When Max Gornish attended Block Yeshiva High School, he also held part-time jobs at several kosher restaurants. He was a waiter, bussed tables, washed dishes and did some meat butchering. Now, as president of the Vaad Hoeir of St. Louis, Gornish plays a key role in kosher food certification. He understands the desire for, and importance of the availability of kosher food.

“If the kosher-keeping community is going to grow, you have to have amenities to compete with other similarly sized cities,” Gornish said. “When people are looking to find a more affordable community to live in outside of New York and Los Angeles and Miami, there are going to be basic necessities that they expect to have. Certainly, they need to have strong schools and kosher options.”

Max Gornish is encouraged about the possibility of expanded kosher food availability. He pointed to Bagels and Bliss in University City and the soon-to-open Corner Cafe in Chesterfield as two new certified kosher businesses.

“We’re working on it,” Gornish said. “The business has changed. Even in New York, all the butchering has become industrialized and concentrated. It’s no longer the mom-and-pop butcher shops the way it used to be.”

As a volunteer, Gornish is engaged in finding solutions, whether it be kosher food, worship or Jewish education. One of his first high-profile roles was as president of Young Israel, at age 27. 

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“When I was president of Young Israel, the community respected me as the president, not as the little kid that used to come to shul every day and got lollipops from them,” he said. “That was really an eye-opening experience to know I was being accepted for who I am, and really a part of this.”

Gornish remains an important voice for the congregation, said Rabbi Dov Fink, who joined the shul in August.

“Max Gornish is such an incredible doer,” Fink said. “He is incredibly talented and dedicated and takes tremendous levels of responsibility upon his shoulders and really does so with tremendous wisdom, sensitivity and kindness and is certainly something that I was a personal beneficiary of throughout the process of applying to the position at Young Israel of St. Louis and throughout the transition period. He’s really a wonderful person.”

Gornish has also served as president of Epstein Hebrew Academy, where he assisted in the 2020 relocation of the school from Olivette to University City. He subsequently helped the school navigate the COVID-19 pandemic and the search for a new head of school. For Gornish, the work of governing a volunteer board has many benefits.

“One of the bigger benefits that I’ve realized personally is the relationships that I’ve been able to build over the years with a variety of different people from throughout the community in different spaces, learning from those people, and also being able to use the lessons that I’ve learned from my community service and apply them to my professional life,” Gornish said.

An early volunteer opportunity for Gornish occurred when he was a teenager. He helped staff junior National Conference of Synagogue Youth (NCSY) conventions.

“I found myself working on the technical staff, behind-the-scenes work in the kitchen, making sure the rooms were set up, and all of the logistics that were planned were actually put in place,” he said. “I continued doing that for the senior NCSY conventions once I was in college, and I stayed with it as long as I could.

“It was fulfilling in the same vein of giving back to something that gave to you and realizing that that’s a lesson that my parents both instilled in me, which is roll your sleeves up and get involved in things that you participate in because you don’t want to be just a user of something, you want to be a giver. You don’t want to be a net taker, you want to be a net giver.”

That philosophy was also instilled in Gornish by his parents. His mother served on the board of Block Yeshiva High School and Epstein Hebrew Academy. His father remains a fixture in the St. Louis Orthodox Jewish community as the person you call when something needs to be fixed.

“He’ll drop whatever he’s doing to go help somebody else,” he said. “It’s a character trait that was ingrained in me from a young age.”

Gornish also tries to pass that quality along to his own children. He believes in leading by example.

“I do what I do for them, so that they can grow up in a wonderful community just like I did, showing them that getting involved and being involved in helping other people is more important,” he said.

After graduating from high school, Gornish left St. Louis and studied in Israel for two years. He attended Yeshiva University in New York, but didn’t have a job lined up there, so he returned to his hometown to begin a career centered around his love of aviation.

“I still had this aviation itch that I needed to scratch,” he said. “St. Louis University provided me with that opportunity to pursue a degree and a career in aviation, both professionally and also recreationally as a pilot,” he said. “From a very young age, I latched onto an airplane in the sky and never really looked back. I’ve always loved it, always found it fascinating, and it’s a blessing that I get to do it.” 

Gornish holds a pilot’s license and for relaxation, he takes to the sky. He also works in the field, as a sales manager for Garmin’s aviation business segment. Work obligations, spending quality time with his family and volunteer commitments make him a busy guy, but Gornish said the rewards are immense.

“The greatest reward that I get from volunteering is when I see people tangibly benefiting from the work that I participated in — when there are successes, when Young Israel is doing better as a shul, when Epstein Hebrew Academy enrollment is going up, and kids are happy, and the community is growing,” he said. “The reward really is ultimately that I get to give back to something that gave so much to me.

“It’s an expression of gratitude,” he said. “I feel like it’s my responsibility to give back to the institutions and the city and community that helped raise me. I get to hopefully pay that forward to others and give them that same opportunity.” 

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