud's Dream of Interpretation , State University of New York Press, 1990.  ProQuest Ebook      Central , https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rutgers-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3408353. Summary: Ken Frieden writes a summary of and commentary on Sigmund Freud's own book, "The Interpretation of Dreams." He focuses on Freud's reactions to instances of dream interpretation mentioned in the Old Testament, particularly Joseph and Daniel. The work is also critical of Freud's theories, as Frieden points out that the whole point of Freud's work was to establish dream interpretation as a legitimate practice, and he sometimes seems to contradict himself.  Author: Ken Frieden is  a professor of Judaic studies at Syracuse University. He is involved in the Departments of English, Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics, and Religion. Frieden writes about Jewish literature.  He has written and published several of his own works...
Read more

The Subject of Dreams

Image
    The tentative topic that I would like to explore is dreams. Although everyone dreams, scientists have yet to know why. Some theories are that dreams show us our deeper desires, they act as a link between our conscious and unconscious minds. (Freud, S., 1949) Another theory is that dreams are a sort of practice run our mind foists upon us to help keep us sharp for situations that may arise when we're awake. Some researchers think there is no reason at all. ( Revonsuo, A) Th e mystery of dreams runs even deeper than not knowing the reason for them. We don't recall most of the dreams we have; about 95% of them are forgotten by the time we wake up. What effect would remembering more of our dreams have on us? What about lucid dreaming?      There is also a supernatural aspect to dreams. In many cultures dreams are actually prophetic visions and entirely interpretable. Some people would even take certain substances to induce such visions. There...
Read more