You Are Not What You Wheat – Lessons From Yosef’s Dreams
The beginning of our parsha describes the two dreams that Yosef dreamt, and which he told to his brothers. It is interesting to note that the reaction of the brothers to each dream, while negative, was not exactly the same:
· After Yosef told them the first dream about the sheaves of wheat bowing down to him, the verse states: “And they continued to hate him on account of his dreams.”[1]
· After telling them the second dream with the sun, moon and stars bowing down to him, the verse says: “And his brothers were jealous of him.”[2]
Now, hatred and jealousy are both negative reactions, but they are not the same. Why did the first dream provoke feelings of hatred and the second dream jealousy?
In order to answer this question, we must first consider another one. How exactly are the brothers represented in these two dreams?
Anyone who knows the story will tell us that in the first dream they are represented by sheaves of wheat, and in the second dream, by stars.
Actually, that is not entirely correct. It is true that in the second dream Yosef describes his family members as the sun, moon and stars. But in the first dream he says, “Behold we were gathering sheaves of wheat in the field.” Thus, it emerges that in the first dream, the brothers were not represented by sheaves of wheat. They were represented by themselves!
What is the meaning of this?
The Beis Halevi[3] explains. Although the two dreams were very similar to each other in substance, i.e., that Yosef would achieve eminence over his brothers; nonetheless, they refer to two different planes. The first dream deals with wheat, and represents their reliance on him for physical sustenance. The second dream talks about stars, i.e., heavenly entities, and represents Yosef’s ascendancy over them in spiritual matters.
It is for this reason that the brothers reacted to the first dream not with jealousy, but with hatred. The brothers would never be jealous of someone who had more wheat than them, for that is not something to be jealous over. If anything, it would elicit feelings of dislike within them for someone even bragging about superiority in material matters. The second dream, which related to spiritual attainments, brought out feelings of jealousy from within the brothers, for spiritual matters are worth being jealous about.
This is what lies behind the question as to whether the brothers themselves feature as part of the dream. The second dream had stars in it, which represents the brothers’ spiritual attainments. As such, the brothers did not need to feature in the dream separately as themselves, for their spiritual attainments are them! The first dream, by contrast, relating to material acquisitions, had to have the brothers featuring as themselves. There is no way they could be represented by their sheaves, because a person is not a sheaf of wheat!
These, then, are the fundamental lessons to be derived from the dreams:
First, a person should not be jealous over someone else’s material possessions, but rather their spiritual attainments.
Second, one needs to know what defines him as a person, and how he should define himself. Spiritual attainments are what we are. Physical possessions are what we have.
This idea of what constitutes a person’s identity is succinctly phrased in the verse at the end of Koheles:[4] “The sum of the matter, when all has been considered, fear God and keep His commandments, for that is all of man.” Koheles is telling us that man’s essence is the sum total of his fear of God and performance of mitzvos. All other assets are things that he has, but not what he is.
[1] Bereishis 37:8.
[2] Ibid., verse 11.
[3] Vayeshev, ibid.
[4] 12:13.