'In My Dream, We Couldn't Find My Father's Head'

'They couldn't find my father's head!'

The tone of the email — sent at six o'clock in the morning — was frantic. A young woman had woken from a nightmare and was desperate to know what it meant.

"Rabbi Cohen, I had a horrific dream last night and when I woke up I was terrified at its meaning. In the dream, my father was undergoing some kind of surgery and it involved them cutting off his head. It was horrible... he couldn't see but he could hear and we were all waiting for them to put his head back, but then the doctors said they couldn't find it!

"Then my father told me that he knew where it was, that he'd put it in a bag on the upper floor of a synagogue where Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai is buried. So I went there to look for it but it wasn't there, and I kept going back to look again but I never found it, even though people came to help me search for it.

"Then one day my mother called me and asked what was happening and if I had found it and I said not yet...  and she said it didn't matter anymore because my father had been to the synagogue and found the bag, but the head was in terrible condition, completely rotten, so he'd decided to give up on it and he threw it away.

"I was shocked and asked her why she was calling to ask me if I'd found it if she already knew what had happened to it, and she said that she'd hoped that maybe I had found it and that what my father found was something else that had rotted away. Then she said, 'Well, that's it then. Your father will have to live without a head.'"

'Your father must check his tefillin'

"I woke up shaking all over and I don't know how to calm myself down," the woman continued. "It had felt so real. Please, rabbi, tell me what it means! Should I fast, or is there something I need to know, or my father?"

Rabbi Zamir Cohen replied immediately:

"There is no need to be alarmed by the dream, nor to fast. Just ask your father to check his tefillin right away, paying special attention to the tefillin shel rosh [that is placed on the head]. Meanwhile, he should use other tefillin that he knows are kosher."

The woman did as Rabbi Cohen wrote and her father sent his tefillin to be checked. 

No tefillin — no head

The next day, he received a phone call from the scribe. "Both tefillin — shel rosh and shel yad — are invalid," he said. "They can't be fixed."

In a follow-up email to Rabbi Cohen, the woman wrote:

"Everything the rabbi said was absolutely true. My father sent his tefillin to be checked and they were both invalid. If there is anything else that should be done, please let us know. Thank you!"

Rabbi Zamir Cohen replied:

"The Torah tells us that 'Hashem guards the feet of those who are devoted to Him.' You were sent this dream to protect your father, who deserved this warning.

"The Talmud tells us that someone who does not put on tefillin is like a person without a head, G-d forbid."