Bryan Schwartzman: From my home studio, welcome to Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: There is one beautiful saying by Rabbi Hisda that a dream unexamined is like a letter unopened. The idea that it's a letter to me does suggest a divine source. Bryan Schwartzman: I'm your host Bryan Schwartzman, and our guest today is Rabbi Haviva Ner-David, and we'll be discussing her Evolve essay, Dreams: Judaism's Forgotten Spiritual Practice. So, despite the prevalence of dream interpretation in the Torah, think Joseph and the Pharaoh, dreams have, at least according to Rabbi Haviva occupied a relatively minor space in the Jewish tradition. For the past few years, Rabbi Haviva has been really diving into dreams in a way I haven't heard about other rabbis doing as a way to get in touch with her inner self, possibly some kind of divine message, and has been working with others in unpacking their dreams. In this essay, and in the interview, Haviva tells the story of how it was her exploration of other religious traditions outside Judaism that led her to focus on dreams and really call on them as a way to get through some difficult moments in her life. Bryan Schwartzman: So we're going to talk about that. But listen, as a bonus, if you listen through to the end, you'll get a first ever chance as a listener to gain deep, penetrating, psychological insight into me, your host. To help demonstrate Rabbi Haviva's approach, I'm going to talk about a pretty far-out dream I had a few months back. Now, the dream happens to have occurred at one of my alma maters, The Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. I can't speak for my unconscious, but consciously, I love you all at JTS, and sorry to bring you into this dream. Bryan Schwartzman: As a reminder, the essays discussed on this show are available to read for free on the Evolve website, evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org. The essays are not required reading for the show, but we recommend checking them out to really delve into these interviews. Okay. Now let's get to our guest Rabbi Haviva Ner-David. Where to start? She grew up in a modern Orthodox community outside of New York, but for several decades has lived in Israel. She was considered a pioneering Orthodox feminist as the first woman to be ordained an Orthodox rabbi. And she also holds a PhD in Talmud from Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv. Now, she identifies as a "post-denominational inter-spiritual rabbi." She will talk a little bit about what that means. Bryan Schwartzman: She's also written a ton of books and has three coming out in the next year. "Getting (and Staying) Married Jewishly", she has her first novel coming out called "Hope Valley" and a memoir," Dreaming against the Current: A Rabbi's Soul Journey", which goes deeper and in a lot more detail than the Evolve essay. And I read a draft out there and it's pretty intense. Somebody really struggling with how to live honestly and authentically and in the world. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David, thank you so much for being here. It's wonderful to have you. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: Thank you. It's wonderful to be here. Bryan Schwartzman: Great. So I guess I'll start with, you really had to go outside of Jewish tradition to find this practice, right? Does dream work come from a particular spiritual tradition? Is it more secular in nature? Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: So I did come at it and was exposed to it in this inter-spiritual or interfaith world. But I think one reason why I didn't know much about it from a Jewish perspective was I grew up in a very rational kind of Jewish upbringing. But also in the history of Judaism or Jewish practice, there actually are a lot of dreams and dreamers in the Bible. There's Joseph, there's Jacob with the ladder, Abraham dreams. Dreams actually play a big role in the Bible. And then, later in rabbinic literature, there's much more conflict around it. Dreams are something... Well, and even in the Bible, there's false dreamers and people who claim that they're dreaming the word of God and they're really not, and so there's warning against that. So even in the Bible there's that. And then in rabbinic literature, there is one beautiful saying by Rabbi Hisda that a dream unexamined is like a letter unopened. Bryan Schwartzman: That's an amazing quote by the way. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: I know. I absolutely love that quote. And I also feel like the idea that it's a letter to me does suggest a divine source in dreaming. But a lot of rabbinic literature also speaks... There's a lot about dreams, trying to get rid of your dreams, let go of your dreams, forget your dreams. There's even a ceremony called Hatavat Chalomot, which is ameliorating your dreams, and that is something that's... can be found in some prayer books even today. And so there's a lot of this feeling of "dreams are something you might want to just let go or forget, send away". So the idea of actually trying to go more into your dreams and really delve into them and try to find the meaning, that is something that is more on the fringes of Judaism, maybe more in mysticism, Kabbalah. