French rabbis and the Master of Dreams

I asked in a dream about those women who recite a blessing before shaking the Lulav , and about reciting a blessing before blowing the shofar for them - is there a transgression or a superfluous blessing in these cases, since they are not fully obligated?

I was answered in the dream as follows: have the generations improved? "All that Sarah says to you, listen to her voice." Go and say to them, return to your tents and bless your God! The proof is from Channukah candles and megillah reading. They explained to me that just as in these cases, since the women were involved in the original miracle they are obligated to perform the commandment and recite the blessing, so too with the Lulav, we find that they have but one heart towards our Father in Heaven... so too with the Shofar, we are taught that the Holy One said: bring me [verses of] kingship, that I may be your king, and [verses of] remembrance, that the memory of your ancestors come before Me favourably, and all of that, with a Shofar. Now, women also need to be remembered before Him favourably. Therefore, if they recite the blessings for these commandments, they have permission to do so.

Maimonides ruled: "A myrtle branch whose top is cut off is acceptable. Even though most of its leaves have fallen off, it is kosher, provided three leaves remain in one row."

Rabbi Abraham b. David of Posquieres (1125-1198) wrote: the holy spirit has already descended upon our house of study, several years ago, and from it we derived that such a myrtle is unfit for use. This is the simple meaning of the michna... All of this is clear in my other book about the Loulav, and I was given encouragement from heaven on this matter.

Should one join the etrog and the lulav together when waving the two together, or should one wave only the lulav and its bundle in one hand, while the left hand – the one holding the etrog – stays still? This question has not been explained in the Gemara nor has it been settled by the poskim, but Rabbi Menachem Recanati wrote, in his commentary to the Torah portion of Emor… “This secret was revealed to me in a dream, on the evening of the first day of Succot, when an Ashkenazic Hassid, Rabbi Yitzhak, spent the night with me as my guest. In this dream, I saw him write the four letter name of God, but he separated the last letter, the Heh, from the other three letters. “What did you do?” I asked him. He responded, “This our custom, where I live.” I rebuked him and wrote God’s name as a complete word. I grappled with what I had seen, failing to understand.

The next morning, when my guest took his lulav, I noticed that he only waved the lulav and the two species bundled with it, without the etrog. Then I understood the meaning of my dream, and our sages, of blessed memory, hinted at this secret in Leviticus Rabbah...

At the beginning of the sixth millennium, a vision came to me in a dream: Go, make a Tora of two parts. And I examined this vision, and understood that I was to write a book of the positive commandments in one part, and a book of the negative commandments, the prohibitions, in the other. Therefore, I, Moses son of Jacob of Coucy, have decided to write these two books, and I have learned from all my masters to bring short proofs to best of my ability, and to paraphrase the Talmud in clear language. May the God of the exiles of Israel assist me, sanctify His name upon my work. In the matter of the count of prohibitions, I also had a dream, in which a vision presented itself to me in these words: Behold! You have forgotten the essential! "Guard yourself lest you forget the Eternal, your God." For truly, I did not intend to count this formally as a commandment, and Maimonides also ignored it, but in the morning I examined the matter, and it truly is a great foundation of the fear of God, and I wrote it in its correct place. God knows that I do not refuse the messages of my visions. And God knows that I only mention these visions in order that Israel strengthen its observance of the Tora, and may the desires of God performed by me succeed.

Is the name Akiva spelled עקיבא or עקיבה ? In the work 'Seder Ha-get', it is written that both have good proofs, and therefore one must give two separate Gittin. The proof for the second spelling was given by Rabbeinu Isaac b. Moses (1200-1270). I heard that he asked the Master of Dreams how to spell this name, and was told "Light is sown for the righteous, and joy for the upright" - the last letter of each of the Hebrew words spells Rabbi Akivah, with a hé! He was so overjoyed with this revelation that he entitled his book 'Or Zarua', the first words of this verse.

I heard from Rabbi Judah the Pious that whoever eats the fish known as balbuta will not merit to eat the feast of Leviathan in the messianic age. He said that he himself heard this, in the way of truth, that Rabbi Ephraim b. Isaac of Regensburg (1110-1175) once permitted eating such fish. That same night, in his dream, he was offered a bowl full of impure insects, and he was enraged at the one who brought it to him. He was then told: why are you angry? You are the one who permitted these. He was angry at the Master of Dreams for saying so, and suddenly awoke, and remembered that he had permitted balbuta on that very day. He immediately got out of bed, smashed all the pots and bowls out of which they had eaten. All those who refrain from this fish, may blessings rest on their heads.