Podcast | Shofar, So Good!: An Interview with Kate Mishkin
Interview by Andreea Coscai, EarBuds Newsletter & Community Coordinator
Shofar, So Good! is an audio documentary about Kate Mishkin’s quest to unearth her Jewish roots by diving head-first into life’s trickiest questions.
Kate Mishkin is a podcast producer and writer whose reporting has taken her from from the Allegheny Mountains in West Virginia, to the beaches in San Onofre, California. Her work has appeared in ProPublica, The Guardian, and the LA Times.
Shofar, So Good! - podcast cover
Andreea Coscai: How did you come up with the name Shofar, So Good!?
Kate Mishkin: It’s a play on words: On Rosh Hashanah, they blow the shofar (a ram’s horn) to welcome the new year. For most of my life, that’s basically all I knew about Rosh Hashanah, so I’d repeatedly make that joke, basically hiding the fact that I felt intimidated and didn’t deserve to celebrate. Making this podcast, I now have a way more sophisticated understanding of the High Holidays. Naming the show “Shofar, So Good!” feels like I’m letting other people in on the joke – including them in these time-tested traditions – as I get more comfortable with my Jewish identity.
AC: What inspired you to dive into your Jewish roots now, and how did you know this was the right time for Shofar, So Good!?
KM: I’m Jewish by birth, but my parents didn’t raise me and my siblings with the religion or customs. As I learned making this podcast, my maternal grandfather faced quite a bit of antisemitism as a traveling big-band musician in the 1940s, and he distanced himself from Judaism as a result.
Over time, Judaism disappeared within my family, compromising my sense of belonging. In a city with one of the nation’s largest Jewish populations, I’ve always felt the acute sense of not quite fitting in. Eventually, that sense of otherness led me back to Judaism to reclaim what had been taken decades ago.
As an adult, I’ve joined synagogues when I’ve moved to a new city, volunteered at Jewish food pantries, and attended strangers’ Passover seders. At first, the experience usually made me feel even more disconnected. As a reporter, I’ve talked to so many people about their identity, but never turned the microphone on myself. I thought I’d take the leap and try.
AC: The show explores some deep, unanswerable questions. Did you find any "answers," or did the journey bring up even more questions?
KM: I did find some answers! I’d always wondered, for example, how to have a Shabbat dinner, and in the first episode, I hosted my own. I’d always wondered how to atone on Yom Kippur and explored that in another episode.
The journey did bring up more questions, though. Just as I was beginning to feel Jewish as I prepared to wrap the series, I came across some information about the rules of matrilineal and patrilineal descent – basically, which parent passes down Judaism. That sparked some new questions about where I fit in, if at all. I really had a crisis of faith that I’m still grappling with.
Kate Mishkin
AC: Do you have a favorite moment or revelation from making the series that surprised you or shifted your perspective?
KM: In an episode about atonement, I interviewed a bunch of young kids about how they apologized on Yom Kippur. Hoping to take a page out of their book, I went to my younger sister to try to retroactively apologize for all the bickering we did as kids. She surprised me by instead talking about her sobriety, and how it’s shifted her perspective on forgiveness. It also made me realize that a lot of these traditions are within us anyway, even if we’ve never officially observed the High Holidays.
AC: What’s one thing you hope listeners take away from this exploration of death, faith, and forgiveness?
KM: I was really moved by the conversations I had in making this podcast, such as one with a chaplain about her experience with death, and another with a rabbi about how he grapples with the existence of a higher power. It opened my heart, and I hope listeners have the same experience.
This podcast isn’t strictly about Judaism – we should all ask these big questions. In a lot of ways, there’s never a good time to sit down and question death, faith, and forgiveness – that’s why I’d been holding off for so long. But in another way, I can’t think of anything more urgent.
AC: The show drops in time for New Year’s resolutions—any advice for people looking to deepen their spirituality or connect with their roots this year?
KM: For the last ten-ish years, I’ve unsuccessfully made New Year’s resolutions about deepening my Judaism, and it took making this podcast to take the leap. A rabbi encouraged me to live in Judaism for a year, observing the annual traditions to see if they’re right for me, and I’m making an honest effort to do that.
I think it’s also really important to talk to family members about their relationships with faith and religion. I didn’t know much about my family’s lineage and how Judaism got lost until I interviewed my parents.