What are the costs of Orthodox Judaism?

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:01][music] Welcome to the Times of Israel's the daily briefing. Today is Friday, May 29th, and I am your host, Gabriella Jacobs, here from our Jerusalem studio with real estate and diaspora affairs reporter, Zev Stub. Welcome, Zev.

[00:00:18]>> Hi, Gabriella. It's great to be here.

[00:00:20]>> Uh, today we're going to start off by speaking about the cost of living in Orthodox Jewish communities across the United States. We're going to talk about issues that arise from that and how it might relate to trends regarding immigration in that community. After that, we're going to move on to talk about broader immigration trends across the Jewish world. What are immigrants looking for when they are looking to buy a home in Israel and how is that affecting the Israeli real estate market? Finally, we're going to close off with a brief overview of the Macaby games that are expected to take place in Israel in July. All that and more after the break. [music] And we are back. So, Zeb, you have an article that recently came out on the financial difficulties [music] facing Orthodox Jewish Americans. What are the issues facing the community? Are they old? Are they new? Tell me about it. So the big story is that life for Orthodox Jews in the United States is really really expensive to the point where many people who are even making very respectable salaries just are struggling to make it. Um one person I spoke with told me that you know you kind of have to be among the top three to four% of earners in the United States just to be able to make it in the Orthodox community in New York. Most of those people are not among the top three to four% of the earners. Um, and there's there's big challenges. I spoke with uh people, you know, I spoke with one one woman who who said her household income was about $150,000 a year and uh they're barely they're barely scraping by.

[00:01:57]Another woman $400,000 a year was their household income and they were like kind of on kind of on the brink. Uh what's the story? A lot of it is is school tuition. Um school tuition is is is a major issue in the Orthodox community. I just want to explain a little bit about the importance of of you know of of schools.

[00:02:19]Um I [snorts] would say that getting a Jewish education that ensures Jewish continuity is of supreme importance uh to most many Orthodox Jews in you know uh around the world. I think I even saw a statistic that uh only you know only only d only single digits o of orthodox Jews in America would say that they would be willing to to compromise on it.

[00:02:44]So Jewish education is a very is a very places very high in the in values uh for for you know for that community >> and how much are Orthodox Jews paying yearly in tuition just to give us a sense.

[00:02:59]>> Yeah. So orthod, you know, a day school is is a private school. While while most Americans go to public schools, which are paid paid for by tax funding, uh private schools are, you know, are schools where the the parents are paying tuition and can easil easily be 20 to $30,000 a year or even more per student.

[00:03:17]So some of these parents I spoke with, you know, if you have three kids or four kids, your tuition might be $100,000 or more. Um and that's uh you know, that's that's a full salary already. Um, you know, I think the median household income in the United States is about $80,000. You know, that's for people who aren't paying school tuition. So, if you start off already, you know, with with these kinds of expenses on your on your horizon before you do anything, um, it's a it's a big game changer for people.

[00:03:47]Um, so people are really struggling.

[00:03:49]Tuition is the main is the main problem is the main challenge. And, uh, maybe we'll talk a little bit more about that in a in a bit. But uh other other challenges are you know there there's other things that are expensive co kosher food um you know uh the the holidays I saw that um that uh people in the Orthodox community are paying nearly double uh for in their in their food expenses uh compared to compared to the general population. Um then then there's holidays. You know there's holidays are often and you know you have often big meals. There's a lot of expenses that go on. Another issue is that a lot of what we're talking about are are people living on the east coast, you know, with the what's called the tri-state area around New York and New Jersey and uh Connecticut. These are uh expensive communities where the the cost of living in general is high and uh the combination of all these factors, you know, so you have a lot of these people living in communities where often, you know, homes cost a million dollars or more and you know, there is an element of, you know, social pressure as well and um all these different factors make it very difficult for a lot of people to to keep up. Can you explain a little bit more why it's so important for these communities to be centralized in these high-income areas?

