The Appalachian Jew

Author: unexpectedincommonhours

  • Code switching

    Code switching

    In linguistics, code switching can be described as a person changing their language, accent, or dialect depending on the situation. However, it also can pertain to changing cultural behavior, mannerisms, or styles of dress, or modifying appearance in other ways, such as covering tattoos.

    In some ways, I have become an expert in code-switching.

    My great grandmother of blessed memory, through whom my Jewish ancestry came on my mother’s side, grew up in Appalachia and spoke in what has often been called the old Appalachian dialect. She lived to be 111 years old, passing away when I was in my late thirties, so I knew her well.

    Because of her and the influence of her way of speaking on my grandmother (who lived to be 99 years old), I can easily understand Appalachian dialect and have been called upon to “translate” a few times in my life:

    • My first job out of college was as a newspaper reporter for a daily paper. When the old mountain preachers wanted the newspaper to include a notice about a church event, they had to come into town to bring the notice. I was often called upon to speak with the preachers because I was the only person in the newsroom who could understand what they were saying
    • After living in northern Indiana for 20 years, I returned to North Georgia with my husband and daughter, both of whom had spent their entire lives in Indiana. Shortly after returning, my daughter and I were in the local post office, and I had a short conversation with the postal worker. As we were leaving the building, my daughter grabbed my arm, and with a horrified look on her face, said, “Mom, what language was that man speaking, and how could you understand him?”
    • I live in the woods, and there are wooded areas on all sides of the property. One day, a man walked up our driveway to ask if he could look at the wooded property next to us. My husband had been the one to go out and speak to him but had found it necessary to return to the house and ask me to come out because he couldn’t understand a word the man was saying.

    When I was growing up, my father (who was from North Carolina)used to drill me and my siblings on the “proper” pronunciation of words so that we wouldn’t sound so country or like we came from the hills. Because of that, and because I lived in Australia for a year and then in Northern Indiana for 20 years, I can move back and forth between dialects and accents and word choices. Many people can’t place my manner of speaking and are surprised that I grew up in the hills of North Georgia.

    Similarly, I can code switch back and forth between Jewish and Christian terminology.

    There are very few Jews in my neck of the woods. Everyone I know in my little local synagogue moved here from someplace else, either in connection with a job or to retire. I am the only person who regularly attends services who actually grew up here.

    I grew up in the Episcopal Church (there also are very few Episcopalians here) and attended graduate school at a well-known Catholic university where I studied the development of Catholic theology and liturgy. I also have been exposed to many other Christian denominations, including evangelical and Pentecostal churches. And now I am a Jew. (I always was Jewish but have now embraced that ancestry and have become a member of the Jewish people.)

    So I can converse using the terminology of Judaism, including words in Yiddish and Hebrew, and I can converse in the terminology of Christianity, including that of the Catholic Church and mainline and fundamentalist Christian churches.

    It all makes for an interesting life and interesting conversations.

    And interesting encounters, like the time a Jewish family originally from Indiana, who now live further up than I do in the hills of Appalachia, came down to a synagogue service at the synagogue I attend. They play Appalachian music and, after the service, they delighted us with a short concert. And yes, they are singing about getting drunk. LOL

  • Conversion anniversary

    Conversion anniversary

    Today, March 14 2026, is the second anniversary of my conversion to Judaism.

    The day after conversion, along with others who had converted during the previous year, I was on the bimah at Central Synagogue in New York City during the Friday evening Shabbat service to be recognized and to receive the priestly benediction from Senior Rabbi Angela Buchdahl (bottom right). I am in the turquoise turtleneck.

    I received this photo today from my friend and conversion colleague Rosemary, who is seated in a wheelchair and is looking directly at the camera. Her husband took the photo, and today is the first time I have seen it.

  • Lord, Prepare Me to Be a Sanctuary

    Lord, Prepare Me to Be a Sanctuary

    The worship song “Lord, Prepare Me to Be a Sanctuary,” written by a songwriter with Appalachian roots, can be found in many modern Christian hymnals and is sung in many Christian churches. However, it also is sung in Jewish synagogues.

    Also known simply by the title “Sanctuary,” the song was written by Randy Scruggs and John W. Thompson.

    Scruggs, who wrote the lyrics, was famous in his own right as a musician, producer and songwriter, and was the son of Appalachian bluegrass musician Earl Scruggs, remembered for popularizing a three-finger style of playing the banjo.

