Our Jewish community is enriched by its members’ diversity, heritage, and unique stories! In celebration of AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) Heritage Month and Jewish Heritage Month, we had the privilege of sitting down and chatting with Rachel Chang. 

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Tell me a little bit about yourself.

I’m a queer mixed race Chinese American Jew, and a musician, ritual leader, songleader, and educator. Throughout so many parts of my life, I’ve been pulled toward music for as long as I can remember.

What inspires your music and drives you as an artist?

Music, for me, has been a tool for expression, for release, and for connection, and over time, for taking space, for challenging expectations, and for channeling and moving energy.

Interestingly, I’d actually say that most of the time, music doesn’t feel like inspiration for me; it feels like ease and flow and relaxation. I make music because I love what it feels like to make music and to be in musical dialogue with others.

Much of my musical work also centers around community, and I’ve learned so much in recent years – from Jewish communal settings in spiritual moments, to organizing settings in the streets – about how music can galvanize us, nourish us, and actually leave us feeling different from how we came in.  

How does your Judaism influence your music, if at all?

Judaism definitely does influence my music, but interestingly, I think the reverse happened first – music has deeply influenced my relationship to Judaism. When I started playing guitar at around age 14, my main source of music community and learning was through a teen songleading group at the synagogue where I grew up. Learning through Jewish prayer and community, I came to appreciate music as a method for creating meaning, for connecting with people, for shaping moments.

Today, I frequently lead music and ritual in Jewish spaces, especially in queer spaces and in JOC spaces, with an intention to cultivate belonging for those of us who navigate spaces that don’t always fully see us. I think a lot about this idea of belonging. I’ve spent a lot of time in my life yearning for a space of belonging, an idyllic community where I’d feel totally seen. I’m now more interested in what it means to cultivate a sense of belonging, an internal sense of knowing that we belong.

Can you share a time when you felt that sense of belonging through music?

A few years ago, I wrote a song that was meant to capture this sense of yearning for belonging and to explore what it means to create it for ourselves. It’s a setting of Kiddush Levanah, which is a Jewish ritual that exists around the new moon. When the moon is just starting to reappear again in the sky, we’re invited to go outside, to see it and to sanctify it. Guided by friends, teachers, and community, I’ve come to hold the moon as a symbol of integration for myself as a mixed-race Asian Jew, a symbol that’s been used by all my ancestors, across cultures and continents, to mark the passage of time. I often share an image that I hold now, of all my ancestors standing outside and looking at the dark new moon sky, thinking of themes of renewal, and beginnings and cycles…

I’ve been singing this piece and leading it in communities for some time now.. It holds, for me, this idea of weaving all of the disparate parts of ourselves, all the parts that are made to feel separate but are actually a part of a whole.

Where can folks stream your music and follow your work?

My Kiddush Levanah setting will be out in the world as single on May 28, which is Rosh Chodesh Sivan! You’ll be able to find the song on all streaming platforms then, but for now, check out a sneak peek of the song below 🙂

Click here to find Rachel Chang on Spotify and check out the video below!