[00:05:06]>> Yeah. Um, so I'll I'll give you some numbers. Um, there's about 700,000 Orthodox Jews in the United States based on uh some some numbers that I saw. I think about 80% of those uh live on the East Coast in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, uh Connecticut areas. These are this kind of the base of of for those kinds of communities. Um, and you know, their families are there, their communities are there, all the community infrastructure of schools and synagogues, they're all, you know, they're all there. And a lot of a lot of these people grew up in those neighborhoods. And so relocating um isn't easy for a lot of them. Re relocation is an issue we discuss uh I discussed with some people and also in the article. Um but uh for a lot of people it's a challenge that they're not willing to uh you know to make.

[00:06:00]>> Yeah, I totally get that. Um and I also remember from your article you wrote that the biggest expense is tuition, but you also mentioned this aspect I'd like to touch on on keeping up with the Joneses. How much is that affecting the situation?

[00:06:13]>> Right. That's a great question. So as I was speaking with some of the some of these uh some of these people from the community that was kind of always going on in my head. I'm trying to get a feel for how much of it is is is this, you know, a fixed cost that you can't get past and how much of it is that you need to maybe just be more responsible in changing your lifestyle. And I it's a big mix. Uh you know, there there are serious fixed costs that are necessary in in those communities. Um there's another factor that um you know the in the Orthodox community I think more than maybe some other communities people tend to congregate in the same area. So you'll have a town like let's say Tene where all the Jews live in one area all the Jews pray at the same synagogue all the Jews kind of attend the same schools. So that puts a lot of pressure of keeping up with the Joneses or I would say keeping up with the Cohens. Um and um so there's uh you know even if you know there's one there's one level we could talk about materialism and one and there's a different level perhaps of just social pressure that everybody struggles with right if everybody living around me is is you know living on one level and there's expectations this way I don't want to be the one to you know send you know not send my kids to camp or or whatever it is. So you know so there's there's a lot of that pressure as well. Um, so it it is a mix though in that sense, >> right? When I'm thinking about when you're saying schools, I understand that Orthodox Jewish schools are that's a value. Uh, when I when I hear you say camps and when I read camps, I I I I hear the social pressure, but it's it's interesting whether it's as much of a value or whether whether that's something we need to compromise on. I don't know if you have thoughts on it.

[00:07:59]>> Day camp is an interesting issue. I think in many many places around the world, kids don't go to summer camp during the summer. You play, you do whatever you do. And there seems to be like some kind of, you know, thing that's caught on in many Orthodox communities that you go to camp, even perhaps sleepover camp. Um, you know, part part of that is, you know, you know, continuing the education of values. you're going to a religious day camp or a religious camp where you know you're with other Jews and there's kosher food and you're you know learning Torah and other you know uh other Jewish values as you go. So there's some of that um you know uh you know and and there's also just a general thing that people have you know grown accustomed to doing.

[00:08:41]>> Yeah, these are big issues. Um what are people in the community doing about it?

[00:08:46]Are there any solutions in the works?

[00:08:48]>> So there are a number of different solutions. I'll say regarding tuition first of all uh most communities offer you know financial assistance um you know usually scholarships are available and you know different different forms of of help. Uh you know sometimes applying for that those scholarships can be very invasive. They ask a lot of questions about how many how many vacations does your family take every year and they you know they do they have a lot of invasive questions but there are off there are scholarships available. Um, more interesting are some new developments with uh with tax credits. There's there are some states where where families can get tax credits uh you know which uh you know towards tuition and and you know they can get vouchers to to help pay for that. And there's a very interesting new act that's going to come in in the coming year which will allow uh families to make donations to scholarship granting organizations which can help out with tuitions. So, so you as a family can donate up to $1,700 uh to one of these organizations and get the full tax credit back. So, you're effectively not not uh losing any money.

