The Jewish Dream Book: The Key to Opening the Inner Meaning of Your Dreams

by Vanessa L. Ochs, Elizabeth Ochs (Primary Contributor), Kristina Swarner (Illustrator)

With beautiful images and engaging text, here's the key to opening the inner meanings of your dreams from the perspective of Jewish mysticism.

This engaging, entertaining, and informative bedside companion will help you open up your dreams and discover the meanings they may hold for you. The Jewish Dream Book invites you to integrate the spiritual wisdom of Judaism’s past into your life today by honoring your dreams and striving to uncover their hidden messages. Exploring the Bible, Talmud, and other ancient sources, it will introduce you to inspiring, easy-to-use rituals and practices.

Included are diverse topics covering everything you’ve ever wondered about dreams and dreaming:

Uniquely Jewish ways to bless and honor your dreams
Transforming a bad dream into a good one
How--and why--to keep a dream journal
How to encourage enlightening, productive, and healing dreams
Guidelines for being a dream interpreter
Historical dream interpretations
Dream symbols and their meanings
How to link your dreams to Torah

Your dreaming hours are about to become much more interesting!

Genres: Jewish, Judaism

128 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2003

Reviews

[Ayo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. Very enlightening and informative. Easily understood. Looking forward to reading on the Subject of Dreams.

[Shuli · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's a lot packed into this lil book! It frames itself as a bedside companion, so this isn't densely academic or overly mystical. Instead, this book is a collection of Jewish dream lore. It's a quick read, perfect reading for a summer night (it was a perfect read during the night of the most recent full moon), but I can see this being the kind of book whose depth opens up as you return to it over the years. Vanessa Ochs clearly takes the subject seriously, so you'll find plenty of citations and a bibliography at the end. In my opinion, it rides the perfect line between giving you plenty to jump off from for further research, without bogging down those readers who aren't looking for that kind of experience.

Part 1 is a short overview of what dreams are and what Judaism teaches about dreaming. Part 2 is a compendium of Jewish dream practices, starting with rituals for going to sleep, waking up, dream interpretation, dream incubation (asking a "dream question"), and handling nightmares. The next section gives specific advice for holding a Rosh Chodesh dream gathering as well as for dreams around certain situations, including mourning and seeking healing. The final chapters are dedicated to the relationship between dreams and the Torah.

Interspersed throughout is a blend of anecdotes and dream lore from the Torah and Talmud, the journals of the Kabbalist Hayyim Vital, Yiddish literature, and contemporary Jewish writers. I really enjoyed the way that this technique gave the book a very cozy, conversational feel, very much the feeling of talking about dreams with friends and family.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book was a great intro to dreams from a Jewish perspective. Completely riddled with typos and printing errors which made it a bit hard to read. Overall approachable and great place to start!

[chais Schulman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked this book. I read it in one sitting, however the book itself had so many typos. The information in it is great and very thorough. I also enjoyed the layout of it. I’m just not sure what happened with the printing or editing process. It’s a shame. The idea is there though so thats why i gave it three stars.