Dream Come True

Many years ago a young Lelover chassid studying in Yeshivas Ponovezh began to suffer from nightmares that haunted him all day and robbed him of precious nighttime sleep leaving him a nervous wreck. He saw horrible things happening to his family. He beheld death funerals and tombstones and would awaken in a cold sweat. He fasted and made a hatavas chalom but the dreams persisted. When he could no longer bear it he went to seek out the Lelover Rebbe at his home on Rabbi Akiva Street in Bnei Brak.

The Rebbe the Bircas Moshe listened attentively to his woeful story but dismissed it with a wave of his hand saying “You have nothing to worry about. Dreams that presage real events are only experienced by people who are so successful at guarding their thoughts that no foreign thought ever intrudes upon their mind for even a fleeting moment. Pure tzaddikim people of exalted level are the only ones who should give any weight to their dreams and take them seriously.”

So then what of the dreams of tzaddikim and men of great spiritual stature? These weeks we are surrounded by dreams — the holy dreams of Yaakov Yosef and even Pharaoh. But we also know about dreams of our modern-day righteous ones. How seriously do they take their dreams?

The Gerrer Rebbe the Lev Simchah who escaped from Europe to Eretz Yisrael in 1940 once appeared in the beis din of the Eidah HaChareidis with a question: He had dreamed that his brother Rav Yitzchak had passed away. Must he practice aveilus the laws of mourning? The dayanim reassured him that dreams were not to be taken seriously and that one does not take any halachic measures based on a dream.