[00:09:54]And then by giving by paying money into these organizations, they can help um you know, subsidize uh education for others in the Jewish community. And the people I spoke with are really optimistic that this can be a gamecher uh for the entire community. So those are exciting things going on in the world of tuition. Another an interesting movement that I that we heard we talked about was a takana wedding. So we didn't talk about weddings. Weddings is another life cycle event that can be very expensive. You know some communities where people pay $100,000 for lavish weddings and uh that can that can break break families especially when young couples are just getting started off. So there's a new movement called uh takana weddings. Takana is is a Hebrew word for like a kind of a correction. And the idea is to uh correct you know something going wrong. These are w these are weddings that are cheaper because the organizers do them in bulk. So so if I go to a hall I can, you know, put my own together wedding together and it might cost $100,000 or whatever. Or I can say I want the Takana package. The Takana package might be okay. You get up to 250 guests. You can choose from one of these three bands. Here's your menu. uh you get the following flower package or whatever it is and and it costs the following and it might might be 50 to 75% less than than what a a wedding might cost otherwise. How does the savings work? Uh it's a bulk plan. Uh and the idea is that you know wedding bands for example that might otherwise you know get play three or four gigs a month are promised that you're going to play 20 gigs a month. So now instead of getting paid $10,000 per gig, you might get paid $2,000 a gig, but you're going to have, you know, many more of them. So that's the idea there. And that's a model that's actually really succeeded and and is really uh very popular, especially in uh more more uh Karedi circles. Uh so that's something that's also really interesting. I've heard about people coming even from outside of the uh the tri-state area uh in order to have their wedding in areas like Lakewood because it's cheaper to do it because of this Takana wedding. That's another uh package that I was really excited to hear about. Um the third thing that I wanted to mention about what are people doing is uh more education. there is a problem of a lack of basic financial understandings and you know especially young couples might need to learn about the basics of of of saving and balancing balancing your budgets and things like that. So the Orthodox Union has started a program called Living Smarter Jewish which is designed to provide free uh financial education uh to to individuals uh young young couples and anybody who wants it.

[00:12:40]I think they said they've uh already worked with 4,000 couples uh in the past 5 years or so. And they're always looking for more people uh because, you know, the beginning of, you know, the beginning of of balancing your family, you know, checkbook is uh is education.

[00:12:55]>> 100%. Um and these all seem like really great initiatives. Um I'm very curious how aliyah plays into any of this. Um is anyone making aliyah due to the possible lower cost of living? um is that something people are considering and is it even lower? So I actually a few pe you know some of the editors told me that as they were look as they were reading the article they said they were kind of screaming make aliyah make aliyah move to Israel um there are um you know regarding the issue of tuition um you know we in Israel uh we have religious tu we have religious education for free there's you know there's different educational systems and you know you can get a full Torah education in Israel for you know that's in the public school system so you know so that for some that's a major uh gamecher and you you know if if you can save suddenly $100,000 uh then that that's that can tip the scales in a major way. One woman I spoke with she kind of broke it down like this. She said there's a couple things that are a lot cheaper in Israel specifically education and and health care costs. Right. I mean right you know healthcare is a lot a lot cheaper in Israel. Uh there are there are also a number of things that are much more expensive in Israel. Homes is one. um you know, clothing, you know, there's many things that are are more expensive in Israel as well. And really, it comes down to every family's uh personal calculations. It may be that the more children you have, the more it makes sense to move to Israel from an econ economic standpoint. Meaning, in terms of the scale, once you're paying tuition beyond three kids, four kids, um and you know, things get really expensive. then that might be the point at which uh some people might say it just makes a lot more sense to move to Israel at that point.

[00:14:40]>> Yeah. So, on the topic of homes, uh do you want to give us a bit of a snapshot on what's going on with real estate and homes in Israel for OIM? What are they looking for and what does that situation look like right now?

[00:14:51]>> Yeah. So, before that, I want to maybe just take a step back and give maybe a Yeah. a little bit more more of an overview right now in the market.

