Judaism Unbound Episode 414: The Torah of Dreams – Jill Hammer
Jill Hammer – award-winning author, scholar, ritualist, poet, dreamworker and midrashist – is co-founder of Beit Kohenet and of the Kohenet movement, and currently serves as the Director of Spiritual Education at the Academy for Jewish Religion. She joins Dan Liebenson and Lex Rofeberg for a conversation about dreaming as a medium for communal connection, Jewish meaning-making, and divine revelation.
[1] Read Jill Hammer’s full biography here, and make sure to take a look at her newest resource on Jewish dreamwork, Undertorah: An Earth-Based Kabbalah of Dreams.
[2] Hammer explains that, although everyone dreams, our ability to remember our dreams varies from person to person. In fact, our brains sometimes prevent us from remembering our dreams. Dive deeper into this aspect of dream neuroscience via this study published by the National Institute of Health.
[3] Hammer references numerous stories from Jewish text throughout this episode. See below for brief summaries of Hammer’s citations, as well as links to their sources on Sefaria.
In the book of Genesis, dreams constitute a major form of revelation: for Jacob (Genesis 28:10-22), for Abraham (Genesis 15:1), and for Joseph (Genesis 37).
By the time the book of Deuteronomy rolls around, the Torah tells us not to trust “dream-diviners” (Deuteronomy 13:2-6).
The Talmud asserts that dreams are 1/60th of prophecy (Berakhot 57b:13).
The Zohar says, “The prophecy in the world is male, and the dream in the world is female” (Zohar, Vayetzei 8:45).
The only time the Torah mentions a woman dreaming is when God chastises Miriam and implies that she experienced prophecy via dreams, as opposed to Moses, who experienced prophecy via text (Numbers 12:5-8).
The Talmud says that some dreams are nonsense (Berakhot 55a:16).
[4] Hammer mentions her teacher Roger Kamenetz’s belief that dreams invite us to feel, rather than think. For more from Kamenetz on dreams, check out his book, The History of Last Night’s Dream: Discovering the Hidden Path to the Soul.
