Woodmere’s Chava Willig Levy podcasts her love of music

Despite being considered high-risk for contracting the coronavirus, Chava Willig Levy has made the most of her time inside her Woodmere home, starting a YouTube podcast last March focusing on one of her passions, music.

On the program, called “Breathtaking,” Levy shares songs and lyrics in a variety of music genres. There are three episodes per week that are roughly 10 minutes long, and each week there’s a theme.

“It’s called [Breathtaking] because it features songs and lyrics that take my breath away,” Levy said. “I’m not just telling the listeners to listen to a certain song; I try to shed a light on something they never noticed or thought about in a song during the episodes.”

Born in 1952 in Brooklyn, Levy has been in a wheelchair since she was 3, after she contracted polio. The pandemic, she said, has made it risky for her to even step outside her house.

“When the pandemic invaded our lives, I was told I really cannot leave the house too much because of my disability — my breathing is weak,” she said. “I felt isolated at first, and somehow this podcast idea came up for me.”

Levy described herself as having an “encyclopedic” knowledge of music, which was another inspiration for starting the podcast. “My family has a quip about me saying I have a melody malady,” she said. “This means that anytime something comes up in a conversation, I can’t help but have something relating to music pop up in my head.”

Holiday music was ubiquitous recently, and Levy’s unique gift was in evidence. “Somebody recently said to me that it’s cold outside, and I immediately thought of the Christmas song ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside,’” she said. “Something pops in my head musically as an idea and I begin to pull things out of my memory bank as a result of that.”

Levy has a communications consulting firm, Lucidity Unlimited, with services ranging from writing brochures, résumés, speeches and marketing materials to editing books. She wrote a memoir about her life, titled “A Life Not With Standing,” that was published in 2013.

There has been positive feedback from listeners who have been touched by the songs discussed on the podcast. Barbara Schumer started listening to “Breathtaking” about three months ago, after discovering it by way of a Facebook page. A week of shows with the song theme of motherhood spoke to her, Schumer said.

“Chava played a fabulous song called ‘Mother,’ by Tom Paxton, that I was listening to while driving,” Schumer said. “The lyrics were about adoption, and I started sobbing in the car, since I have two children I adopted at birth. I wrote to her after that, and I think she’s a remarkable person.” Schumer said that she has recommended the podcast to a number of friends.

Levy’s cousin Suri Krieger, a fellow music lover who listens to the podcast, described it as brilliant. “I think it’s great that the podcast is so inclusive of all kinds of music, and she sees them so creatively,” Krieger said. “Her goal was to find a way to keep sane during this pandemic, and she has found a way that is so creative and enlightening for all music lovers. I’ve been really enjoying it.”

Despite her disability, Levy said, “It’s always been an important part of my life to be a three-dimensional person. Having a disability is an important piece of who you are, and I’m not at all in favor of living my life as if the disability is not important. But it shouldn’t be the exclusive thing that defines who you are.”

The podcast can be heard at https://spoti.fi/2KR6yTh.