Black is a Color

AS THE SON OF A SURVIVOR of the Nazi concentration camps, I grew up hearing the first-hand testimony of a witness to humanity s darkest moment. Dr. Mengele supplanted Dr. Suess, and the Big Bad Wolf did a lot more than huff and puff. Sleeping with the lights on might keep the Boogie Monster at bay, but nothing could beat back the horror of being tucked under the covers by an arm branded with death camp numbers.
As my father left my bedside and headed out the door, he would pause and turn back toward me. Did you say your prayers? he would invariably ask.
Did I what?!
How can you bequeath me such an encounter with the devil, and expect me to believe in a loving God?
Do you really believe in a happy ending?
Yet somehow, he did. He and countless other survivors experienced hell on earth, and still found the strength to believe.
What happens when a generation grows up in comfort on the heels of so much horror? How do I make peace between my tranquil existence and my father s brutal past? When the life you are bequeathed does not resemble the life you are leading, there exists a great inner dilemma. Moreover, I am raised, not only to believe in, but to embrace the very God responsible for the atrocities of my father s generation.
It is this struggle to have faith in the midst of madness, and the unique Jewish response to it, that is the subject of Black is a Color, a collection of works, rendered through art and prose, that express how traditional Jews found and still find hope and faith in the midst of the deepest darkness.
It is an illumination of man s post-Holocaust spiritual stature; a search for the happy ending .