There is, nevertheless, a place where you can find it.

1) From “The Way of Man,” by Martin Buber (1950)

“Rabbi Bunam used to tell young men who came to him for the first time the story of Rabbi Eizik, son of Rabbi Yekel of Cracow. After many years of great poverty which had never shaken his faith in God, he dreamed someone bade him look for a treasure in Prague, under the bridge which leads to the king’s palace. When the dream recurred a third time, Rabbi Eizik prepared for the journey and set out for Prague. But the bridge was guarded day and night and he did not dare to start digging. Nevertheless he went to the bridge every morning and kept walking around it until evening. Finally the captain of the guards, which had been watching him, asked in a kindly way whether he was looking for something or waiting for somebody. Rabbi Eizik told him of the dream which had brought him here from a faraway country. The captain laughed: ‘And so to please the dream, you poor fellow wore out your shoes to come here! As for having faith in dreams, if I had had it, I should have had to get going when a dream once told me to go to Cracow and dig for treasure under the stove in the room of a Jew— Eizik, son of Yekel, that was the name! Eizik, son of Yekel! I can just imagine what it would be like, how I should have to try every house over there, where one half of the Jews are named Eizik and the other half Yekel!’ And he laughed again. Rabbi Eizik bowed, traveled home, dug up the treasure from under the stove, and built the House of Prayer which is called ‘Reb Eizik Reb Yekel’s Shul.’

“’Take this story to heart,’ Rabbi Bunam used to add, ‘and make what it says your own: There is something you cannot hind anywhere in the world, not even at the zaddik’s, and there is, nevertheless, a place where you can find it.’”


2) From “The Nature and Aim of Fiction,” by Flannery O’Connor, published in “Mystery and Manners” (1969)

“We hear a great deal of lamentation these days about writers having all taken themselves to the colleges and universities where they live decorously instead of going out and getting first hand information about life. The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.”