Mikhl Baran

My portrait of Mikhl Baran for his 90th birthday (painted 6 years ago)

Yesterday, I wrote about wearing white as a summer color. It is not just for doctors, tennis players or brides. Anyone with any style might choose to wear white between the holidays of Memorial Day and Labor Day. For our family, choosing white also meant the beginning of Camp and the many days we spent shopping for white shorts for the kids. It was an important item to pack and sometimes very hard to find.

We began working at Camp KR in 1993, where white clothing was much more than just a metaphor for proper summer etiquette. On a hot Friday night, a camp director might look like the Good Humor Man in his long white pants and white shirt, but the rest of us would gather around the flagpole in white T's and white shorts to listen to the words of Mikhl Baran. Girl's side often sang and danced in cute white summer dresses, and Boys' side usually wore the same stained white undershirts for eight weeks in a row. But everyone showed their respect for a night of Shtiller by wearing white.

Shtiller, Yiddish for "quiet," is a tradition we held at our camp to welcome Shabbos every Friday evening. Mikhl Baran and his wife of over 70 years, Millie, are survivors of the Holocaust. It continues to be his mission to tell his stories to each new generation so that the legacy of their lives will always be remembered. Campers love to greet Mikhl and not just on a Friday night. They would be so excited to see him on the grounds of Sylvan Lake and would always show him the reverence and respect not many elders get from kids these days.

KR is not a place, although the grounds where we met each summer are beautiful. Our Camp is defined by the people who came together for each other as adults and as children. The treasured friends we made from all over the world touched our lives and deeply changed us as people. Joel and Vicki along with Mikhl were just a few of the special ones and they became our friends for life. "Mikhl is the wisest man I ever had the honor of meeting," said my daughter, Katie. In his presence, she only wanted to sit and listen. She would not say a word. She would just sit quietly and absorb his mastery of Yiddish stories and the history of Jewish culture. Zach called Mikhl during a school year when he needed help with a Holocaust project for college. The stories were not only inspirational to his college essay but to him personally, as my son is now a teacher of history and English. Zach loves to relate that Mikhl (Yiddish for Michael) learned how to speak English by listening to the Brooklyn Dodger games!

Mikhl and Millie with Whoppie Goldberg when she came to visit camp this summer

Many campers learned sportsmanship and fair play from camp. Many learned the art of lanyard or how to tie-dye a T. And others found their performing voices on the stage of the Social Hall. Our son, Sam, sang with Mikhl's daughter, Ruth, and learned to love Jewish music from the very best. Sam now teaches Jewish songs to his students with Ruth's guiding voice filling his heart every day.

Norman and I did not raise our children with a strong sense of religion. Yes, they know they are Jewish. The matzoh ball soup I will serve Sunday night will remind them of that. But Camp Kinder Ring, a Workman's Circle Camp that began back in 1927, immersed many generations of children into the rich world of the Jewish culture and the core of those childhood lessons came from a man named Mikhl. As I embark on a new career of painting dogs and other assorted sundries, I have to look back on my painting of our beloved friend and be reminded of how honored I was to be asked to paint his portrait.