Jews have been in the dream business ever since Genesis.
When Nextbook Press author Rodger Kamenetz isn’t writing books, he works as a dream therapist. And in writing Burnt Books, his newly published dual biography of Franz Kafka and Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, he found two Jewish figures who were also fascinated by dreams. As anyone who has read The Metamorphosis or The Trial could tell, Kafka frequently immersed himself in “dreamlike states” when he wrote. Rabbi Nachman also based several of his teachings on dreams. Both drew on the Jewish tradition of dreaming and dream interpretation, rooted in what Kamenetz calls, in The History of Last Night’s Dream, “the primordial dream book in the West, the book of Genesis.”
Now it is time to bring that tradition to the present. Send in your dreams, and Kamenetz will respond with his interpretation.
Here are some guidelines: Keep your dream narratives brief, focus on what is said and done, and mainly on what you feel in each moment of the dream. Briefly identify the persons who appear by indicating how you feel about them (“Joe, my brother-in-law, he scares me”). We reserve the right to edit the dreams to protect privacy. Submissions must be received by November 5. Send them to: [email protected]
From the editors of Tablet Magazine.