72 Miles til Kentucky

Chapter 8: The Holidays

When you’re Jewish, it seems like the holidays are always around the corner, and there always seems to be some sort of competition. Whether it’s the High Holidays just as school gets into full swing, or how Chanukah and Passover often, but confusingly not always, overlap with Christmas and Easter. There’s a lot of explaining to do, and partnerships to be built.  That’s what led my mother into my elementary school classrooms, where she fried latkes and read Herschel and Chanukah Goblins for me and my Christian classmates. It’s also what led her into interfaith clergy work, and a Passover partnership with the local Catholic Church. As for my father? Well, he used his engineering skills to build Chanukah holiday decorations for the front yard, which he still claims was easier than hanging Christmas lights on the house.  And by the time I got old enough to fully express myself, and my complicated Jewish identity, it was a holiday concert that finally tipped me over the edge.  This episode also features commentary from two important experts—1) Dr. Laura Yares of Michigan State, both on the experiences of 19th century American Jews, and her own experiences as a 21st century immigrant Jewish American, and 2) Rabbi Jen Gubitz, co-host of the OMFG Podcast and founder of Modern Jewish Couples where she trains clergy, counsels interfaith couples on how to build their own unique Jewish or Jew-“ish” home.  72 Miles features the stories of three separate interfaith Jewish families–two real, one not, and one mine. Together, they trace 150 years of Kentucky history, with experiences that resonate today—about being Jewish in America, about being Jewish and southern at the same time. About being Jewish, being interfaith, and the blending of the two. So strap in, and take a ride with me, up and down I65, or back and forth on the L&N Railroad. In the end the when and the who don’t make as much difference and you might think. But the where sure does. My name is Nathan Jordan Vaughan. It’s 72 Miles til Kentucky. Let’s get moving. 72 Miles Til Kentucky was written and produced by Nathan J. Vaughan. Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Lofi Girl. Curricular components for each episodes are available on the show's website [https://www.nathanjvaughan.com/72-miles-podcast]. You can learn more about me and any of my work on my website, www.nathanjvaughan.com [https://www.nathanjvaughan.com]. Subscribe to my regular Torah podcast, Modern Torah anywhere you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.

Chapter 7: Back & Forth

From Sunday School in Nashville to Sunday dinner at Granny's, my family bushogged our way towards a cohesive religious identity. Even as my mother was returning to the faith of her childhood, my father was moving further away from his, and towards an unlikely home — The American Society of Friends. Introducing a third faith in our household seemed to solidify our identity, rather than shatter it, and my brother and I were quick to absorb the tenets of our father's new faith, a chance we got every summer, for a few years, when we attended SAYMA – the Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting, including a short stint in Quaker youth group. Still, as much as Quaker ideals of compassion, equality, love, and simplicity lined up with our own Jewish and family values, my mother was deeply uncomfortable with the idea of our being both, and she dearly wanted us to be Jewish. But towards the end of her life, having lived her own experience and used it in turn to counsel dozens of young interfaith couples, she changed her tune...slightly. Special thanks this episode to Jacob’s Ladder [https://www.jacobsladdermusic.com/], for use of their original music in Chapter 7: Back & Forth. Check out all of their music on their website! Jacob's Ladder is an internationally touring band seeking to push the boundaries of contemporary Jewish music and traditional American Roots music through Jewish communal singing and prayer. In melding these two musical worlds, they tell their story through Eastern European Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jewish traditions, but also through their American heritage and its influence on their unique musical style. 72 Miles features the stories of three separate interfaith Jewish families–two real, one not, and one mine. Together, they trace 150 years of Kentucky history, with experiences that resonate today—about being Jewish in America, about being Jewish and southern at the same time. About being Jewish, being interfaith, and the blending of the two. So strap in, and take a ride with me, up and down I65, or back and forth on the L&N Railroad. In the end the when and the who don’t make as much difference and you might think. But the where sure does. My name is Nathan Jordan Vaughan. It’s 72 Miles til Kentucky. Let’s get moving. 72 Miles Til Kentucky was written and produced by Nathan J. Vaughan. Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Lofi Girl. Curricular components for each episodes are available on the show's website [https://www.nathanjvaughan.com/72-miles-podcast]. You can learn more about me and any of my work on my website, www.nathanjvaughan.com [https://www.nathanjvaughan.com]. Subscribe to my regular Torah podcast, Modern Torah anywhere you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.