    This past week, “Sanctuary” was sung at Central Synagogue in New York City in conjunction with the assigned Torah portion of the week, the portion from the Book of Exodus in which Moses was instructed to have the Hebrew people build the Mishkan, the portable sanctuary that would travel with them through the desert.

    As an online member of Central Synagogue, I participated in a Wednesday Torah study during which we all sang “Sanctuary.” We sang it again during the Friday night Shabbat service which I livestreamed, and a third time during the Saturday morning Mishkan service in which I participate through Zoom.

    I wonder how many Jews realize that this was written as a Christian song by someone with Appalachian roots. And I wonder how many Christians know that Jews also sing the song during services, often adding words from Exodus in Hebrew:

    V’asu li mikdash (Make for me a sanctuary)

    V’shochanti b’tocham (That I may dwell among them)

    Va’anachnu n’varech yah (And we will bless God/Yah)

    Me-ata v’ad olam (From now and forever) 

    Here, Julia Cadrain who is a former cantor at Central Synagogue, sings both the Hebrew and English lyrics. (Note: Although the title of the video says that this is a Shaker hymn, it is a contemporary song, copyrighted in 1982.)

  • My Journey Back to Judaism, the Faith of My Ancestors – Part 4

    My Journey Back to Judaism, the Faith of My Ancestors – Part 4

    The Road to Conversion

    Livestreaming services from Central Synagogue in New York is what made me aware that there was a path by which I could convert to Judaism.

    Central Synagogue has a Center for Exploring Judaism, established in 2010 and geared mainly towards those with a Jewish partner or spouse, helping them to understand the Jewish faith and what it means to live a Jewish life. But the program also is open to individuals who desire to explore Judaism. Originally, all classes were held in person at the synagogue, but in recent years online cohorts have been comprised of people literally from around the world.

    In late Spring 2023, I contacted Rabbi Lisa Rubin, director of the Center for Exploring Judaism to ask about being accepted into the program. What fascinated me about the hour-long interview with her was that one of the first things she said to me was that she was wondering why a Jewish person (me) would want to be in a cohort group. She considered me to be already living a Jewish life. When I explained that I had been raised as a Christian by parents who also were raised as Christians (even though they knew they were Jewish), she agreed that actual conversion would be the proper course of action for me.

    My cohort group consisted of about 40 people from throughout the U.S. and from several other countries. Classes extended over a six-month period from July through December 2023, met once a week on Zoom, and were conducted like university classes. We had a syllabus, several required books, and weekly assignments and were expected to actively participate in class discussions and complete two projects . Both projects could be submitted after classes ended, but no one could be considered an actual candidate for conversion until both were turned in. In addition, each of us had to meet individually on Zoom with Rabbi Rubin on a regular basis.

    The following is from Central Synagogue’s website:

    Summary of the Conversion Process

    1. Initial meeting with Rabbi Lisa Rubin, our Director of the Center for Exploring Judaism 
    In this introductory meeting, we will discuss your background and interest in Judaism and do our best to ascertain whether our program may be a good fit for you.

    2. Enrollment in our Exploring Judaism course 
    Our course covers the foundations of Judaism: holidays, history, prayer, theology, and life cycle. A new class begins every other month and we meet weekly for a six-month period.

    3. One-on-one meetings with Clergy
    These regular meetings (during the six-month period of the Exploring Judaism course) are for individual guidance and mentorship.

    4. Extended study after the course
    Conversion candidates are encouraged to study with a rabbi as long as is needed to attain confidence with a basic “literacy” of Judaism. Time will vary with each student.

    5. Completion of a conversion project and spiritual autobiography
    Students are asked to complete two small projects toward the end of the conversion process.

    6. Bet Din and Mikveh
    A bet din (rabbinic court) will be assembled on the day of your conversion followed by a visit to the mikveh (ritual bath).

    Everyone in the cohort group had to submit, as one of their projects, a personal spiritual autobiography. Much of my spiritual autobiography has been included in earlier posts of this blog as My Journey Back to Judaism, the Faith of My Ancestors – Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

    The second project could be anything relating to Judaism that was of interest to the individual student, but the topic had to be approved by Rabbi Rubin. For my second project, I did extensive research, reading another dozen books plus several articles and participating in a webinar sponsored by the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience in New Orleans. Much of that research also was included in earlier posts of this blog as The Melungeons: Conversos, Crypto-Jews and Hidden Jews in Southern Appalachia – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and in The Melungeons: Conversos, Crypto-Jews and Hidden Jews in Southern Appalachia – Sources.

