Dreams occupied a unique space in Jewish tradition—neither fully trusted nor fully dismissed, they hovered between divine communication and meaningless noise. The Talmud devotes extensive passages in tractate Berakhot (55a-57b) to dream interpretation, and medieval Jewish authorities took these discussions with profound seriousness. undefined Trachtenberg showed how an elaborate dream culture flourished in medieval Ashkenazi life, complete with interpretation manuals, protective rituals, and even a formal prayer to neutralize bad dreams.
The central question was always: where do dreams come from? The Talmud offered multiple answers. Some dreams are divine messages delivered by angels. Some are demonic deceptions. Some are simply the residue of daytime thoughts. Hai Gaon, the 11th-century Babylonian authority, acknowledged the tradition that each person has a personal "genius of dreams"—an angel who appears as an old man to one person, a youth to another—though he admitted he had never personally encountered such a being. Simon Duran (d. 1444) went further, defending dreams as reliable even in scientific matters, noting that the physicians Galen and Ibn Zohr had solved medical problems through dream-visions.
The timing of a dream mattered enormously. Dreams in the early hours of the night were considered unreliable, influenced by digestion and bodily humors. Dreams near dawn carried greater authority—the soul, having rested, was more receptive to genuine messages. The Sefer Hasidim and Hochmat HaNefesh (the vital soul) both discuss these timing distinctions in detail.
Meir of Rothenburg, the great 13th-century Ashkenazi authority, was renowned as an expert dream interpreter. The tradition of seeking divine guidance through dreams reached its most remarkable expression in the She'elot U'teshuvot Min HaShamayim (Responsa from Heaven)—a collection of halakhic questions supposedly answered through dreams, attributed to undefined of Marvège (12th century). The work was controversial but influential, suggesting that heaven could deliver legal rulings while a rabbi slept.
Bad dreams required ritual action. The Talmud prescribed a dream-annulment ceremony (<i>hatavat halom</i>) performed before a panel of ten men, in which the dreamer declared the dream good and the panel affirmed it three times. Fasting after a bad dream was standard practice—the codes permitted fasting even on Shabbat (the Sabbath) for this purpose, a remarkable exception that revealed how seriously the tradition took the threat of an evil dream.