[00:14:59]Israel's uh housing market has, you know, been been red hot red hot over the past two decades and things have been going, you know, prices have been climbing all the time. Right now, in the last year or so, the market has cooled somewhat. Uh partially because of the war and partially because prices have gotten really high. So, the domestic market has kind of cooled. I think the the latest numbers are that prices over the last year have fallen by 1.2%. which is not a lot, but there's a there's been a sort of a cooling in the in the local market. At the same time, the the uh market for immigrants has actually uh picked up a lot, especially since October 7th and the growth in anti-semitism. There seems to be a lot more interest in owning homes in Israel and not and and and with the intention to to live here. Uh, one real estate agent told me that whereas in the past many, you know, Americans who were looking for homes in Israel were looking for a vacation place, now they're often thinking about like a place to, you know, move and, you know, within a year or two years and to move here and to and thinking about a home that that matches the lifestyle that they have abroad. So, that's a trend that's kind of shifted.

[00:16:13]So, the mark the the market uh for among English-sp speakaking immigrants has picked up a lot. Uh now we're seeing some some pretty interesting trends.

[00:16:23]Actually there's been a huge rise in immigration in in recent years. I think uh over the past 10 years there's about 40,000 new uh new immigrants from North America. So that is changing communities and and that's that's shifting things around. New immigrants especially English-sp speakaking ones really like to be with with their own kind. You know people move into you know we talk about Anglo bubbles or you know communities of of English speakers. Um, and so, you know, so there's there's a lot of work being done to develop communities that are kind of built around and optimized around English-speaking communities. One of the most interesting trends that I've seen recently is the development of buildings, you know, or new projects around a communal rabbi. This is something new.

[00:17:10]Uh, and this is something maybe also specifically catering more to the Orthodox community in America. often the the synagogue is kind of like uh is your community. You know, in Israel it's not the same and often people in Israel go to the synagogue to pray and then go home. Whereas Americans often look to the synagogue to provide community.

[00:17:30]That's where their friends are. It's kind of like uh you know a hub that that that uh you know is kind of provides a unique uh sense of friendship. So there are a few movements to kind of bring that to Israel. I've seen a few projects uh advertising that you know that a specific rabbi is going to be the rabbi of this community. So there's there's projects in uh in Katamon uh Givatamos is another neighborhood neighborhood in Jerusalem among others where uh they're saying we're building around this rabbi and people are going to buy partially because they want to be in a community built around this rabbi. And so that's a really interesting phenomenon. Um you know that and you know obviously these buildings are being built to what we could call American standards. Um and uh so people are thinking in that direction. Now you could ask okay that's interesting. Is there is there a secular equivalent you know that's not built around rabbis? The answer seems to be no surprisingly. You know I think the the place that synagogue occupies is something unique. um you know there are you know there are schools and you can you know you can build around certain things but the specific that specific thing of building around a rabbi there's not really a secular equivalent in that sense. So that so that's an interesting thing. So there are some you know there are these these buildings that are kind of marketing to a specific niche and it seems like they're doing well. Um so that's uh that's one trend that I thought was really interesting. I spoke with a few other people about some other different things going on. Um I spoke with somebody from an organization called Mishkan Israel who wants to help create new communities from scratch. He he he described you know one example he had a group of like 20 secular families all like secular families with young kids and they said we want to build a community together like you know and you know from starting from the beginning starting from you know getting the land somewhere in Israel maybe in the north someplace where there's not nothing exists right now and building it and building a community everybody's designing their own houses and that they would kind of have their own community there together um so you know so they're kind of working on that now Um there's a there's a lot of you know disadvantages this you know you really start at the beginning you have many years to go there's a lot of infrastructure that needs to be built to to make this happen but [snorts] uh I I found that to be a really interesting concept and one that I would love to see you know get off the ground more in the coming years. I'll mention just one more thing about that.

[00:19:57]Um, another model that uh some people in Nephesh Benesh described to me was uh talks with municipalities about creating uh immigrant hubs that don't exist. They mentioned specifically Sterote in the south which you know we think of Sterote as you know getting hit by rockets from from Aza but Stero is a city that uh would love you know as it's trying to rebuild now postwar they would love to bring in an Anglo community and there so there were talks about you know the city giving subsidies and developing also like a proper infrastructure to have to create a neighborhood designed specifically for English speakers as well. So that's something that that's another interesting trend that I hope we'll hear more about as time goes on.

