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‘Mercenaries for Jesus’: Christmas is a busy time for Jews who sing in churches
(New York Jewish Week) — “Jesus is a paycheck,” said Rob Orbach, one of the many classically trained Jewish vocalists who perform Christian sacred songs in churches across New York City.
“There’s a lot of money to be made in churches, especially in New York,” Orbach, 30, who lives in West Harlem, told the New York Jewish Week. “It’s a competitive gig. It’s challenging. We have to be perfect.”
It’s the Christmas season, which means churches throughout the city will be presenting holiday music during worship services and in concerts. And because churches don’t discriminate when hiring professionals for their choirs — and New York City has a surplus of Jewish musicians — many of the singers and instrumentalists bringing comfort and joy, comfort and joy, will be Jewish.
“There are lots of Jews all over the church scene,” Maya Ben-Meir, an Israeli singer who has nine years of experience singing in churches, told the New York Jewish Week. “These churches have stellar ensembles. They hire only professionals and perform magnificently beautiful music. Why wouldn’t I go for this type of job?”
While Christmas may be the busy season, singing in a church is one of the rare jobs for professional singers that is “a steady source of income for most of the year,” she added.
Jewish singer Rob Orbach, 30, performs as part of a church choir in 2021. (Courtesy)
David Gordon, 49, a singer who lives in Manhattan and has more than 20 years of experience singing professionally in churches, estimates that there are hundreds of Jewish singers in church choirs all across New York during this holiday season.
“My choir right now, there are a dozen paid members, and nearly half of them are Jewish, and so is the woman who plays the piano,” said Gordon, who, like other singers interviewed for this article, was hesitant to name the churches where he works.
Gordon, who said that “he’s not very religious” but celebrates the Jewish holidays with his family, told the New York Jewish Week that just this week, he sang a jazz nativity scene and received a call “to ring for the ‘Messiah’” — that is, Handel’s “Messiah” oratorio, a staple of the Christmas season.
“Everybody I know talks about how many ‘Messiahs’ they’re going to have to pay their bills in December,” Gordon said. “It’s a huge part of the career at a certain level.”
He added that he sees himself as “a mercenary for Jesus” — and the outsider angle of a Jew coming into a church to sing Christian worship music is not lost on him.
“There were times where I did not feel welcomed,” Gordon said. “There’s this overlap of ‘We don’t really want you here because you’re a mercenary, you’re getting paid to be here.’”
He said he once heard a pastor say during a sermon that “it’s the fault of the Jews that Jesus was killed the way that he was killed,” Gordon said — a historic charge that the Catholic Church and other denominations have tried to quash.
“It’s something that occasionally comes up,” Gordon said. “Just the sort of standard institutional and relatively harmless antisemitism that’s just part of the Christian tradition.”
Stephanie Horowitz, 41, a Reform Jew who has sung in churches for years on Long Island, told the New York Jewish Week about how she has heard “upsetting things” while working in church choirs.
She described an experience of when the story of Jesus’ crucifixion was told during a service. “This particular church used a translation that was very incendiary towards the Jewish people,” Horowitz said. “It was very clear that they’re trying to send the message that the Jews of the time were responsible for his death, without clarifying that this doesn’t mean we need to hold Jewish people today responsible.”
She added that in another experience, a pastor was giving a sermon about how “the Messiah will be a successful man.”
The pastor “said that, to a Jewish person, a successful man means a rich man,” Horowitz said. “I literally almost stood up and left. The musical director, afterwards, asked if I was OK.”
Meanwhile, Ben-Meir, who grew up secular, said that she was “fortunate enough to work in churches where I didn’t feel antisemitism directed toward me.”
“Everyone knew that I was Jewish,” Ben-Meir said, who is taking a break from singing in churches this season to travel with her partner. “It was never a secret.”
Horowitz explained that when one studies classical music, all roads lead to the church, as Western composers such as Bach, Haydn and Handel led church ensembles and wrote through a Christian lens.
“One of the few places that value musical tonality is the church,” Horowitz said. “I’m obviously not busy on Christmas anyway, so it works out.”
(The custom, it should be noted, goes the other way as well: Some synagogues hire non-Jewish singers and instrumentalists for their choirs. One rabbi even weighed in on whether the practice was permissible.)
And yet, it may seem that for a Jewish person, who is somewhat religious, who celebrates holidays, who grew up around all the Jewish customs, may have trouble singing Christian worship music.
Orbach, who identifies as culturally Jewish, said it is “very easy to separate” his Jewish religion from Christianity when he sings in churches. However, he recalled a time when a church leader asked him to read prayers outside of the rehearsed song.
