When I started my Jewish journey, nobody told me that the biggest costs wouldn’t be the obvious ones. Sure, I expected to pay for books, classes, maybe some ritual items. But what blindsided me were the hidden costs—the unpaid time off for holidays, the career shifts, the synagogue memberships, even the emotional toll of burnout.
This isn’t about scaring you away from conversion or Jewish life. It’s about going in with your eyes open so you can plan, budget, and make intentional choices that honor both your soul and your bank account. Because while Jewish life is deeply meaningful, it also comes with very real costs—and it’s easier to carry them when you’re prepared.
In this post, I’ll walk you through some of the most common long-term expenses and challenges, along with strategies to make Jewish life sustainable, no matter your starting point.
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Transcript below.
Transcript:
Some of the biggest costs of Jewish life don’t show up right away, but they’re worth thinking about now, while you’re in the conversion process,
these costs don’t mean don’t do it.
None of this is meant to scare you. It’s more meant to ground you, help you walk into this journey with your eyes open.
Most of these costs aren’t conversion specific, but they are costs that your conversion will bring into your life. Usually pretty quickly.
Jewish life comes with real costs,
but it also comes with deep meaning, tradition, and community.
And you don’t have to go broke- or break yourself- to get there.
Hi, I’m Kochava. I’m a Jewish convert, and I have been helping people convert to Judaism since 2010 through my blog, Building a Jewish Life.com.
I converted twice while a broke student, first conservative, and then orthodox.
Learn from my mistakes and failures.
The discussion in this video is gonna be from more of a traditional slash orthodox standpoint, but there’s value for everyone in this video no matter what kind of Judaism you’re converting through.
First: Shabbat observance.
So. Shabbat’s beautiful.
It’s also 25 hours a week
when you can’t work, network, chase deadlines, side hustle, answer your boss’s email, answer your boss’s phone call.
Depending on your field,
keeping Shabbat might limit your job options
or require some creative negotiating. That happened to me. I originally studied theater in college, technical theater, behind the scenes stuff: scenic design, scenic painting, costuming, that sort of work.
You can’t get really far in the entertainment industry if you keep Shabbat.
So depending on that field,
being Sabbath observant, shomer Shabbat, could impact your income or your ability to advance.
This isn’t a reason to panic, but it is a reason to plan ahead.
Look at your current job or career path.
Especially if you’re in school and ask, will I be supported if I start observing Shabbat?
If not, what conversations or changes might be necessary over time?
Second: relocation costs.
Even if your Jewish conversion doesn’t require a move up front, it may eventually be your next step.
Whether it’s to live near the Beit Din, join a new community,
join a community with a single scene,
or raise Jewish kids with more support. Relocation costs can add up: first and last month’s rent, security deposits, new school fees or applications,
replacing stuff in your house.
You probably have a pretty good idea of all the costs that can come in when you need to move, especially if it’s a significant distance. if relocation is in your future, try to save up gradually.
A little cushion goes a long way when opportunities or requirements arise.
Jewish holidays.
Think starting to observe Shabbat is a big shift for your employer to understand?
Jewish holidays don’t just take planning. They take a lot of time off work, and that adds up fast. Two days for Rosh Hashanah. One day for Yom Kippur. Four for Sukkot and Simchat Torah,
four for Pesach and two for Shavuot.
And that’s 13 days for just the biblical holidays.
You’re looking at around potentially 15 work days a year. So you might need to take unpaid leave, use paid time off, or adjust your workload.
I just made a video for how to talk to your employer about the days you need off for religious holidays, and it includes a script you can use word for word.
And your coworkers might not get it.
It might sound like you get an awful lot of days off work. And you get a lot more vacation time than they do. But if you’ve ever celebrated a Jewish holiday, you know it is not a vacation.
For freelancers and small business owners, these restrictions can hit awfully hard.
And while you do get better at planning around it over the years, it is something you’re gonna have to factor into your budget and your calendar.
This is the reason why so many people who are Orthodox work in orthodox spaces.
When your workplace is running on the Jewish calendar, your life gets so much easier. So many people use up all of their vacation days just on the Jewish holidays.
Of course, it all depends how the holidays fall out that year. How many of them are on workdays and how many of them are on the weekend.
Another factor for Shabbat is depending on where you live, you may need to leave at an earlier time on Fridays for sunset.
Usually people make up that time in the mornings,
but it’s one more thing you’ll have to negotiate.
