Chana Rothman is busy. In addition to raising her own children, the Mount Airy resident and Germantown Jewish Centre member is getting ready for an album release, accompanying event (at The Fallser Club in East Falls on May 4) and leading the Music Department at the Jack. M Barrack Hebrew Academy. She answered a few questions about her life and work for the Exponent this week.
How did you end up leading the music program at Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy, and how has your first year been?
Barrack has been looking to grow their music program, and they had a position open last spring. I’m also a parent there, so I really deeply care about the music program. I decided to apply for that, and when I got the job, we talked a lot about the vision for the program.
It’s being revived, and we’re really proud of it. This trimester, the seniors at the school do a community service project rather than coming into school, and I had two seniors who wanted to be part of the music program and help grow the music program. It’s been really amazing. We’re starting an acapella group, and we have lots of great ideas and excitement about the program and others. I feel like it’s really being revitalized right now, and I’m really excited to be kind of spearheading that and be supported by Barrick.
How do you take the themes and ideas you explore in your art and make them transferable to a school-aged audience?
My whole life, my biggest passions have been music, Judaism and working with young people. I babysat, I lived in Israel as an au pair and then I taught Hebrew school. Song leading is really about using a lot of creativity. It’s very youth centered and youth directed.
The way I approach music education is taking a lot of the creativity that I use in my singer-songwriter career and helping students find their voice the same way that I found mine.
Our music program in the middle school is elective based, so I get to choose [subjects] based on the students’ interests. I choose what electives I think will be successful. I taught global grooves — a drumming class where we did rhythms that represented the cultural backgrounds of the students. So, one student had a dad who’s Puerto Rican, so we learned a Puerto Rican song and rhymes. We had two students who had Yemenite Israeli heritage, so we learned a few Yemenite rhythms. We’re doing a class on songwriting this trimester, and it’s amazing having these two seniors there because they have this whole fresh approach.
What else have you and your students been getting up to at Barrack?
We did a Jazz Journey class where the class was centered around a field trip to the Kimmel Center, which is a world class music venue, and it was a part of a [program called Jazz for Freedom]. We got to see a live jazz concert geared towards middle school students. I taught another class called Tranquil Tunes that was about music mindfulness. We created calm compositions using digital software and we sat on yoga mats on the floor. There’s a lot of different ways that I get to teach here!
In addition to teaching, I know you are a professional musician yourself. You have an album coming out soon — your first full-length album in a decade. What inspired your new work, “Mother of Creation”?
That title came to me during the pandemic. My partner and I were in this quiet cabin by a little pond, and the sun was going down and we talked about the blessing. The bracha that you say when the sun sets used male language in Hebrew, and I thought, ‘What if there was a blessing that used female language?’ I just spontaneously started singing about the mother of creation and it turned into a really simple and beautiful song that could be used as a blessing. This album means so much because the Philadelphia Jewish community and the North American Jewish community have supported me, and that’s how I am able to make a living as a musician — most of us musicians are not making what Beyonce makes.
How does working with kids inspire you? Are there any moments where you have thought that you could take something they said and apply it to yourself?
All the time. Just the fact that one of my students, who I have taught since he was in second or third grade, is going to play with me at my [album] release party is amazing. He is this musical mind that thinks in a way where we can collaborate even though we’re different ages. Another example is from a gratitude prayer in the morning. I said, ‘Let’s all go around and say one thing we are all grateful for.’ Most of the students said different things, and one of them just said, ‘a roof over my head.’ And then there was this moment that, I don’t know why, but was so powerful for me. She’s in eighth grade, and she just looks up and gave this little smile and goes ‘classic.’ That was so perfect for a middle schooler to say ‘a roof over my head,’ but I love that she said ‘classic’ because it was her way of being like, ‘that’s the basic [answer],’ you know? That was a nice life moment for me because I have a gratitude practice where every night I try to write down 10 things I am grateful for in my journal. Sometimes by the end, I am even just thinking, ‘What am I grateful for, what am I grateful for?’ and it goes back to these basic things like food and being healthy.