“As much as I’m not religiously Jewish, that was the line for me,” Orbach said. “I said to them in my interview that I am Jewish.”
Ben-Meir said she never “considered myself to be Christian” while singing in churches.
“It’s a job,” Ben-Meir said. “I always felt that what I was doing when I was singing was bringing joy to the congregants themselves. That, to me, is a form of service, and I don’t necessarily ascribe religiousness to the service.”
Gordon, who is also an actor and teaches acting classes, said that when he performs Christian worship songs as a Jew, it’s similar to when he “checks his ethics at the door when playing a misogynist in an opera.”
“I check my personal feelings aside,” Gordon said. “That’s what I’m paid to do. I just take on the character and the intention of the text, and I’m always glad when an audience is with me, and I’m able to affect them. I don’t really care how.”
He added that there are times when he’d prefer to sing other songs and play other characters that don’t “support the structure of the church.”
“We all have to make compromises as artists,” Gordon said.
Horowitz said that there are plenty of positive experiences involved with singing in the church, and looks forward to taking part in her professional Christmas carol trio, The Jewel Tones, that gets consistent work throughout the holidays.
“Most of the time, it’s really nice,” Horowitz said. “I feel like I’m helping them practice their religion, and there is something beautiful in that. I’m helping them get closer to God.”
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The post ‘Mercenaries for Jesus’: Christmas is a busy time for Jews who sing in churches appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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A Historic Moment, and the Covenant Ahead
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
Over the last few weeks, something truly historic happened in Israel, and many may have missed it.
It had nothing to do with Iran or coalition politics. Instead, it touched the heart of the most sacred contract the Jewish state makes with its citizens: how it treats the families of those who gave their lives for its existence.
The Knesset has passed a series of long overdue legislative amendments that together mark the most significant expansion of support for bereaved IDF families in decades.
One of these reforms ends a painful injustice toward IDF widows and widowers. Survivor pensions will no longer be revoked upon remarriage or reduced through arbitrary caps and exclusions that punished bereaved spouses for trying to rebuild their lives.
The financial impact will be significant, and for many families, life changing. But the moral statement is even greater. Israel has affirmed that love, partnership, and hope should never come at the cost of security for those left behind.
To grasp the weight of this moment, we must look back more than fifty years, to the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War. Thousands of young widows navigated loss in a traumatized nation.
The widow of a fallen soldier was treated with reverence. The actual widow was not.
Many were discouraged, implicitly and explicitly, from remarrying or moving forward. Too often, widows were forced to choose between emotional healing and economic survival.
That injustice helped give rise to the IDF Widows and Orphans Organization, created to ensure that bereaved families would not be forgotten once war faded from public view.
Today, Israel faces such a moment again. Since October 7, more than 900 service members have been killed, leaving over 350 new widows and nearly 900 children, 250 of them under the age of five.
This new legislative package represents a break from the past. It signals that Israel will not ask this generation to carry grief quietly, or to sacrifice a second time in order to survive.
As if this were not historic enough, a second legislative reform passed alongside it is even more financially significant than the remarriage provision alone. This legislation expands not only moral recognition, but the actual material support that bereaved families will receive for decades. Adult orphans are formally recognized for the first time well into adulthood, unlocking monthly payments across age brackets that were previously invisible in law. Widows receive compensation reflecting real loss of earning capacity rather than symbolic recognition. Housing grants are expanded and decoupled from outdated marital conditions. Education, rehabilitation, fertility treatment, childcare, and emotional support are addressed as integrated needs rather than fragmented entitlements.
This is not incremental policy tinkering. It is a billion-shekel commitment that will translate into far more direct aid, far more stability, and far more dignity for thousands of families whose lives were irreversibly altered in service of the country. It corrects injustices that accumulated quietly over generations, often borne by adult orphans who were expected to stand on their own simply because time had passed.
And yet, even as we recognize the significance of this moment, we must acknowledge what remains unfinished. Significant groups, including adult orphans from earlier wars, still stand outside formal frameworks of support. Their loss did not change. Only the calendar did.
History is not only made on battlefields or in war rooms. Sometimes it is made quietly, in committee hearings and plenary votes, when a nation decides what it owes to those who paid the highest price.
Last week, Israel made history, not only by passing laws, but by reaffirming its covenant with the families of the fallen. Now it must complete that covenant, until no widow, no widower, and no orphan is ever left behind.
The author is the Executive Director of IDF Widows and Orphans USA.
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UpScrolled: The New Social Media App for Haters and Antisemites
Henri Philipe Pétain meeting Nazi Germany Chancellor in Montoire, just months after signing an armistice agreement that surrendered more than half of France’s territory to the Nazis. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
There’s a new app on the market that’s promising users a social media experience like none other: a user experience that doesn’t include shadow bans, censorship, or deceptive algorithms. A social media app where you can feel free to say what you want without fear on a litany of topics.