    I submitted my second project in February 2024, thinking I probably was the last person in my cohort to submit their work, but this turned out not to be the case. In addition, I had been under the impression that each of us would be assigned to another rabbi at Central Synagogue to continue studies until such time as that rabbi determined we were ready to complete conversion. That also turned out not to be the case for me.

    As soon as Rabbi Rubin had my second assignment in hand she asked me when I could come to New York to complete my conversion.

    Conversion

    I made the trip to New York in mid-March 2024 and formally converted to Judaism on March 14. Unlike in Christianity, in which conversion is often a public event including baptism witnessed by friends and family, conversion in Judaism is a private event involving only the convert and three rabbis.

    My Bet Din, or rabbinic court, consisted of three female rabbis, all of whom teach in the Center for Exploring Judaism.

    (Two other members of my cohort converted on the same day and one had a different configuration of rabbis on her Bet Din.)

    I expected an intimidating scene in which I would be grilled by the rabbis on various aspects of Judaism, but it turned out to be a delightful discussion. All three rabbis considered me to be living a Jewish life and told me that they saw me not so much to be converting as returning to the faith my ancestors had once practiced but that had been hidden for several generations.

    As part of my conversion I was formally given my Hebrew name, which, as an adult, I had chosen. I kept my given name, given to me at birth by my mother who had named me for a heroine in the Hebrew scriptures, but I changed my middle name from Leigh (Leah) to Shira, a name that means song because I have always been a singer. דבורה שירה

    Immersion in the mikveh, the ritual bath, is an integral part of conversion. Central Synagogue uses the community mikveh on the Upper West Side in Manhattan. Those coming to the mikveh enter from the street through a rather non-descript door to find a beautiful, spa-like atmosphere inside. As a convert, I immersed in the mikveh’s warm water alone, completely submerging three times and saying a specific blessing after each immersion. The rabbis waited outside the door and greeted me with a rousing chorus of Siman Tov Mazel Tov.

    Here’s what that sounds like…

    Afterwards, I was given the priestly benediction and was declared to be officially a part of the Jewish people.

    The priestly benediction can be heard here, beginning at about 3:11 in the video. Here, Central Synagogue’s Senior Rabbi Angela Buchdahl gives the blessing to former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer who had been interviewed at the synagogue…

    The evening following my conversion was a Friday, and at Central’s Friday night Shabbat service, I along with many others who had converted at Central Synagogue in the preceding twelve months, was called to the bimah (the platform at the front of the synagogue) to bless the reading of the Torah and to receive the priestly benediction.

    In this photo, which features Rabbi Rubin from the Center for Exploring Judaism, I am among the group on the bimah although, because I am so short, I cannot be seen.

    I returned home from New York a different person, knowing for certain what I had “known” all of my life, that I was, in fact, a Jew. I finally was where I belong.

    The following song from Temple Israel Westport expresses what I had always known. Written and sung by Cantor Becky Mann, on the left, joined by Cantor Julia Cadrain (formerly at Central Synagogue) on the right, it says, “You’ve always belonged here.”

  • My Journey Back to Judaism, the Faith of My Ancestors – Part 3

    My Journey Back to Judaism, the Faith of My Ancestors – Part 3

    Toward living a Jewish life

    In the late 1990s, after my husband, daughter and I moved from Indiana back to the area where I grew up in Georgia, my interest in Judaism increased. Even though I was active in the Episcopal Church, I wanted to identify more as Jewish.  I joined a Jewish book club and began reading and collecting a library of books about Judaism and what it means to live a Jewish life, without even knowing anyone here in North Georgia anymore who is Jewish.

     Fast forward to 2018, I was following a blogger in California, a rabbi who called herself the Coffee Shop Rabbi, and she posted a list of synagogues in the U.S., by denomination, that were livestreaming their services.  I decided to try livestreaming the Friday evening Shabbat (Sabbath)service from Central Synagogue, a large Reform congregation in Manhattan in New York City.

    There are no words that can adequately describe how I was affected by that first service I watched. It was as if I had heard the songs and the prayers before, even though I never had. They reached something very deep within my soul, as if it were in my very DNA, and I felt the presence of God in an almost palpable way. It was as if I had come home at last, as if this is who I am, who I’ve always known myself to be, and I wept through the entire service.  

