Mikeitz
Genesis 41:1-44:17
I Kings 3:15-4:1
Dreams are central to the drama in the cycle of Joseph stories in Genesis. Every time dreams appear, they come in pairs.
In his youth, when Joseph tells his brothers about his dreams of ascendancy over them, there are two: One featuring the sun and the moon and 11 stars and the other featuring sheaves in the field.
When Joseph finds himself in prison in Egypt, he successfully interprets two dreams of his fellow inmates — the cupbearer’s and the baker’s.
In this week’s portion, Joseph has been released from prison because Pharaoh needs an interpreter of dreams — and, once again, Pharaoh has had two of them.
Like Joseph in his youth, Pharaoh has two metaphoric dreams with the same theme, but different symbols.
The first dream features seven fat and seven scrawny cows. The second features seven healthy and seven sickly stalks of corn.
Both express the message that Egypt will experience seven years of plenty followed by seven years of drought.
What is the significance of this double dreaming?
Joseph himself addresses this question at the end of his interpretive soliloquy on behalf of Pharaoh: “Pharaoh’s dream was repeated — two times — because the matter has been fixed by God, and God is making haste to accomplish it” (Genesis 41:32).
From the biblical perspective, expressed by Joseph, the double dreaming proves that these dreams are messages from God and that the matters revealed therein will come to pass in the near future.
More doubles
Since the 19th century and the rise of modern biblical criticism, scholars have been quick to explain repetition in the Bible as proof of numerous sources having contributed to the final text.
But at least one contemporary scholar finds herself more closely aligned with Joseph’s explanation than with the Documentary Hypothesis and its derivatives.
Ya’irah Amit, Professor of Hebrew Bible at Tel Aviv University, takes up this subject in an essay in “The Torah: A Women’s Commentary” (Eskenazi and Weiss, eds. URJ Press. 2008).
She points out that there are a number of additional repeated occurrences in the Joseph stories besides the dreams, asserting that the entire plot of the Joseph cycle is “advance(ed) by paired structures.”
She cites as examples the two rescue attempts in the effort to save Joseph from the pit, two visits to Egypt by the brothers to acquire rations for their family in Canaan, and two times that Joseph acts like a stranger in front of his brothers.
Amit’s point is that the doubling we see in the dreams is part of a larger literary strategy that “indicates a fixed divine intention — and sometimes its imminent actualization.”
Joseph’s statement at the end of his dream interpretation for Pharaoh, then, serves, in Amit’s estimation, as an explanation of the biblical writer’s use of doubling as a literary and theological device.
Whether we understand the doubling of dreams as a literary device, proof that God is at work in the story, evidence of editing from numerous sources or some combination of the above, it cannot be denied that it reveals a truth about human experience that is universal.
Repetition of dreams, even in our own experience, cannot be taken lightly. Waking up from a particularly vivid dream may cause us to wonder at its meaning, but having that same or a similar dream more than once always causes us to look more deeply at what our subconscious is trying to tell us.
In this week’s portion, Joseph encourages us to consider that our dreams can be entry points not only to our subconscious needs and concerns but portals to a greater Power in the universe that is directing our steps.
Dreaming double can indeed be an entrée to greater spirituality and the presence of God in our lives.
Rabbi Dena A. Feingold is spiritual leader of Beth Hillel Temple in Kenosha.
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