So, naturally, it has become a cesspool of antisemitism, anti-Zionism, racism, and conspiracy theories.
This new app is called “UpScrolled” and became one of the top downloaded apps in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia in the last week of January 2026.
Let’s take an in-depth look at the origins of UpScrolled, what it claims to do, and its development since becoming one of the fastest-growing social media platforms of 2026.
What is UpScrolled?
UpScrolled is the brainchild of Palestinian-Jordanian-Australian developer Issam Hijazi, who has a background in working for top tech companies.
According to Hijazi, he had the idea to develop a new social media app after allegedly noticing that certain pro-Palestinian posts were being shadow-banned and censored on social media.
Two of UpScrolled’s key partners are Tech For Palestine and Watermelon Pictures, organizations that are at the forefront of crafting the pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel narrative online.
Tech For Palestine was one of the groups associated with the mass editing of Israel-related entries on Wikipedia, spreading misinformation and passing it off as established fact. Watermelon Pictures is a film production and distribution company that focuses on spreading Palestinian-related content online and in theaters. It has been involved in such films as The Voice of Hind Rajab, All That’s Left of You, and Palestine 36.
Oscar-nominated The Voice of Hind Rajab uses real audio from a child’s final pleas — raw, devastating truth.
But it dramatizes the rest, blurring fact and fiction, and leaving out context. Viewers stop watching a story, and believe they’re seeing the truth. Moral judgments are… pic.twitter.com/udzCbxy6vA
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) January 25, 2026
UpScrolled was launched in June 2025 but only really took off in January 2026, largely thanks to the acquisition of a majority stake in the TikTok video app by an American venture.
Some users became annoyed with TikTok due to lags and other issues that developed soon after the ownership change, while others alleged that the word “Epstein” was being erased from direct messages, alleging a possible censorship issue with the app’s new owners.
Anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian activists noted that one of TikTok’s new major stakeholders was Larry Ellison, a pro-Israel businessman, and claimed that he would clamp down on pro-Palestinian speech on the app.
The combination of technical issues, claims about censorship, and baseless allegations of TikTok silencing pro-Palestinian voices led to the rise of social media users downloading UpScrolled. Its rapid growth was a result of the pro-Palestinian nature of the app’s development as well as the attractiveness of what it claims to stand for: No censorship and no outside interests influencing what users see on the app.
All of the worst people you know are flocking to the new anti-American propaganda platform UpScrolled.
Odds it turns into a psychosis-inducing echo chamber for terror-supporting lunatics seem pretty high. https://t.co/xVfpTL2Nhb pic.twitter.com/B3XWQoTLnF
— Israel War Room (@IsraelWarRoom) January 26, 2026
What Issam Hijazi and fans of the new app claim sets UpScrolled apart from other social media platforms is no censorship, no shadow banning (users don’t see what you post), no billionaires dictating what you see, and no deceptive algorithms.
Sounds like a libertarian’s dream, where you can say the craziest things you want with no consequences on the platform.
Of course, there’s more than meets the eye. Behind the claim of “no censorship” lies a list of items that are not allowed on the app. This includes such no-brainers as child exploitation, violence, sexual content, and self-harm.
Even a “free speech” app needs some parameters in order not to turn into a den of darkness and illegality.
But here’s where things get interesting.
UpScrolled was created as a pro-Palestinian alternative to traditional social media platforms. Many of its most vocal supporters are pro-Palestinian activists who see the app as a means of airing their anti-Israel views, some of which are downright supportive of terror groups and anti-Israel violence.
What happens when the “free speech” app being touted by the anti-Israel online community as a grand marketplace for like-minded individuals has to face its own rules and regulations?
It’s one thing to claim that there are certain regulations on the site. It’s another thing to actually enforce them.
— UpScrolled (@realUpScrolled) January 29, 2026
UpScrolled’s Platforming of Hate
Given the app’s selling points, it is no wonder that in the one week that it has topped the charts for app downloads, UpScrolled has become a veritable free-for-all of anti-Israel and antisemitic posts.
Some of these posts celebrate Hamas and its slaughter of October 7, 2023, a direct contravention of the regulation that forbids support for violent and terrorist groups.
Other posts compare Israel to the Nazis, claim that Israel controls the United States government, and justify violence against Israelis.
It’s not only UpScrolled’s users that are anti-Israel and deny the Jewish State’s right to exist — the app, itself, refuses to let you identify your geographic location as Israel, only giving you the option of “Occupied territories of Palestine.”
