Sermon given October 10, 2026.

If you had three wishes, what would you wish for?

When I was a kid and watched the movie Aladdin, I remember playing exactly that game with my siblings. We would imagine we ourselves had found a magical lamp and had three wishes, and could make anything we wanted appear. Of course, some smart aleck always wished for more wishes. But the point of this anecdote is just for us all to ask ourselves--

If we actually had the power to imagine something, and wish for it, and make it appear-- what would we wish for?

Similarly, when I worked at the JCC preschool in DC, something I particularly loved was sitting with the kids in aftercare who would draw picture after picture after picture while waiting for their parents to pick them up. Those kids didn’t just draw pictures of flowers and dogs and rainbows and other things they could see in their everyday lives (though, for the record, there were a lot of rainbows). They also drew fantastical things, using their imaginations-- ponies with wings, giants who squashed evildoers with one footstep, a rainstorm of jelly beans, a castle with dragons in the moat and dessert all day and no bedtimes. 

Do you still imagine make drawings like that? If not, do you remember how old you were when you stopped drawing pictures like that?

If you could make any fiction into a fact, any hope into a certainty-- what would that hope be?

And now that you’re asking yourself these questions, how does the process of dreaming, and imagining, make you feel?

Is it exciting? Does it make you feel optimistic? Or-- on the flipside-- does it hurt? Is there a voice in your head that speaks up and says “that’s not real, that can’t happen”?

I have a chevruta, a rabbi I study with regularly. This week, we learned a text that addressed the power of imagination. 

Specifically, we are reading Kitvei HaRambam on Midot v’daot, on conduct and character, in which the Rambam analyzes neurofunctions and the various mental faculties we humans have, centuries before modern medicine provided empirical data on the subject. He makes distinctions between rational, sensory, and other mental faculties, and then reflects on the power of imagination.

Now, it is clear that Maimonides has some personal experience with the fantastical, with imagining things that he didn’t actually see with his own eyes. We know this because he lists some of the things he has imagined for us, things like:

A person who is gigantic, so tall that their head reaches into the clouds;

Or a monster with a head so big it has space for a thousand eyes;

Maimonides then says:

“The imaginative part of the soul is the faculty that remembers the impressions of the senses after they disappear from the senses that perceived them… and this imaginative faculty assembles those remembered impressions or separates them."

However, Maimonides’ experiences with his imagination did not lead him to conclude that the things he imagines are actually possible or realistic. Instead, he concluded:

“The imaginative faculty combines from the impressions it perceived things that it did not perceive at all-- even things that are impossible to perceive.” In fact, the Rambam goes even further to name as ridiculous anybody who believe “that whatever can be imagined is possible to exist.”

That is to say, Maimonides believed that just because we can imagine something does not mean that it can actually come to pass. 

And though this sounds kind of pessimistic to me, I’m guessing many of us have also had similar moments in our lives where we have also felt like what Maimonides is describing. If I pivot to the slightly more serious things that I dream about, things like sustainable peace in the Middle East…. Sometimes, when life seems overwhelming or a lot of things in the news are going badly, it can feel like our dreams, and the things we hope for or imagine might one day come to pass, are truly unrealistic in this world. It can feel like they’re just ideas or fantasies with no hope of actually becoming reality.

I’m not talking about dragons or elves (though who knows what scientists could clone or whip up in a lab, or what exists on other planets in the universe-- we can’t guarantee that there aren’t dragons somewhere!). I’m talking about the things I ache for-- Things like a world where hunger and poverty do not run rampant. Things like a world where we can look our children in the eye at KBE and tell them that they will never, ever be attacked or excluded just for being Jewish. 

Can that ever really come to pass?

I try, and I know that we all do, to work for a world where these things can be true. But sometimes, that feels really, really unlikely, and really, really far off. Sometimes, it feels like Maimonides is right-- like just because we can imagine something like true peace, just because we can imagine that safety, doesn’t mean it’s actually possible or feasible or realistic.

And milestones like another anniversary of October 7th, just a few days ago, drive that hard reality home-- the reality that here, today, the world as it is is still far, far off from the one we are hoping for. The things we long for have not yet come to pass.

IF they one day come to pass, there is a good chance that it will not happen in our lifetimes, or in our kids’ lifetimes.

There is a concept, in Judaism, called “Moshiach”-- something that is our ultimate dream, something that only exists in an imagined future. 

Often, we translate the word “Moshiach” as “messiah”, but if we translate it this way, that might bring to mind the Christian definition of the concept, or the idea that there is-- or already was-- one literal person who will bring about a final, incredible, better future.

