Dreams in Judaism

Jacob's dream of ladder

In Judaism, there is considerable amount of literature on dreams, in Jewish thought dreams not only have significance but they can be even out-of-body experiences receiving important messages to the person.

The book of Genesis is scattered with dreams of the Patriarchs and others. The first dream is (28:12), Jacob dreamt of a ladder standing on the ground with its head in the heaven and angels ascending and descending. This was a message to Jacob that there will be new angels accompanying him during his journey to Charan replacing the angels who accompanied him in Israel (Rashi). Similarly, the dream of Joseph and the eleven stars (37:5) were a message that Joseph would in the future reign over his brothers in Egypt.

Joseph's dream of stars prostrating him

Thus Judaism maintains that dreams need to be sometimes interpreted as they might have meaningful messages relating to the person, someone else or occurrences in the world.

Jewish views on dream interpretation:
According to Jewish thought, there are four categories of dreams with regards to their interpretation.

The first category is of the dreams which have more than one possible interpretations that can be either negative or positive and therefore depend upon their interpretation for their effect. The realization of such dreams follows the mouth; if you interpret positive it turns out to be positive and vice versa.
In this category if none interprets the dream, although there exists the negative potential as there exists positive, there will be no negative effect in reality.

The second category comprises those dreams that have a particular interpretation and can therefore be considered either a negative or positive dream. But nevertheless its interpretation can change the dream from either positive to negative or from negative to positive.

The third category of dreams is prophetic. Prophetic dreams have only a single interpretation and cannot be changed, such as the dreams of prophet Joseph, Jacob and the Pharoah.

The fourth category represents the wide variety of dreams that have no relevance whatsoever.
The Abarabnel (Genesis 40:24) writes that dreams are the revelation of disorganized thoughts that are suppressed during waking hours and released during sleep. Such dreams are vain, have no meaning and have no effect one way or the other.