"We Need the Fantasy of a Destination and a Journey and a Path": Living Tangientially with Basya Schechter

“I think this is such a great line for your podcast. It’s from my third album, Exile. ‘I am in exile in my own home. My real home is moving, it’s a wandering home. I give birth to contradictions, I give up in indecision, and worry.”

Basya Schecter is one of my favorite wanderers. From a prolific early singer-songwriter career as the leader of Pharaoh’s Daughter, to her nine-year stint as the full-time musical director and then spiritual leader of communities in Manhattan and Brooklyn, to her recent sabbatical and transition to a more fluid mix of communal leadership and “musical adventures,” she has embodied an insistence to listening to one’s inner voice that I deeply admire. Speaking about the surprising comfort and inspiration she was able to find within the Jewish Renewal community (after a Hassidic upbringing in Borough Park that traumatized her relationship with Jewish community) — and about how the contingencies and demands of single-motherhood pushed her to reconfigure her life in a way that opened unexpected portals to self-connection — she is also frank about he perils of burnout and the non-negotiability of maintaining an active creative life.

“Creativity is finding the thing inside you that you didn’t know was inside. To find that thing that’s higher and beyond what I can actually do, and yet something that comes through anyway. And it’s a surprise. Those are gifts. Those are such gifts. Then those gifts become your friends.”