Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

iTunes Classifies Jewish Music as Christian

It looks like iTunes must have been snoozing during Comparative Religions 101. The Jerusalem Post found that the world’s largest online music and video vendor doesn’t seem to know the difference between Jewish and Christian music. Or maybe it just doesn’t care.

The newspaper reported that it found most popular Jewish singers’ songs and albums were classified as “Christian and Gospel,” and that there was no separate category for Jewish music. Some Jewish songs were listed in the “World Music” section of the iTunes store.

Recordings by well-known Orthodox singers like Avraham Fried) and Mordechai Ben-David with words like “Yiddish,” “Jew,” “Shabbos,” and “Yom Tov” were classified as Christian. The same was reportedly the case with the late Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach’s “Am Yisrael Chai” song, Jewish children’s music, and some highly regarded cantorial tracks.

When the Post made Fried aware of the situation, the surprised singer definitely had something to say about it. He said it made no sense to categorize Jewish and Hasidic music as Christian. In trying to figure out a possible motive for this, he said, “I don’t understand where they are coming from and what the point is of doing this…I would hate to think this is an attempt to bury Jewish music under a Christian or Gospel label.”

Apple, on the other hand, had nothing to say about the matter.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.