Borns Jewish Studies Program

Ancient civilizations were fascinated with dreams and assigned them meaning. The course will introduce participants to biblical and Talmudic dream interpretations. The best examples of dreams in the Bible are those of Joseph, Jacob's ladder, and the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of impending disaster. Dreams were also linked to prophetic activity. The Talmud famously stated that an uninterpreted dream is like an unread letter. Talmudic sages suggested that one could even “heal” a dream, thus changing a possible negative outcome in a positive direction. In this course, we will read the accounts of dreams in the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud. We will also review the most recent research on explaining dreams according to psychoanalysis and explore dream-inspired elements in contemporary visual culture (for instance in The Quay Brothers' Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass).

S26