Rabbi Eytan Feiner
One of the featured speakers at the recent Presidents Day Flatbush Hakhel Yarchei Kallah Event was Rabbi Eytan Feiner, rav of Congregation Knesseth Israel – the White Shul in Far Rockaway. The topic of his lecture was “The World of Dreams in Halacha and Machshava.”
Rabbi Feiner began his shiur with an outstanding October 7th Dream and a fascinating Rav Yitzchok Zilberstein teshuvah. In the early morning hours of October 7th, a baal teshuvah who was living in a Yishuv near the Gaza border had a dream in which his rosh hayeshiva was telling him to immediately get up and gather his wife and their two children and get into a car and drive away from his community to safety. Only that morning was both Shabbos and the Yom Tov of Shemina Atzeres, both days when Torah observant Jews are prohibited from doing certain melachos, including driving a car.
When he work up, he just shrugged it off as a dream and went back to sleep where he fell into a second dream when the rosh yeshiva again warned him even more harshly, even grabbing him by his neck and pleading that he was in great mortal danger and must flee the Yishuv. This time he awoke and confused he woke up his wife and told her of his two dreams and that they should immediately get into a car with their children and drive until they were safe.
Realizing the Horrifying Truth of His Scary Dream
After arriving at a community where he felt safe, he parked the car. A few hours later he and all of Israel realized that a terrible attack occurred many of his neighbors unfortunately were killed or injured that same day by Hamas terrorists yemach shemom.
After that terrible day and the Yom Tov ended the shaken baal teshuvah called his Rosh Yeshivah and told him about his startling dreams. He asked then even though the dreams had saved his life and the life of his wife and children, does he have to do teshuvah (repent) for the real sin of driving his car on a day that as mentioned before was both a Shabbos and Yom Tov. The Rosh Yeshiva felt that he needed to pass the shailah (question) to another rabbi and he chose to forward the query to Rav Yitzchok Zilberstein, the brother-in-law of the late posek hador – Rav Chaim Kanievsky.
Rav Zilberstein responded by explaining that had the dream turned out to not be true, yes the baal teshuvah would have to repent for following a false dream interpretation. But since the dream was accurate, he had not sinned. But he was correct in driving only so far as he felt he needed to go to in order to be safe and not to do any more desecrations of Shabbos and Yom Tov. Rabbi Feiner also noted that Shabbos, the day in which the baal teshuvah had his dream is 1/60th of Olam Habah (the World to Come) and that sleep itself is 1/60th of Misa (death).
The Difference Between Dreams of the Past and the Future
In analyzing dreams, Rabbi Feiner said that most dreams that we have are focused on the past and for those type of dreams, we don’t have to be concerned. If, however, the dream focuses on something that will occur in the future, we have to take it seriously as dreams are 1/60th of prophecy.
Rabbi Feiner also said that if a dream occurs on Shabbos or on Rosh Hashanah, one has to take such a dream more seriously. Other points he mentioned include a reference to a statement of the Rif (Rabbi Yitzchak ben Yaakov Alfasi, 1013-1103, a Moroccan Torah scholar,) who writes that Hakodesh Baruch Hu often opts for a dream to be a messenger.
Other topics that Rabbi Feiner touched was why did Hakodesh Baruch Hu create us with a need to sleep or to dream or to have nightmares? He also discussed about dreams that are recorded in Tanach (the Jewish Bible.)
Reprinted from this week’s edition of The Flatbush Jewish Journal.
