Jean Gornish
Jean Gornish (1916–1981), known as “Sheindele di Chazante", was a chazante, a female performer of Jewish cantorial and liturgical music. She is often called the first woman chazan, although she never served in that capacity in a permanent position in a synagogue, and Julie Rosewald precedes her.
Early life
Jean Gornish was born in 1916. Her father was a chazan in Philadelphia. As a young woman, she had a brief career as a nightclub singer in the northeast, where she playing Lam's Tavern in Springfield, Pennsylvania. Her life as “Julia Cornish” or “Jean Walker ‘The Slick Songbird’” was short-lived; by 1936 she had committed herself exclusively to cantorial music, likely because her parents objected to her singing popular music in public. She took the stage name “Sheindele di Chazante” and began to appear on stage, radio, and records, performing both sacred and popular Jewish music. She appeared on the radio on station WPEN.
Career as chazante
She approached her performances with the utmost attention to tradition and detail. Although it was her dream to sing for a congregation, she was respectful of religious tradition, aware that her mere presence on stage pushed up against the limits of Jewish law - even the Reform movement did not train female cantors until the early 1970s. However, Sheindele did take on some ritual responsibilities, conducting the High Holiday choir at Manhattan’s Hotel Astor, leading Passover seders at a number of resorts, and even leading High Holiday services in Philadelphia on more than one occasion.
A reviewer for the Chicago Daily News noted:
She offered no apology in either word or manner, for what she was doing. She gave the impression that she had as much right as a man to appeal to the God of her fathers. The reception of each of her numbers was proof positive that anything freakish there might have been in her invasion of a man’s world was overwhelmingly offset by her artistry.
By the early 1940s, Sheindele’s popularity had reached such a height that she secured an exclusive contract with the Planters Peanut Company, which helped her organize a touring schedule and radio programs in Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago. In each city, fan clubs threw lavish parties and helped fill theaters such as the 3,000-seat Orchestra Hall in Chicago or the Milwaukee Auditorium.
Sheindele performed in traditional cantorial garb - a satin robe and a skullcap, either black or High Holiday white. Her versions of classic liturgical pieces were the bread and butter of her routine. In addition to classic liturgical pieces she also included performances of Yiddish folk songs and brief sermonettes explaining the meaning and context of each number. She understood what her audiences wanted, and regularly finished her concerts with a medley called “Shtetlakh” that included songs about Eastern European shtetls such as Zlatopol, Moliev, and Belz, concluding with the song “God Bless America.” A reviewer for the Chicago American wrote:
La Chazente elicited tears from those familiar with the literature heard in synagogues and even reached the hearts of those who never stepped into a Jewish temple. In her field she has no competitor and must be termed the "Heifetz" among cantors.
Family and later life
Sheindele never married and never had any children. She lived with a female companion for many years while continuing to perform both live as well as on the radio. Although illness slowed her down during her later years, Sheindele enjoyed a long-running career, strains of which can be heard on the only recording she ever made, the late 1950s LP "Sheindele Sings the Songs of Her People". Her papers are held in the Philadelphia Jewish Archive Center.