He’s the Jewish Johnny Cash.
But instead of singing for a raucous crowd of inmates at Folsom Prison, as Cash famously did in 1968, Orthodox Jewish singer Yaakov Shwekey was the headline act for a group of about 60 non-inmates invited into a Manhattan jail to celebrate the bar mitzvah of a prisoner’s son last December.
The bar mitzvah boy — whose dad is former fugitive fraudster Tuvia Stern — “was happy” at the Dec. 30 event in the Tombs, Shwekey told The Post.
“[But] you could tell it was rough on the family with the father being in jail.”
A major macher in Jewish recording circles, the 31-year-old, Jerusalem-born Shwekey came out with his first album, “Shomati,” in 2001.
Last year, he kicked things up a notch with his eighth album, “Shwekey — Live in Caesaria.”
He said he did the unorthodox jailhouse gig at the Tombs — for free — after being asked by a friend of a friend of Stern’s.
Shwekey said he had never met Stern until the day he shook his hand in the lockup.
“I was asked to come and give my services, and I went. That’s why God gave me this gift,” said Shwekey yesterday at his home in Long Branch, NJ.
“I try to use my talent to uplift people.
“It didn’t really concern me, the situation. I was there for the family. I didn’t find it unusual.”
But unlike normal bar mitzvahs — that is, ones not held in jail — which are typically happy affairs, the party for Stern’s son began on a solemn note, according to Shwekey.
Guests in the Tombs’ visiting house were apparently feeling restrained by the grim surroundings.
So Shwekey and his band tried to lighten the mood with several upbeat songs, which he said got the crowd loosened up.
But he also trotted out one of his most famous numbers, “Racheim,” whose lyrics are a prayer asking God for mercy.
“It’s a sad song,” Shwekey said.
The crooner said he was surprised yesterday by the furor over news that a bar mitzvah was allowed in the downtown lockup as a favor to an inmate.
“We didn’t think we were doing anything wrong,” Shwekey said.
“I would never do something that was illegal or wrong. I just focus on the uplifting.”