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: So I did have to go somewhere else to really discover this, but like a lot of things I find once I discovered it and then came back inside my tradition. There actually are a lot of... There are some other people doing this from a Jewish perspective, and so I wouldn't say I'm the only one. I'm definitely not. But it's not mainstream. It's definitely not mainstream. And when I do the dream work, I don't feel that I'm doing it from a Jewish perspective, I feel like I'm doing it from a human perspective. It's one thing that I also really love about the idea of dream work is that it is so human. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: Everybody dreams, even people who say they don't dream, like my life partner, Jacob, he says he doesn't dream, but it's really that he doesn't remember his dreams. Apparently, scientifically we all actually do dream and some people just don't remember them. So the fact that everybody dreams, that this is something that we all have in common to me is just amazing, stunning. The fact that I could go anywhere and do this work with anyone just as a human is really beautiful, I think. Bryan Schwartzman: So, what do you mean when you say dream work? I think a lot of people hear that and they might think Freud and psychoanalysis. And my sense from reading some of your work is this is a very different endeavor. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: Okay. So dream work, when we do dream work, first of all, the idea is that the dream belongs to the dreamer. So nobody can come and interpret the dream for you. So it's not like with Pharaoh and Joseph and- Bryan Schwartzman: Interesting. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: ... Exodus, where someone would bring the dream and then somebody who's completely removed could just tell you what it was trying to tell you. So the idea is that you work with the dreamer, the dream worker works with the dreamer to try to understand the dream. And the way this is done is that you bring the dreamer back into the dream, and then interview certain of the images and elements in the dream. So when I say interview, that means that you have the dreamer become these various images or elements in the dream, which could go as far as becoming like a fly on the wall in the dream or a cloud. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: It could be anything. Or being night because the dream takes place at night or being a city that the dream takes place in. And you have the dreamer enter... become, embody those images or elements and then speak from them. And would you like me to get into the idea behind that, of why that works or... Okay. Bryan Schwartzman: Sure. I guess first just I'd ask is this... I mean, you talk about having the dreamer in these sessions try to inhabit elements of their dream, how does that happen? It sounds almost like hypnosis. I can't see any other way somebody would become water or a fly on the wall. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: Wow. Okay. Well, it is pretty magical how it happens, how it works and it does happen in a way that can feel like hypnosis because I know when I've gone back into dreams of mine, I really do feel like I go to another place, and you do have to relax into it and just let go and trust the work. The idea is that the elements in the dream are all pieces of the unconscious of the dreamer. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: And so they can be different aspects of the unconscious or elements of the unconscious. Or even if you don't want to use words like unconscious, you can just say sort of voices that we might not allow to speak in our waking life, and when we're sleeping and our defenses are down, the voices speak, but they don't speak necessarily in a way that's clear for us to understand. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: They might not come to us and say, "Okay. When you wake up, you should go ahead and take that job that you were wondering if you should take." So it requires going into the images and then letting them speak. And because they're your images and you created them, so you know what they have to say, but you have to actually go into the images and embody them to understand what it is that they're trying to tell you. It's not always about going to interview the elements. I should say that also that it's... There are different kinds of dreams, and certain kinds are more rare, but I have had them myself and worked with people who've had them. So there's something that could be a visitation dream, where somebody comes and gives you a message. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: And sometimes the message is more clear and sometimes you have to work it by having the dreamer go into the body... to embody that person who's in the dream and then just say what the message is. There's also prophetic dreams. And I actually had one. I'll share it because it's pretty wild. My son last summer was in a week-long sleepaway camp. And I had a dream one night that he came next to my bed and told me... He held his finger to his lips and said, "Shh. Eema don't tell them that I escaped from there. I hated that place." And then I woke up in the morning and there was a message from him, he had his phone with him, a WhatsApp that said, "Come get me from here. I hate it. I have to leave here right now. Come get me." Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: And so I would I guess call that a prophetic dream in some ways, kind of... So, well, maybe a mixture between visitation and prophetic. Prophetic in that in the morning I was going to get this message from him and a visitation because there he was next to my bed telling me that he hated this camp and he wanted to go home. So, that's the only one of those I can think of that I've had. So they're rare, but they do happen. And yeah. Bryan Schwartzman: Was that that you had an inclination deep down that something was off or do you think this was actually predicting the future? How do you understand that? Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: Right. I think it's hard to distinguish between all of those different things that were going on. As a mother, yeah, I'm sure I was... First of all, I know him well enough to have maybe guessed that perhaps he wouldn't love this experience. And it's an intuition as a mother too, I guess. Maybe what's the difference between intuition and prophecy? And also connected as a parent can be to a child. So there's that connection too, that they may come and speak to you when they're not with you maybe. Yeah. Bryan Schwartzman: So what role does a... I don't know what the word is, a dream worker play? Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: Yeah. So the dream worker... And that's a term I just use, I don't know if it's any official term. Part of it is just trusting intuition and going where the energy of the dream is going or going where the energy of the dreamer is going, being very curious and asking a lot of questions, making connections. Sometimes you'll ask one element to speak to another element in the dream. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: And often there are voices that are conflicting because in our own selves we have conflicting voices. So sometimes you might ask one element, "Do you have anything to say to..." Does the chair have anything to say to the couch or... And so often, those conversations can be very enlightening and illuminating. And so as the dream worker, you really are just going through the images in the dream. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: And also with experience, you start to get a feeling for the kinds of questions to ask, and for who to have speak to who. But it's not something that you can kind of just learn the rules of it. A lot of it is about being experienced and trusting your intuition and just kind of relaxing into it and trusting spirit or God or whatever you want to call it because that's part of what... If you believe that these inner voices that are speaking to you in your dreams are in some ways connected to something spiritual, whether you want to call it God or spirit or your soul or your higher self, there's so many different ways to name that thing, that feeling that's sort of beyond us and deep inside us and everywhere. Bryan Schwartzman: You mentioned the possibility that this might be a path to experiencing, encountering divinity, I mean, do you need to have belief in a higher power for this to work? Is it enough to say, "This is a route to my own consciousness"? Is the experience really different depending on your beliefs? Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: I don't think so. I think that it is also encountering the divine for me when I go deeper inside myself. But if that might not be for everyone, for everyone it might just be about connecting to as I said these... a higher self or... Well your soul also is a religious concept. But it can also just be your unconscious or the feelings and thoughts that you don't allow yourself to feel and think during your waking time. So whether you consider that a spiritual experience connecting to your inner voice, or whether you call that more a psychological experience or an emotional experience, for me, it's all connected anyway, and just different ways of saying sometimes the same thing. Bryan Schwartzman: Interesting. Well, a lot to think about. So you've clearly been on a long exploration of truth, meaning, understanding, how has getting in, really thinking about dreams and dream work, how has it made a difference in your life and your search for these things? Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: Okay. So for me, dream work has actually been transformative for my spiritual life. And I would say that now it actually is my main spiritual practice, keeping a dream journal as soon as I wake up, if I have a dream that I remember, I write it down. So it has been and was transformative. And for me getting in touch with some desires, some feelings, emotions, direction in my life, having the affirmation and the dream or uncovering it in the dream helped direct me in my own spiritual journey. So one example I can give, maybe it'll make it more concrete. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: So I run a mikveh on the Kibbutz where I live in the galley, and it's called Kibbutz Hannaton and the mikveh is called Shmaya. And I had a dream that I came to do a conversion ceremony at the mikveh, and there was no water in the mikveh. And then I told the people, "Okay. You can go get lunch or something, come back and I'll refill the mikveh." And then when we came back, the mikveh was overflowing. It was flowing out of the building, and then it started to flood the entire kibbutz and everybody just kind of floated away. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: And so when I worked this dream with Jude, with my teacher, so one thing she did is have me become the water. "And I think you mentioned water, becoming the water before." And I have a lot of water dreams as someone who works with water and swims every day. First of all, she asked me where I went when I vacated the mikveh. And now here's an example of how this works so magically. So this was not something in the dream that I would have known or anything I could have known. It was really about going back into the dream and becoming water. And when she asked me that question, it was very clear to me. And I'd say, when you said hypnotic, it was like I was in a trance in some way. And she asked me where I went as the water, and I said I went back to my source. And then she asked me why I came back, and so I said that I had work to do in this world still. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: And then she asked me why I overflowed the mikveh, and I said because I felt that I couldn't be contained within those borders or boundaries of that vessel and I needed to expand more, I needed more expansion. So this told me... When you come out of the trance or whatever... When you start doing the work, then usually you ask the person where did that speak to you in your life right now? Because you might not know as the dream worker, you might not have any idea what any of that is about. And so for me, it was very clear that it was a message from me to me, from myself to myself, that in my spiritual life, I needed more expansiveness and space and fewer boundaries and fewer rules. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: And having grown up Orthodox, and trying to fit into that world of all of the rules and kind of contorting myself to fit into that world for years, it was sort of... I felt it was an affirmation of something I had already been working with and it's that I needed more expansion, and then I didn't need to necessarily be confining myself to those walls and to that structure. And then also the image of everyone floating away, I mean, that was part of my own work with people, of helping them be kind of uplifted and carried away with the work that I do. And so that was part of also... It was about my own spiritual journey and it was also about how I can bring that to other people and help them. So, that's a pretty good example I think of how- Bryan Schwartzman: Wow. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: ... the dream work can work. Bryan Schwartzman: I mean you mentioned you come from a real rationalist background and my sense is that this work in some ways is the opposite, not that it's irrational, but that there's... It's not a math problem. There's no right answer. I mean, theoretically you could have come up with a different interpretation for the mikveh dream maybe, and it would have... If it resonated with you, it would have been equally valid. Is that dichotomy something you like about it? Is it problematic to come from a rationalist perspective and kind of surrender to dreams which seem kind of, if not scary, chaotic, random, nonlinear narratives? Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: Well I grew up rationalist and I think part of my spiritual journey has been letting go of some of that. And so yeah. I wouldn't say necessarily that it came naturally to me from... If it's something that had been introduced to me maybe in my teens or early 20s or... I am 50-something now, 51, 52, then I don't think it would have appealed to me. So it's after my own inner work that it appeals to me. Although, as someone who's a writer and I write fiction, I write nonfiction, I write memoir, symbols and narrative, as I said, have always been... have really appealed to me. So when I think about it, it does make sense to me that this is a modality that really works for me personally. But there is also something about it that's in some ways scary as the dream worker, but also comforting in that if you believe that you don't have the answer and the answer lies with the person that you're working with, so that takes off some of the pressure. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: And just to believe that you're really just the one who's... It's like being a doula or something. You're just the one who's birthing the message and helping that person get to the message. And so just trusting in that, I guess the way maybe a midwife would trust that they just have the skills, but then when you actually get into the delivery room, you have to just trust that you'll know what to do, because you can't prepare for it before you really... Each case is different and you're there to enable the birth to happen. Bryan Schwartzman: Okay. Well, we have just a couple seconds of your time. If you'd like to support these groundbreaking conversations of Evolve on the podcast, on the website, in our web conversations, or even the curriculum we're producing, you can. You can make a contribution to reconstructingjudaism.org/evolve-donate. There's also a link in our show notes. Okay. Now back to our conversation. All right. Well, say someone is actually interested in at least starting with recording their dreams, I mean, you wake up, the images, the narratives, if you remember them at all, they disappear really quickly, do you have any tips on how to dream-journal, what kind of details you should record, how long it should be? Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: So, first of all, keeping a dream journal even helps you to start remembering your dreams. Part of this is also intention. So if you have intention to start remembering your dreams, often you actually will. It might not happen right away, but it can happen over a time of starting to record your dreams. But also before you go to sleep, if you have an intention, "I'd like to try to remember some of my dreams," sometimes it works. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: So one thing to do is to keep the journal next to your bed, so that you don't have to move when you are recording the dream. Because as I said, any slight movement can already make you forget. And yes to focus on images. And the narrative part of it is less important usually in the kind of work that I do. So, often people will say, "Oh. I can't remember exactly what happened first," and this and that. It's usually not very important actually. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: And another thing that I didn't say before that's important is that usually the person who's you in the dream, if you're in the dream at all, is usually the element that's the least important. So try to focus more on the other things that are happening in the dream and less on yourself. So, you might have a dream that you were trying so hard to get somewhere and you couldn't get there, that happens often in dreams. People have those kinds of dreams and then... So, that might be about certain anxiety that you have in your waking life. But then, if you remember other things going on in the dream, other elements, where does it take place? Is it at night? In the morning? Is there a sunrise? Things like that are often the voices that are more important to hear speak than what you were doing in the dream, that you were trying to catch a bus. Or the bus might be the element that has something really wise to tell you. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: So also just focusing on other things besides you in the dream when you're writing it down. And interestingly now, I mean, we're in this period, this corona period, so I have been reading that people have been reporting more vivid dreaming now. And why that is, it could be fear and anxiety coming out in dreams, it could be that people are spending more time at home and actually more calm time. It could be so many different things. But interestingly, people also have been reporting images and dreams that are similar to other people. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: So I think I mentioned to you that a lot of people have been dreaming about bugs. And so there is something also this kind of collective unconscious which we didn't talk about at all, but that's a whole other realm of dreaming that if people are all going through similar things at a certain time, they might even be having similar images in their dreams. Bryan Schwartzman: So I have to admit, I've never met anybody who's sought out a dream counselor. I mean, is there anything you can tell us about who your typical clients are or even how they find you? Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: So my clients actually are usually regular spiritual direction clients, and then they might choose me if they have a list of spiritual directors to choose from because they see that I... When I write in my bio the different things I do, and I mention dream work, they might've chosen me because they're interested in dream work. But often not. Often it's for something else, and then when I tell them about dream work and I say, "Oh. If you have any kind of dream that feels significant or was especially vivid, just feel free to bring it to a session." And for a lot of people, it's the first time they've ever done that. But they might just come to a session one time and say, "You said that thing about a vivid dream. I actually had this dream last week or last night, and I'd like to try it." Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: And then when we do it, I find that some people are such vivid dreamers that it's amazing how much they remember, much more than I do. And some people, also the work itself just comes so naturally they so easily slip back into their dreams and there's so much rich material there for them. So like all things, it works better for some people than for other people. But a lot of the times I think people, just the way I came to dream work, they'll just through some other avenue they'll end up getting to me, but then finding the dream work to be as profound as I do. Bryan Schwartzman: So if somebody is really curious about having their own dreams explored, where would they start? I mean, do you just go on Google and search "dream worker near me"? What's the first step? Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: Well, they can contact me for sure. I- Bryan Schwartzman: Absolutely. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: Yeah. I love this stuff. So I would never turn a dreamer away. Interesting question. I guess, like anything you could Google... Not everybody calls it dreamwork, I don't think. So, you could Google dream work, dream interpretation, just different kinds. There's Jungian dream work. The working with elements is often called Gestalt dreamwork, although I wouldn't define what I do by one particular school. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: But I guess Googling dreams, dream work, dream interpretation, dream analysis, but because it depends on what you're looking for. Because what I do, I would not call it dream interpretation or dream analysis, because that really puts the power in the hands of the dream worker. And it's called dream work, what I do really for a reason, which is that you're just working with the client to help them get to the deeper understanding of the dream. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: And the reason why I think that I was exposed to it in spiritual direction is because that's the idea of spiritual direction too, is that you're not the analyst or the therapist, you're really just more like a spiritual... you're doing more of what I call spiritual accompaniment, where it's more like you're accompanying the directee or client on their spiritual journey and maybe reflecting things back in it that they might not see on their own, or from what they're saying or making connections between things that they're saying, or just asking a lot of questions out of curiosity that helps them go deeper. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: So it's really very in tune with spiritual direction in general, the dream work. And the idea is that the answers don't lie with the dream worker or the spiritual director, they lie with the person who's the dreamer or the directee and you're just helping them get to their own answers. Bryan Schwartzman: So, to give folks a sense how this would work, if I recounted a recent dream I had, would you be able to give us a sense of how you would approach it without me going full throttle into it? Or how would that work? Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: Sure. Bryan Schwartzman: So that was . Ever since we... When we started getting in touch about doing this interview, I started jotting down dreams here or there. I had one that's really stuck with me. And just kind of wondering how you'd approach it. So I found myself back in the library of The Jewish Theological Seminary in New York where I did a graduate degree and I worked in the library to get some spending money. And in the dream, I was reshelving books on the stacks, and suddenly I found that my skin was covered with these things that were like worms, but they weren't worms in the real world sense. They had big kind of teeth that were almost like hooks, and they were all hooked into me. Bryan Schwartzman: And I kind of realized this and I ran to I guess the bathroom and could tell I was bleeding, and I was trying to pull these worms out of me. And somehow in the middle of all of this, I hear what I guess are gunshots, and it turns out the whole building is in the middle of an active shooter situation. Somehow I'm able to get out of the building, although it doesn't look anything like the neighborhood in Morningside Heights surrounding JTS, but some like dream cityscape. Bryan Schwartzman: And I'm fleeing, and whoever had assailed the building is pursuing me through the city and it feels in the dream like it just goes on for hours. I mean, the chase goes through subways, through restaurants, through buildings, and then I don't know what happens. I wake up and I got up and wrote that down. So if we were in spiritual direction, how would you approach that? Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: Okay. So usually what you do first is you have the person go back into the dream and say it again, which you actually said in the present tense, which is great, that was your intuition. So saying it in the present tense first person, so that's all important to get back into it. And you might want to close your eyes and really feel like you're there. And then you would say the dream again and I would try to feel first of all where your energy was in the dream when you were telling it and where there was more energy and where it felt more alive. And also for me, just where I'm most curious and where the images seem most interesting or bizarre, or... Yeah. So I would want to speak to... I'd started to jot some things down while you were speaking. So obviously, what's most bizarre is the worms with the teeth. So I'd want to speak to those worms. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: I'd want to speak to the teeth, maybe try to understand why they're grabbing onto you like that, what it is that they're grabbing onto and what their agenda is there. Sometimes you ask images too ,like, what is your role here? What is your purpose? What do you want to say? What are you trying to say? So those kinds of... I'd be interested in the place it takes place at too, JTS. What is that? If you would say, "I am JTS..." I don't know if I said this before that when you become the elements... So usually you would start with saying, "I am..." So, "I am The Jewish Theological Seminary. I am..." Maybe you would become the library too and New York City maybe too, I mean, you go through the subways and all of that. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: I once had a client who dreamt a dream that took place in New York City. And he was really curious about why, because he'd only been in New York City once, and this guy lived in Israel. And it turned out when I had him become New York City, he started to talk about the... A lot of things that came up that I... Turns out he identified very much with New York City, the culture, the whatever, and one big thing was he had gone through a trauma in his life recently and come through it, and so he said, "Oh. I'm New York City and I had this big shooting and it happened and it was a very traumatic event and now I'm recovering from it," and all that. And so it was really, really interesting that that came out when he became New York City. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: So yeah. I'd be interested in all of that, the place and the blood maybe too. I mean, as I would start interviewing the different elements in the dream, it would also lead me to where to go next, and whether I would have people talk to... people have elements speak to each other, the shooters, what are they trying to accomplish? And it's a very rich dream with a lot of great images so I'd be happy to work it with you. Bryan Schwartzman: All right. Maybe when we're not recording. Okay. Short time-out here. We hope you are finding this a powerful interview. Do you want others to experience this kind of conversation? Please take a moment to give us a five-star rating or leave a review. Positive ratings and reviews really help other people find out about the show. Okay. Now back to our conversation. This is a very... It seems like a very subjective, personal enterprise. And a lot of the way Judaism operates and perhaps other faith traditions is to a large part on a communal level. Do you see a road for dream work interpretation, whatever the right term is, playing a larger role in Judaism or other faith traditions. And is that a goal of yours? Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: So let's see. First of all, on the communal versus individual level, so I should confess that I'm much more inclined and drawn toward ritual that's more intimate and individual. So mikveh is a good example and that's my... My other big practice is water rituals. And so there are people actually also who do dream working groups. I have a monthly dream group that meets, but we're all people who do dream work and so we interpret each other's dreams. But there are other approaches that are different than the approach that I use, which actually people say their dream to the group... I've heard about this, but I've never done it. Say the dreams to the group, and then everybody says how that dream relates to them and their life. And that has more of that idea of this collective unconscious kind of dreaming. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: And so it's different than the way that I approach it. But that is a more communal way, I guess too, of doing dream work and believing that it's sort of, it's all of our dream. Is there room for more practice of dream work in Judaism? So again, I don't feel a need to connect it to being Jewish or doing it in a Jewish context. But like with a lot of things, because I'm also an interfaith minister and also a rabbi and I like to meet people where their comfort zone is. So I might not have a need to connect during work to something Jewish. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: But for some people framing in a Jewish way makes it feel safer for them, makes it feel more accessible. And that's fine, because there is material in the Jewish classic texts about dreams. So whether you want to study this Joseph's story and then do some dream work, and that might make people feel like it's more Jewish. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: And it is, because it's human and being Jewish is also a part of... Humans seek out religion and spirituality. And so if the religion that you were born into or that you chose is Judaism and putting it in that frame... I wouldn't say it's forcing it on it because it is there, there is Rabbi Hisda's phrase in the Talmud, there are Kabbalists who did a lot of dream work. There was Rabbi Vital who kept a sefer halomot, a dream book, and did dream work. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: There were Kabbalists who did dream fasting after they had a bad dream, or there is also bringing on a dream, she'elat halom, asking for a dream. So this stuff is there, you can find it. And that might be inspiring for people to know that they're following in the footsteps of other Jews who did this work too, even if it was more marginal. Bryan Schwartzman: Well, I think this was a rich, insightful conversation. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David, thanks so much for connecting with us, for taking the time to explain and explore and illuminate I think. So thank you. I hope we have the chance to interview again someday on this, or sounds like there are definitely plenty of other topics we could have delved into. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: Thank you. Bryan Schwartzman: Thanks for listening to my interview with Rabbi Haviva Ner-David. If you enjoyed this conversation, please be sure to check out her essay on Evolve, Dreams: Judaism's Forgotten Spiritual Practice. So, what did you think of today's episode? I'd love to hear from you. Evolve is about curating meaningful conversations, and that includes you. So send your questions, comments, feedback. Bryan Schwartzman: You can reach me directly at my actual email address bschwartzman@reconstructingjudaism.org. We'll be back in a month with a brand new episode. Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations is executive produced by Jacob Staub and edited by Sam Wachs. Our theme song, Ilu Finu, is by Rabbi Miriam Margles. This show is a production of Reconstructing Judaism. I'm your host, Bryan Schwartzman and I'll see you next time.