The House of Treasure

From Mosaic:
http://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2013/06/fossilized-judaism/

Perhaps the most important book on the Jewish bookshelf is the Shulhan Aruch. Composed by Rabbi Yosef Karo in 1563, the Shulhan Aruch is the code of Jewish law and Judaism’s most authoritative book. It sets down precisely what the law is in the myriad of circumstances in which a Jew can find himself. I remember as a boy, my rabbi told me that if a Jew could take one book with him to a desert island, it should be this one...

I remember a line from a Dean Koontz novel:

"Did you find Jesus in jail?"

and it referred to the frequent experience of being withdrawn from society, incarcerated, and finding religion and redemption.

However, in our Society, we do not merely "find Jesus" or merely find a religious point of view; we also find an entire corpus of catechism, sacred writings, canon laws, and theologies.

When we go on our solitary questing, when we find a point of inspiration, we expect to find a treasure house filled to the brim with gold, diamonds, and rubies.

The quest is, then, over and done with; who wants more than the treasure house teeming with riches?

But the quest is not over. When we seek the Holy, what we should find is a House of Treasure, mostly empty as yet, but which is filled with the potential to be the receptacle of the gold of our good actions.
The House of Treasure is the possibility to be Good, overwhelmingly Good, and to write the novel cathechism of our age.

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