Chapter 6: Choosing Judaism

My mother passed away on September 14, 2021 after a years-long battle with cancer that cost her control of the left side of her face. We had been recording for just over a year, but there was still so much more she wanted to say. After she died, I went through her journals, to learn the perspectives that she was hesitant to share with me even at the end of her life. My father contributed by archiving the family VHS tapes my mother had saved all these years, including a copy of my Bar Mitzvah and my mother's adult Bat Mitzvah. Together, with the stories she shared while still alive, they tell a complicated and often lonely journey of a woman struggling to find her place in life, and a community that she could call her own, which thankfully, and at long last, she finally did...in Judaism. Special gratitude to my good friend, Caitlin, who took on the monumental challenge of reading my mother's journal entries for this episode. 72 Miles features the stories of three separate interfaith Jewish families–two real, one not, and one mine. Together, they trace 150 years of Kentucky history, with experiences that resonate today—about being Jewish in America, about being Jewish and southern at the same time. About being Jewish, being interfaith, and the blending of the two. So strap in, and take a ride with me, up and down I65, or back and forth on the L&N Railroad. In the end the when and the who don’t make as much difference and you might think. But the where sure does. My name is Nathan Jordan Vaughan. It’s 72 Miles til Kentucky. Let’s get moving. 72 Miles Til Kentucky was written and produced by Nathan J. Vaughan. Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Lofi Girl. Curricular components for each episodes are available on the show's website [https://www.nathanjvaughan.com/72-miles-podcast]. You can learn more about me and any of my work on my website, www.nathanjvaughan.com [https://www.nathanjvaughan.com]. Subscribe to my regular Torah podcast, Modern Torah anywhere you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.

Chapter 5: Are We Jewish or Are We Christian?

My family moved to Bowling Green in 1989. My brother was turning six, and I was turning three. We rented a house in the country for a few months, then bought the red-brick home on Garrett Drive where we lived for 16 years. We joined the local Presbyterian Church, but didn’t quite fit in. It was too conservative, or maybe we were too liberal. My parents struggled to make friends, and my brother and I hated Sunday School. All of which fueled an  identity crisis, and another poignant question posed by my brother from the back seat of the family Oldsmobile.  So my mother started exploring. She connected with the local community, searching for a Jewish home that fit her interfaith family. We tried the existing Reform congregation in Nashville, but had a bad experience. For a while we drove to Owensboro, KY on Friday nights—two hours on toll roads through  rural western Kentucky coal country. Finally, my mother got wind of a new Reform congregation forming in Nashville—Congregation Micah. After an open house where she felt welcome and wanted, and with encouragement she made the commitment. For all of us, without really asking. But we’ll get there.  72 Miles features the stories of three separate interfaith Jewish families–two real, one not, and one mine. Together, they trace 150 years of Kentucky history, with experiences that resonate today—about being Jewish in America, about being Jewish and southern at the same time. About being Jewish, being interfaith, and the blending of the two. So strap in, and take a ride with me, up and down I65, or back and forth on the L&N Railroad. In the end the when and the who don’t make as much difference and you might think. But the where sure does. My name is Nathan Jordan Vaughan. It’s 72 Miles til Kentucky. Let’s get moving. 72 Miles Til Kentucky was written and produced by Nathan J. Vaughan. Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Lofi Girl. Curricular components for each episodes are available on the show's website [https://www.nathanjvaughan.com/72-miles-podcast]. You can learn more about me and any of my work on my website, www.nathanjvaughan.com [https://www.nathanjvaughan.com]. Subscribe to my regular Torah podcast, Modern Torah anywhere you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.

Chapter 4: I'm Jewish, You're Not!

My parents met at Walnut Street Baptist Church in 1979. My father was there for services, at his mother's request. My mother was there working, as a sign language interpreter. They were married not long after in a different Baptist church, by a group of friends, using an interfaith wedding ceremony they wrote themselves.  As a young couple, my parents found their a home at Central Presbyterian Church, in downtown Louisville, where they met my godparents, and made lifelong friends. They even baptized their two children, much to the congregation's delight. We tried to have it both ways, and do all the things as my mother used to say, but that was starting to fall apart the older my brother got, until one day he said to my father, from the backseat of the car, "I'm Jewish. You're not." He was four. Eventually, life took my family south, far from the relatively large Jewish community of Louisville, KY and the support that community can provide. But that's for another chapter. 72 Miles features the stories of three separate interfaith Jewish families–two real, one not, and one mine. Together, they trace 150 years of Kentucky history, with experiences that resonate today—about being Jewish in America, about being Jewish and southern at the same time. About being Jewish, being interfaith, and the blending of the two. So strap in, and take a ride with me, up and down I65, or back and forth on the L&N Railroad. In the end the when and the who don’t make as much difference and you might think. But the where sure does. My name is Nathan Jordan Vaughan. It’s 72 Miles til Kentucky. Let’s get moving. 72 Miles Til Kentucky was written and produced by Nathan J. Vaughan. Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Lofi Girl. Curricular components for each episodes are available on the show's website [https://www.nathanjvaughan.com/72-miles-podcast]. You can learn more about me and any of my work on my website, www.nathanjvaughan.com [https://www.nathanjvaughan.com]. Subscribe to my regular Torah podcast, Modern Torah anywhere you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.