30GoodMinutes's video: Karyn Kedar - Reflection on Hope - Program 4614

Rabbi Karyn Kedar, senior rabbi of Congregation B’nai Jehoshua Beth Elohim in Deerfield, Illinois, reflects on a story that helped her to interpret a dream and heal her life. One night I had a dream. It was really sort of a night vision. I dreamt that if I could somehow learn to sew, I could heal my life. It’s a very strange dream for me to have because I don’t even sew buttons on to coats, I’d rather buy a new coat! And yet this dream had stayed with me and I didn’t understand it, until I came upon the following story: There was a man who was in search of understanding, healing and meaning. He wandered into the woods one night. Very late at night he came upon a house in the woods and there was a candle flickering inside. He looked inside the window and saw that there was a tailor sitting by the candle, sewing clothes. The man thought that this tailor somehow had magical qualities. As he was about to go in, he decided he would rip his pants so the tailor could have something to mend. The tailor took his pants and started to mend. Then the strangest thing happened! As the needle went into the pants, the man felt a piercing pain in his leg. Then as the needle started to come out, he felt a piercing pain in the core of who he was, as if in his soul. And he understood that not only was this man a tailor healing his pants, but he was also healing the man; and through healing the man, he was healing the world. Then I understood my dream. My dream meant that if I could somehow take a tapestry that was my life, a picture that I was trying to understand, and bring it together with another cloth that was black, opaque velvet, God. If I could bring what I knew and what I would never know together, sew them together and somehow live on the seam, then I could begin to heal my life.