[00:20:40]>> Very cool. You know, it's interesting that you mention, you know, groups of people coming together to buy some land in the periphery and start their own communities there. I'll say as somebody coming from, I don't know, the young couple scene in the Jerusalem area. It's definitely something that we talk about all the time and I'm curious if it's an idea that's more relevant for for young people. I mean, it's cheaper. We've got time. Um, are you able to talk a little about that? Yeah, I mean for sure part of, you know, definitely part of the idea is is expenses. If you can, you know, buy the land yourselves and build build your home yourself and it's somewhere out in the periphery where land's a lot lot cheaper. You know, in theory, it could definitely be a money-saving option. You know, I think uh the idea of building your own community is, you know, maybe, you know, kind of this Zionist dream that many have had for for for for decades. I remember talking about it with my friends as well. Somebody said, you know, part of the the mission here, you know, this Mishkan Israel organization that I mentioned, it's it is a for-profit organization, but he talked about, you know, it's, you know, Zionism with a, you know, with a mission. You know, this the idea is also to bring people here and to build up the land as well. So, I thought that was really interesting.

[00:21:44]>> Yes. Thank you. This has all been fascinating. We're going to go to a quick break.

[00:21:49][music] >> And we are back. So, Zeb, you recently reported on uh the upcoming Makabia games that [music] are meant to take place in July. Could you tell us a bit about what those are and what we can expect?

[00:22:03]>> Yes. So, first of all, I I I'd like to stress that the Makabia Games are actually the second largest sports competition in the world after the Olympics. Just to give some numbers, I think the 2024 uh Olympics in Tokyo had about 11,000 competitors. the the most recent uh Makabia games uh had about 10,000 competitors. So in terms of the size of the competitions and the number of people participating, it's a massive project. I'm not I'm not going to start comparing uh the level of you know the level of competition between the Olympics and the Makabia games. But uh you know in terms of size, you know, it's designed to be something significant. So the Makabia games were were scheduled for last summer. They were going to take place last July, but after the attack on Iran in June, uh the games were cancelled. Uh at the time, I spoke with uh one of the heads of the the Makabia organization and he made a uh audacious, you know, goal. He said, you know, we're going to reschedule for next year and we want to be the largest games in the world, bigger than uh bigger than the Olympic Games. I think he imagined at the time that uh Israel would be done with its wars and uh >> big dreams.

[00:23:13]>> We Unfortunately, we are not in fact at that point. Um, so the the games are looking to be a little smaller than than than last time. Um, you know, I think we're talking about maybe 5,000 people or so scheduled to come. A few countries said they weren't going to send delegations. Uh, some of the sports, some of the individual sports uh have been cancelled, some of the smaller ones, but it's still going to be a big spectacle. You know, it'll be it should be a great event uh going on around the country. you know, countries are sending their their youths their youth uh you know, to compete in all kinds of games and it should be a lot of fun. um a message I would say say to my uh to to our listeners in Israel, you know, uh I was just speaking with uh some people about, you know, the the idea of attending the Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028 and they said tickets were hundreds of dollars per person and you know the city's going to be congested and the and you know there's a lot of uh you know talk about how how invasive those games are going to be for the public and how expensive they're going to be. The Makabia games in Israel are going to be free for everybody. There's going to be games all around the country from the north to the to the center to Jerusalem, I think to the south as well. Um, and it's going to be uh close to two weeks of of of sports every night. You know, I would suggest that that uh to everybody to go out there uh you know, find out where your local games are, support the support your uh support your countries and it's great fun and um you know, recommended >> super cool. All looking forward to it.

[00:24:46]Thank you so much, Sev.

[00:24:47]>> Okay, thank you.

[00:24:48]>> This has been the Times of Israel's daily briefing. Once again, I am your host and this episode was produced by Yetszkak Leay. If you have any questions about this episode or any other, please reach out to us at podcast at timesofisrael.com.

[00:25:03]Tune in tomorrow for another installment and have a wonderful day. [music]