Alongside the usual anti-Israel rhetoric that you can (unfortunately) find on most social media apps, UpScrolled has seen a deluge of antisemitic, racist, and neo-Nazi posts.
These include vile caricatures of Jewish people, posts celebrating Adolf Hitler, Holocaust denial, and posts blaming Jews and African-Americans for the ills of society.
Screenshot
While the app’s developers claim that they are intent on removing content that “clearly violates our guidelines,” it appears that they are in no rush to tackle the whirlwind of Hamas support and antisemitic content that has enveloped UpScrolled.
At the moment, UpScrolled is growing its user base. While it seems that mainstream organizations and personalities have yet to open accounts (aside from a few notable exceptions, such as a number of European sports teams), the usual suspects have fled there.
Currently, the usership of UpScrolled seems to be largely made up of anti-Israel activists, advocates for far-left politics, a smattering of normal social media users (foodies, travelogues, etc), and bots.
If more non-political users join the app, then perhaps the platform’s proliferating hate will be diluted. However, as it currently stands, UpScrolled has become a den of hatred and vulgarity. If it continues this way, it will ultimately have a limited user base, serving as an echo chamber for those who are okay with whitewashing Hamas, Nazi symbols, and blaming all of society’s problems on racial and religious minorities.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
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Tucker Carlson to interview Mike Huckabee, U.S. Ambassador to Israel
(JTA) — Right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson and Mike Huckabee, the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, said they will conduct an interview after Carlson published a video from the Middle East that included harsh criticism of Huckabee.
The planned sit-down, hashed out over social media, comes as Carlson has troubled the Jewish world and fractured the conservative movement by using his influential podcast to increasingly entertain antisemites and conspiracy theories about Israel. He has reserved his particular ire for “Christian Zionists,” of which Huckabee, a Baptist minister who aligns himself with the pro-Israel hard right, is a leading figurehead.
“Instead of talking ABOUT me, why don’t you come talk TO me?” the ambassador, and Carlson’s former Fox News colleague, wrote on X early Thursday in response to a Carlson video filmed in Israel and Jordan that purports to reveal how Israel treats Christians and declares that “Huckabee fails Jerusalem’s Christians.”
Huckabee added, “You seem to be generating a lot of heat about the Middle East. Why be afraid of the light?”
When Carlson agreed to an interview an hour later (“I’d love to”), Huckabee responded, “Look forward to the conversation[.]”
Huckabee, a key evangelical Trump ally and stalwart Israel backer, is reaching out to Carlson at a notable moment. Carlson has recently emerged both as the right’s harshest Israel critic and as the source of its larger divide over antisemitism, particularly since his friendly interview last fall with avowed white nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.
Many conservative leaders, including Sen. Ted Cruz (who’s faced harsh grilling from Carlson over his own support for Israel) and Orthodox Jewish pundit Ben Shapiro, have called on the GOP to distance itself from Carlson. Yet he maintains good relationships with President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, and has sway over right-wing powerbrokers such as the Heritage Foundation and Turning Point USA. He has also forged close ties with Qatar.
Carlson’s latest video, framed around the treatment of Christians in Israel, calls for American Christians — long a key pro-Israel constituency — to stop supporting Israel. He also accuses Huckabee of ignoring such concerns.
“Why not go ahead and talk to Christians and find out their side of the story?” Carlson muses. “Why aren’t American Christian leaders like Mike Huckabee or Ted Cruz, people who invoke the Christian Bible to justify what they’re doing, why haven’t they done this?”
Huckabee has in fact spoken out against what he says is persecution of Christians in Israel since his appointment.
Carlson then interviews the Anglican archbishop of Jerusalem, who suggests that Christian Zionism is “a trap” for Jews “because they’re all supposed to convert to Christianity or die.” Much of Carlson’s report focuses on the treatment of Palestinian Christians by Israelis, including settlers who have raided Christian villages in the occupied West Bank. He also mentions Israeli military strikes on Christian holy sites and a Christian hospital in Gaza. (Palestinian Christians remain a minority in the heavily Muslim territories, and the brunt of Israeli attacks have fallen on Muslim residents and sites.)
“It’s a story of Christians being oppressed in Jerusalem by a government that American Christians pay for,” Carlson says. His report is heavily sympathetic to Jordan, where he claims Christians live more freely than in Israel.
If the interview goes through, Huckabee would be the first sitting member of the Trump administration to appear on Carlson’s show since the controversy over his Fuentes interview. He has visited the White House multiple times so far this year.
The post Tucker Carlson to interview Mike Huckabee, U.S. Ambassador to Israel appeared first on The Forward.