Because many of us are not able to attend shul in person, the Rabbi has agreed to share his shabbat morning drashah in advance. Here is the first half of it. To read the full drashah, click here and it will take you to what will become a rich archive of all of Rabbi Staller's drashot.
Often times, we’re so familiar with the biblical stories that, in anticipation of what is about to come, we don’t stop and reflect on what’s going on right now. When we read about Yosef being brought before Pharaoh to interpret his dreams, we all already know that Yosef will eventually become the viceroy to Egypt, bring his family down to meet him, and set the stage for the exile in Egypt and the rest of the bible. However, if we step on the breaks and take a moment to reflect on where we are in the biblical narrative, the events that unfold should strike us as unusual and unique.
After successfully interpreting the dreams of his fellow prisoners, Yosef is brought to Pharaoh to interpret his dreams– something we all take for granted as logical, as Yosef is the great dream interpreter. But at this point in the Torah, we have only just been introduced to this idea of a prophetic dream interpretation! Since when is this a method of divine communication? Granted, we have a few prior cases of divine dreams– Avraham at the covenant of the parts, Lavan during his pursuit of Yaakov– but in all of those cases, there was no “interpretive” element involved! God directly appeared and communicated with the Avraham and with Lavan, albeit while they were sleeping. Since when does God communicate via elaborate charades– hinting to people their future via a complicated guessing game of symbolism?
While Yosef might be the first biblical figure to primarily interface with God via dreams, he is certainly not the last. Just last week, we read the Hafotrah from the book of Zechariah. Zechariah, the last of the biblical prophets, exclusively communicates with God via symbolic dreams. Throughout the book of Zechariah, the prophet has confusing symbolic dreams and is helped to arrive at their proper interpretation via an assisting angel. By Zechariah, it is clear that God’s shift from direct communication to dreams foretells the imminent end of prophecy and decline of the Jewish people’s relationship with God. In other words, Zechariah, as the last prophet to manage any form of intimate relationship with God, experiences a much more diluted form of prophecy where he only sees vague images in a dream, and a third party– God’s angel– has to help him interpret it. Thus, we see that divine dreams are representative of God distancing himself and opting for an indirect form of communication... continued
Click HERE to read the Rabbi's full Drasha
