Mordechai Hershman

Hershman was one of the best and most important Jewish cantors ever, and more than that, one of the best tenors ever. And yet, his biography remains somewhat obscure. He was born on January 12th, 1888 in Chernihiv, Ukraine. He lost his father when he was only six years old, and grew up with foster parents first and then with his grandfather. His musical interest was early and genuinely his own, since both his parents and his foster parents were very emphatically indifferent to music. He started to study voice with the cantor of his local synagogue when he was in fact still a child; at age 16, he already got his first post at the synagogue in Zhitomir, and soon after in Vilnius, where he was to stay until 1920, interrupted by military service during WWI.

However, something must have singled that military service out, and somehow, he seems to have been exempted from all true military activities – different sources say either because his commanding officer was so impressed by his voice, or because cantor David Roitman arranged his dismissal from the army and a temporary position for him at the synagogue in Kremenchuk. Either way, he went back to Vilnius after the war, and emigrated to the USA in 1920, where he became chief hazzan at the Beth El Temple in Brooklyn, New York (until 1930).

Already from Vilnius, and then from Brooklyn, he went on extensive concert tours in Europe, the USA and Palestine; after 1930, those tours were his only activity. In his concerts, he sang cantorial music of course, Yiddish folk songs – but also operatic arias, which he unfortunately never recorded.

He died early: most sources say in 1940, and I found also 1943. Either is wrong; he is buried on Mount Carmel Cemetery in New York City, and his tombstone says clearly that he died on January 30th, 1941.