However, a more fitting Jewish translation for the word Moshiach is an imagined future “Redemption”. If we translate Moshiach as “Redemption”, this allows for the possibility that Moshiach is not a single individual we are imagining or dreaming about but rather a widespread shift towards a more just, fair, honest, and peaceful world. 

This reframing allows Moshiach to become a process, not a person-- and a process each and every one of us can literally help bring about. If Moshiach is a process that we are dreaming about, that means that every action we take has the potential to be part of Moshiach. We can each have ownership in it. 

The idea of “Moshiach” is rampant in our sacred literature and liturgy. It is clear that our sages, for any skepticism they may have had about dreams and imagination, certainly spent a lot of time dreaming themselves, and imagining their own versions of a better world.

Maimonides, who as we just said was a bit skeptical of the power of our dreams to become real, deems in his Mishneh Torah that Moshiach will actually just be a title that a leader will earn who finally rebuilds the Temple. However, the Rambam does allow himself to dream a little, saying that in the time of Moshiach, there will be “no famine, no wars, no envy, no competition.”

Another example from our tradition of the discussion of Moshiach comes in Mishneh Sanhedrin, where Rabbi Yohanan claims that the age of Moshiach will come either when all humans are innocent-- or when all humans are guilty. An interesting thought-- We humans get to choose which one it will be! 

And our Sages taught in the Midrash of Pesikta Rabbasi, “What is the light Israel is waiting for? Israel is waiting for the light of Moshiach.” 

The Rabbis in the Talmud discuss Moshiach. The prophets in the TaNaKh discuss Moshiach. Isaiah famously imagines the lion lying down with the lamb. 

And perhaps more audaciously, Isaiah also imagines that there will come a time when humans will never again learn war.

We can read the news any day and see that that dream has not yet become reality.

Survivors of concentration camps offered testimony of the dreams that they held on to that helped them make it through the horrors of the Shoah.

Hostages held in captivity in Gaza described how holding on to shreds of hope and imagining reuniting with their loved ones, hugging them again, helped them retain their sanity and their humanity when their captors attempted to rob them of both. 

This is all to say that dreaming-- imagining-- and hoping-- is both a daily human activity, and a theoretical or philosophical activity-- but it is also, actually, a key to survival, for us as individuals and as a people. If we don’t dream, we guarantee that these things will never come to pass.

And so, we have to keep dreaming. We have to keep imagining. 

Which brings us back to this room, today, and to us.

Are we more like the Rambam in the text I’m studying, believing that we can imagine something but that just because we imagine it doesn’t mean it’s possible?

Or do we believe that if we can imagine something-- like actual, true, sustainable peace-- like Moshiach-- or like a world where there is truly dignity and safety for all-- or like a world where hatred of other groups because of who they are no longer happens-- that it could actually, really, one day come to pass?

Abraham and Sarah had a dream of family and welcome, even in their old age. Moses and Aaron had a dream of freedom and faith after generations of slavery. Jacob and Esau dreamed of the bonds of healthy, supportive brotherhood after a lifetime of betrayal and estrangement. God had a dream that was realized in this week’s Torah portion-- a dream of creation of this world, of humanity, of relationship.

And against all odds, these dreams were, indeed, realized. 

What if our dreams can be realized too?

What if the Rambam was wrong?

And the cool thing is, thanks to what I learned this week-- we actually know he was wrong, at least on one account. Because in his description of fantastical, otherworldly things that could never REALLY exist, Maimonides actually offers more examples than the ones I offered at the beginning of this sermon.

Remember, he talked about a gigantic man, and about a beast with a thousand eyes. But he actually mentioned something else, as an impossible thing that he could imagine but that could never become reality. He imagines-- quote--

“An iron boat gliding through the air.”

…..does that sound familiar? Of course it does! He’s describing an airplane. An iron boat gliding through the air. Because of course, 800 years ago, such a thing seemed literally out of this world. It seemed impossible.

But not today. Not anymore. What seemed like a pure dream to our ancestors is, now our reality.

So who’s to say that 800 years from now, there might actually be a chance for what we are dreaming of-- a chance at real peace?

And who’s to say that the efforts we put in now, even if they won’t bring about that sustained peace we dream of in our lifetime, aren’t planting the seeds for our children’s children’s children to know peace? To actually be a step closer to moshiach?

I’ll ask us all again, as we begin another year together, as we start again with Bereishit-- if you found a lamp, and if you had three wishes, or even if you had ONE wish…what would you wish for-- and what would you do to help make it reality?

Shabbat shalom.