Orthodox singer, composer, and podcast host Franciska Kosman, the daughter of Conference of European Rabbis President Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt spoke with Arutz Sheva - Israel National News about her songs and compositions and her work with victims of abuse.
Kosman says that she started learning to play the piano when she was six and was about ten years old when she composed her first song. "It was always easier to play my own things than what the teachers wanted me to play so I naturally veered toward composing."
Her mother encouraged her to take a verse from the Prophets and compose music for it, which is how she got started composing Jewish music. She sees music as "a way to make Torah your own and connect with what we learn and life as a Jew."
"Making pasukim (verses) to my music helps me connect with the text," she says. "There's always room for more music. Music helps people connect. That's why we have new interpretations and we have new versions of old songs. Because people don't always want to hear the same thing again. If you recognize the words, then new music almost seems like something you can feel familiar with."
Kosman often chooses verses that have not previously been put to music. "I'll choose a pasuk that I feel doesn't get the attention it deserves," she said, noting that she focuses on the Megillot, such as the Book of Eicha (Lamentations).
She described her latest project of telling the stories of the women of the Bible through music, "something men don't necessarily do. Putting myself in their shoes and then showing the experience of ... a Disney character, if we wanted to relate to some of the women in Tanach (the Hebrew Bible) and think, 'What were their lives really like?'"
Kosman's podcast started with a focus on the lives of Jewish women. She later started a program called 'No More Silence' in which she interviewed survivors of abuse. For "that last three years, I've been bringing up topics that are usually unspoken."
"There's silence that is self-inflicted by survivors. There's silence that's brought on - it can be by the community, the family, from everywhere," she said. "As a community, I think, there's a lot more awareness and we're dealing with things a lot better than we used to."
During her visit to Israel, Kosman performed for the wives of IDF reservists who are serving in Gaza or in northern Israel during the current war. "The goal was to have not one dry eye in the audience, and I think we accomplished that."
"The feeling is, 'What can I ever say or sing to make anything better?' After October 7th I wrote five, six, seven songs since then. One of them is 'Dear Soldier.' All I could do is sing you a song. I can't do anything else to make it better."