Night Vision

These are the weeks of dreams – dreams that changed the course of history for Yosef Hatzaddik and the world around him thousands of years ago.

Because while many dreams can be dismissed as the nocturnal playback of an overtired brain or overstressed system, sometimes they’re a way of connecting to higher realms in ways our conscious mind doesn’t understand.

Many of us have experienced a life-changing dream, a meaningful message in our sleep, or a night-time visit from the Other World.

TEN TRUE ACCOUNTS OF LIFE-ALTERING DREAMS THAT PORTENDED THE FUTURE

Rav Breuer’s Dream

For all the pünklichkeit for which Rav Breuer and the yekkishe community are known, the one area he was not meticulous about was ending his learning seder on time

IN the mid-1970s, my father, Rav Yaakov Yitzchok Weinberg z”l, started learning with Rav Dr. Yosef Breuer, the venerated rav of K’hal Adath Jeshurun in Washington Heights, New York. The chavrusashaft began at the behest of Rav Breuer’s family, who sought to set up the elderly rav with a chavrusa so he could maintain his sedorim even as his eyesight waned. Every morning, my father walked to the home of the Rav’s daughter, Meta Bechhofer, at 50 Overlook Terrace, where he would join Rav Breuer in his study for their 10 a.m. sessions.

Surrounded by large tomes of Gemara (one volume on the shared desk, a second on a shelf that pulled out from the desk, and yet another on the stool nearby), the pair would blissfully submerge themselves in the Yam HaTalmud as they methodically made their way through the Gemara, Rashi, Tosafos, and the main Rishonim on each daf, basking in the joy of pure limud haTorah. The session officially went until noon, but for all the pünktlichkeit (punctuality) for which Rav Breuer and the German community are known, the one area he was not meticulous about was ending his learning seder on time.

The very fact that my father and Rav Breuer could learn together was inspiring and wondrous: My father, a Polish Gerrer chassid originally from Lodz, was in his forties. The Rav, a leader and scion of an aristocratic German Jewish family, was already in his nineties. Yet despite their vastly different backgrounds and even a formidable language barrier — my father spoke in the chassidishe Yiddish of his youth and the Rav conversed in a sophisticated German — they transcended the barriers of semantics.

Rav Breuer is remembered for his profound writings, for the large kehillah he built, and for being the foremost expositor of Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch’s hashkafah of both Torah im derech eretz and austritt — Rav Hirsch’s principle of an independent, Torah-true kehillah without any association with Reform Jewry.