(JTA) Over the course of his career, Cantor Philip Sherman, 62, who is a mohel (in fact, he was featured as one of “America’s Top Mohels” in a 2014 JTA article) has performed over 20,000 circumcisions. But in between performing multiple circumcisions a day and serving as associate cantor at Congregation Shearith Israel in New York – also known as the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue – he has another gig: actor. Most recently, the Orthodox cantor, who lives in White Plains, New York, appeared in the Netflix hit series “Orange is the New Black,” about a women’s prison. He played a judge presiding over a trial involving one of the prisoners – Sherman says it was his favorite to date. “The really amazing thing about that is that it’s a real part in a real show, where I’m not playing a rabbi or cantor or some Jewish guy,” he told JTA. Sherman has appeared in about 15 other roles in commercials, TV series and movies, playing a religious Jew in most of them. His “Orange” scene lasts about a minute and a half. He later received a call asking him to come back to the series in a recurring role, but he was not able to make the filming date because he was traveling in Israel at the time.

Sherman’s acting career launched by chance in 1987, when the Philip Morris tobacco company decided to feature a shot of Shearith Israel in a commercial celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Bill of Rights. Sherman mentioned to the producers that the music they had planned to feature in the background during that shot featured an Ashkenazi, not Sephardi, melody and therefore was not representative of the synagogue’s culture. They ended up asking him to record a more appropriate song to play during the shot. “A few months later, checks started to come in,” he said. “Apparently they put in my little voice, the thing that I did, and it was a 26-week nationwide commercial, which back then was like hitting the lottery.”

He then hired an agent who helped him land further roles. “Over the years it’s been a lot of fun,” Sherman said. “It’s just one thing that I get to do, and you get to meet all sorts of interesting people.”