«Dichosos los soñadores y maldito aquel que les abra los ojos»

The expression «Dichosos los soñadores y maldito aquel que les abra los ojos» distills Shaltiel Abravanel’s tragic regard for idealism: dreams cannot dissolve a conflict rooted in competing claims, yet they keep even the clear-sighted from becoming wholly petrified and despairing. Its blessing and curse give the thought its tension. To awaken dreamers is to expose their powerlessness, but to lose them would mean a still more desolate world.

The limits of understanding

Shaltiel’s maxim follows his argument that the conflict between Jews and Arabs does not arise from a failure to understand one another. Both peoples cling to the same land because, as he explains, each has no other; each also knows that the other will never relinquish it. The parties already understand the stakes, and that mutual knowledge does not bring peace.

He rejects the comforting theory that disputes can be cured by family guidance, group therapy, goodwill, or friendly conversation. The fantasy that enemies will share strong, sweet coffee and fall into one another’s arms mistakes a conflict of incompatible claims for a misunderstanding. His comparison to two men who love the same woman makes the point personal as well as political: no flood of coffee can drown the hatred created by rival attachments.

A blessing with a warning

Against that unsparing account, Shaltiel calls dreamers fortunate and condemns those who open their eyes. The saying is not an endorsement of the belief that idealism will prevail. He immediately qualifies its blessing: dreamers and their followers will not save the people around them. Their value is instead measured against the worse condition that would remain in their absence.

Without dreams, Shaltiel says, the curse hanging over the community would be a thousand times heavier. Even sensible people may be somewhat less petrified and desperate because dreamers exist. The expression therefore turns on a distinction between political efficacy and human necessity: a vision can fail to settle a dispute while still resisting the despair that dispute produces.

The dreamer and the political realist

Shaltiel directs the argument to Shmuel Ash, whose admiration for Jesus makes the contrast between dream and power especially pointed. Shaltiel calls Jesus perhaps the greatest dreamer who ever lived, but distinguishes him from his disciples, whom he describes as hungry for power and ultimately bloodthirsty. The example sharpens the maxim’s warning: a dream’s legacy can be altered when followers pursue power rather than the dream itself.

The expression thus belongs to a speaker who neither trusts reconciliation through goodwill nor dismisses idealism as useless. Its paired verdicts preserve both sides of that position. Dreamers cannot redeem political reality, but the person who strips them of their hopes risks leaving reality more rigid and hopeless than before.