    I continued to livestream services from Central Synagogue and immersing myself in Judaism. I ordered the Mishkan Tefillah Siddur, the Reform prayerbook, so I could follow along during services. I began to light Shabbat candles on Friday evenings and to make challah, the braided bread that is eaten on Shabbat. 

    And I have long had mezuzahs on my front and back door posts.

    Because music always has been an important part of my life, I created a Spotify playlist which now contains over twelve hours of Jewish music.

    In addition, one of my brother’s friends (who I did not know until recently is Jewish) told me about the small Jewish community, Shalom B’Harim, here in Northeast Georgia. I am now a part of that community which meets once a month in a church building about 25 miles from me. The rabbi drives two hours from Atlanta to get here.  Services may be on Friday evenings or on Saturdays, and we rely on emails to let us know when the next service will be held. 

    Non-denominational and without actual membership or dues, Shalom B’Harim only draws about 25 to 30 people each month from six counties in Northeast Georgia. The High Holiday services draw about twice that number. I’ve only met one person there who grew up in this area.  Everyone moved here from other parts of the country, either for work or to retire in the mountains, and they still seem puzzled about my growing up here and my having known, so long ago, the Jewish families in my hometown.

    The same person who introduced me to the local Jewish community also introduced me to My Jewish Learning, and I’ve taken advantage of some of their programs, such as the Mi Shebeirach Moment (healing service) once a week and their online Zoom courses on Jewish Spirituality and Turning Toward Teshuvah (repentance).

    Three years ago, I asked if I could become an actual member of what Central Synagogue in New York calls The Neighborhood. It is the first such outreach program in the history of Judaism in which they have a rabbi assigned to a large, disparate group of livestreamers from around the world.

    I began partaking of everything I could that is offered by The Neighborhood, Zooming the Saturday morning Mishkan services, attending Wednesday Torah study, webinars, Neighborhood block parties, and other programs offered by Central’s rabbis. In 2023 and 2024, my daughter and I made the trip to New York for Central’s Neighborhood Homecoming.

    My Jewish ancestry

    I mentioned above that the first time I livestreamed a service from Central Synagogue, I felt as if the prayers and music were in my DNA. The truth is that I do have Jewish ancestry on both sides of my family.

    Although there is no such thing as “Jewish DNA,” I now have confirmed my Jewish ancestry by doing research and through autosomal and mitochondrial DNA testing with multiple companies that show how my DNA relatives self identify and the populations to which I am most closely related.  My father also tested (but died before he knew his results), as did his brother, several of my cousins, my half sister, nieces and nephews, and my mother’s sister.

    On my father’s side, I have Sephardic ancestry from Spain and Portugal and Ashkenazi ancestry from the area of Eastern Europe that was known as the Pale of Settlement, the only part of the old Russian Empire in which Jews were allowed to live permanently. Today, that is the western part of Russia and the countries of Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Lithuania and Moldova. My closest DNA markers there are Ukrainian.

    On my mother’s side, through her maternal line, I have Sephardic ancestry from Morocco, Tunisia, Ethiopia, and Yemen.

    Even though I was told as a child that my ancestry was almost 100% from the British Isles, fully half of my DNA is Spanish/Portuguese, North African, and Middle Eastern.  The other half includes Western European, some of which appears to have been Jewish from Germany and France, and also Sub-Saharan African, and Native American. 

    Southerners are very good at hiding ancestry. My father always claimed that his family was 99% English and maybe 1% “Black Dutch,” descended from royalty.  I now know that “Black Dutch” is a euphemism for a Sephardic Jew originally from Spain. My mother’s family was said to be 100% from the British Isles, but there is substantial amount of North African and Middle Eastern DNA.  

    Recently, I ran into someone I’ve known for many years who also knew both of my parents well. I asked her if she had known that my parents were Jewish, and her response was that she knew my father was, because he used to talk with her about it frequently. Yet he never told his own children.  

    I’ve struggled with this knowing that I am Jewish by ancestry but being told that I am not. Why would my parents and grandparents hide this? The only answer I have is the times in which my grandparents and great grandparents lived in the Deep South, a time of open activity by the Ku Klux Klan and rampant antisemitism after the lynching of Jewish businessman Leo Frank. 

