Do you dream when you sleep? Many people do. Sometimes we dream important things. But we often forget our dreams when we wake up.
Sometimes, we don't even remember dreaming. But when a Tzadik, a righteous person, has a dream, and especially when the dream is mentioned in the Torah, it holds a lesson for us.
We are going to analyze Joseph's first dream and compare it with Pharaoh's dreams, which we will read next week.
In his dream, the Pharaoh is a passive observer, watching what happens to the cows and the corn. He is not doing anything.
Joseph's dream begins with activity. "We were binding sheaves in the middle of the field." A Jew is always busy. "Man was created to work," our sages teach us. God made us His partners in Creation, and He commanded us to make this world a dwelling place for Him.
What kind of work do we have to do? Joseph's dream also teaches us a lesson about this. What are Joseph and his brothers doing in the dream? They are gathering sheaves of grain and bundling them together. Each sheaf grows separately from the others, but Joseph and his brothers are bringing them together.
The world around us seems to be full of separate things, and we don't always see a connection between them. But, in reality, everything is part of God's oneness.
It is our task to show how there truly is unity (Ajdut) in all that HaShem created; His holiness is found in every part of Creation. That is why the Jewish people are called "One People in the World." Through Torah and Mitzvot, we reveal the oneness of the world.
At the end of Joseph's dream, all the groups of sheaves kneel before his group.
In every generation there is a Jewish leader who explains to the people how to carry out the mission of revealing God's will in the world. The strength to fulfill this mission comes from accepting and following this leader's instructions, in order to do God's will.
Extracted from Please tell me what the Rebbe says.