Posted by Justin Davidson
When a day passes, it is no longer there. What remains of it? Nothing more than a story. If stories weren't told, or books weren't written, humans would live like the beasts, only for the day.
Reb Zebulun said, "Today we live, but by tomorrow today will be a story." The whole world, all human life, is one long story."
Children are as puzzled by passing time as grownups. What happens to a day once it is gone? What are all our yesterdays with their joys and sorrows? Literature helps us remember the past with its many moods. To the storyteller yesterday is still here as are the years and the decades gone by. In stories time does not vanish. Neither do people and animals. For the writer and his readers, all creatures go on living forever. What happened long ago is still present.
I.B. Singer, Zlathe the Goat, quoted in A Night to Remember: The Haggadah of Contemporary Voices.