    Returning

    Until recent years I didn’t even know it was possible for someone raised as a Christian to convert to Judaism. I thought I would forever be someone on the periphery, someone with Jewish ancestry but not fully accepted as Jewish. However, once I learned that there was a path for me to become fully Jewish, to be accepted as part of the Jewish people, and to live a full Jewish life, I made the decision to convert, to return to the faith of my ancestors, to home.

  • My Journey Back to Judaism, the Faith of My Ancestors – Part 2

    My Journey Back to Judaism, the Faith of My Ancestors – Part 2

    Jewish beginnings

    Even though I was raised as a Christian and was immersed in Christianity, ever since I was a small child there was another track running through my life. I felt that I was Jewish and wanted to be part of the Jewish people.

    I didn’t know how I knew this; it was just a knowing. I believed I was someone born with a Jewish soul, although I wouldn’t have used those words when I was a child.  In my child’s mind, I thought I was a Jew who had been born into the wrong family. But as I listened to my mother, I realized she was dropping hints.

    My mother made it clear that she named each of her children for people from the Hebrew Scriptures.  She also spoke of going to Jewish summer camp when she was young. That, of course, leads to the inevitable question of who in a small town in the South would send their daughter to Jewish summer camp in the early 1940s unless they were Jewish?  When I was old enough to go to camp she sent me to a secular camp where a large number of campers were Jewish.

    When I was older, my mother helped manage the book and gift shop at the local Episcopal Church. Her inventory there included this wall hanging, which is now in my home…

    The shop also sold cassette tapes and songbooks from the series “Scripture in Song,” musical settings of the Psalms.

    I now know that my father, too, had Jewish ancestry, but I didn’t pick up on his hints when I was young. He said only that he had Black Dutch ancestry and that his grandmother told him that anyone who researched the family history would be cursed and die a horrible death. The term Black Dutch is often used as a euphemism for Sephardic Jewish ancestry from Spain.

    My father also had a love for Israel that went beyond any I had ever seen among Christians. Tithing ten percent of his income was central to his spirituality, and he found a way to pay a tithe from the profits of his business directly to Israel. An inventor and manufacturer of the chicken deboning machine, he sold that machinery around the world. However, every tenth machine that was manufactured was given to a kibbutz in Israel, and he personally escorted the machines to the kibbutzim.

    After his death, a former colleague told me that my father often spoke to her about being Jewish, but he never told his own children, and he lived his life as a very devout Christian.

    Both of my parents had been in musical theatre (my mother’s dream had been to be on Broadway), and they made many trips to New York to see Broadway shows. This was in the late 1950s and early 1960s. On one occasion, after their return from New York, I overheard my mother tell someone that they had been denied service in a restaurant because they were Jewish. I wondered then how anyone would know they were Jewish and why they had not simply said they weren’t Jewish.  They always denied being Jewish whenever I asked directly about it. I remember once saying I wanted to be Jewish, and my mother’s response was, “Why do you want to be something you’re not?” 

    I wanted to know who I was…

    There weren’t very many Jewish families in my small hometown when I was growing up, but my mother made sure I knew who all of them were, and they seemed to know my family well. I was only in first or second grade when I learned about the Holocaust and about the Jews in my town who had come to the U.S. as refugees.

    When I was in 4th grade, the mother of one of my Jewish classmates called my mother to ask if I could go to the movies with her son. My mom said yes, and that began a friendship that lasted for several years. By 7th and 8th grade, he and I were considered to be boyfriend and girlfriend, and I became close to his entire family. At the time,  I.D. bracelets were popular among boys, and I wore his bracelet which was obviously Jewish, with the Star of David on it and his name in Hebrew. My friends’ mothers would never have allowed them to wear such a bracelet. When he had his Bar Mitzvah in Atlanta, we were the only family in our town that was invited.

    In college my closest friends were Jewish, and people have always assumed I was Jewish. After graduate school, I worked for several years as a civil rights investigator, investigating employment and housing discrimination, and members of the Jewish community with whom I worked just assumed I was Jewish. Here in the South, oddly enough, perfect strangers have walked up to me and asked if I’m Jewish.  (Why?) Yet no one in my family would openly admit having Jewish ancestry.

    I still have many questions about all of this. It has been like trying to put a puzzle together and realizing that there are many missing pieces. Unfortunately, there is no one who can provide answers. No one is still alive who would be able to give me any more insight than what I already have gleaned.

    One thing I did know for sure, however, and that was that I wanted to claim my Jewish ancestry and live a Jewish life.