Little Paran got Hanukkah money from Grandpa and Grandma — a hundred-shekel bill — and he is having a hard time parting with it. He holds the bill close. Imagines what he will buy with it. On Shabbat we told him he was not allowed to hold the bill, so he asked just to stroke it. We let him.
He never had this kind of attachment to other gifts. The remote-control jeep he forgot about after half an hour. The rollerblades he forgot after two days.
But the money bill? That is the central topic right now. What will I buy with it? A parrot? A robot? A telescope?
What is it about money that makes us long for it so much? Why are people willing to burn through entire lives to pile up more and more money, in amounts they will never be able to use?
The reason for the longing may lie precisely in money’s lack of tangibility.
When Paran got a remote-control jeep, he got only a remote-control jeep. But these hundred shekels are a whole world. They can be a parrot or a robot, they can be five hundred sticks of gum or thirty popsicles, they can be a knight’s sword or a basketball hoop on the wall. They are all the unfulfilled dreams. Yuval Noah Harari was right when he said that, contrary to what people tend to think, money is the most spiritual thing in the world. Little Paran is in no hurry to buy. Right now that bill is worth far more to him than anything physical. That bill is a dream and a sweet fantasy. When the bill is cashed in: the sweet dream will end.
We all love to dream. But to actually fulfill? That is scary.
In all honesty I must say that when I did fulfill dreams, there was usually a slight sourness in the fulfillment. The pink cloud of the dream is sometimes better than the reality of the dream come true.
Few are those who know both how to dream and how to fulfill. It cannot always even be the same person. The dreamer is a far-off visionary. Getting down to the details of the dream and carrying it out always involves a rupture. It involves a compromise that falls somewhat short of the dream. Moses dreamed of the Land, but Joshua the man of action fulfilled it. Herzl dreamed of the state, but Ben-Gurion the man of action fulfilled it.
What is special about Joseph the righteous is that he was both in one man. The dreamer and the fulfiller. Every turn in Joseph’s life comes through dreams. Because of his dreams he went down to Egypt, and thanks to the dreams of others he became the ruler of Egypt.
But Joseph, in Parashat Miketz, does not just interpret the dream. He also fulfills it. He gives practical advice on management and becomes the executor of the great dream plan.
“A Song of Ascents: When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like dreamers.” For years the Land of Israel was an object of dreams. It suited everyone that the Land of Israel remain an unfulfilled dream. A holy place to yearn for, but not one that would force us to deal with the mundane and the material. We will leave the mundane to the gentiles. We will not cash the hundred-shekel bill.
Until the descendants of Joseph came along, who knew both how to dream and how to fulfill. To sow in tears and reap in joy. Like Joseph, who dreams of sheaves and, as ruler of Egypt, also knows how to gather sheaves and grain in abundance; the pioneers, the children of Joseph, began with “we were like dreamers” but knew how to reach the stage of “carrying his sheaves” as well.