Now the invisible costs of converting to Judaism.
No one warned me that converting to Judaism would be a part-time job
with no paycheck and constant performance reviews.
Even if you somehow find free resources, you’re still paying with your time, your energy, and your emotional bandwidth.
So if you’ve ever felt exhausted, second guessed yourself, or cried after a rabbi meeting,
you’re not being dramatic. You’re in the middle of a major life shift. And if you are crying after a rabbi meeting, your rabbi might be a jerk. I have a video about red flags and rabbis up here.
Remember, God wants you treated with dignity. You were made Betzelem Elokim.
So let’s talk about more of those invisible costs.
Decision fatigue, and emotional burnout. When you’re converting, you’re not just learning laws, you’re constantly asking, am I doing this right? Am I Jewish enough yet?
What did the rabbi’s raised eyebrow mean?
The mental soundtrack is exhausting.
And because the journey takes many months, even years, burnout is super real.
You probably started out so energized,
soaking up books and blessings,
but six months later you’re crying
because someone on Reddit said, you’re doing it wrong.
It’s not that you’re failing it’s that this is a long haul emotional process.
This is a huge shift in your life.
And most people don’t understand that until they are already really deep in it.
And another video I’ll link you to is the imposter syndrome in Jewish conversion video.
Burnout is your number one enemy in the conversion process, and most of us go through it at one point or another. And that burnout can affect the rest of your life. It can make it harder for you to go to work and earn that money that you need .
So let’s talk about time, because as we all know, time is money.
Think about how much unpaid labor you’re putting into your conversion. Time that you could spend earning money, having a second job,
or doing extra work to get recognized in your field, or just enjoying life.
There’s hours of reading and studying and journaling.
The time you’re attending services, classes, and events.
And during the week, attending services could affect your work schedule.
Making extra meals to accommodate Shabbat and Shabbat guests.
And I’m sure that there are many more that I’m forgetting right now.
All of that costs time and that time comes out of your potential work hours,
sleep schedule, or much needed rest. If you’re already stretched thin,
( Hello to the parents, caregivers and disabled folk). This can feel like a full-time job with no paycheck. In fact, you are paying them to let you work.
It’s okay to pace yourself
And it’s okay to say no to the extras
that will tip you into overwhelm.
You are not failing if you rest.
And yes, that means it’s okay to take a longer time to convert than you would like to.
I know no one really likes that option, but sometimes it’s really necessary and we should stop being so hard on ourselves when we have to slow it down.
Here’s another part that people might not warn you about. Even when things are going “well,”
you might feel pretty lonely.
Like you’re no longer fully part of your old world. But you’re also not fully accepted in your new world either.
Friends may not get it, family might resist it.
The Jewish community may not fully embrace you yet. You may not have made new friends yet.
That liminal space is a tender, vulnerable place.
It’s normal to feel grief while choosing joy. You can hold both of those feelings at the same time about the changes you’re making in your life.
It’s okay to feel lost while you’re finding yourself. You are not broken.
This is what transformation looks like from the inside. It is messy.
Therapy or coaching is not required, but it can be lifesaving.
If you have the resources, I would highly recommend having a therapist that can walk with you through the process of conversion because there is going to be so much that you’re gonna have to process and learn about your life and your family relationships and your friend relationships. Having an objective outside observer help you with that is worth its weight in gold.
You’ve got identity shifts, spiritual transformations,
and community issues,
and you don’t have to navigate that all alone.
Now we’ve got the long-term add-ons. Just when you think you’re done paying for your conversion surprise!
Let’s name some of the long-term costs of living a Jewish life so that you’re not caught off guard.
This is the stuff that sneaks up on you. You may not experience any of this for your first six months, maybe not even in your first year, but eventually at least some of these costs will start to show up.
There is no line item on your budget for “keeping up with the Steins,” but there probably should be
because your wallet is gonna feel it anyway.
Synagogue membership.
Once you’ve converted, most communities expect you to become a member of a synagogue. Which can easily run from a thousand to $2,000 for a family. Sometimes more.
Single and student rates are often lower, and usually you get a cheaper year for your first year of membership, but it is still a huge chunk of change. And it’s hard not to compare it to churches that just pass around the plate and somehow the lights still get turned on and the pastor still gets a paycheck.
But somehow we’ve gotta pay our rabbi. We’ve gotta keep the lights on, we’ve gotta pay for the programming. And memberships is how we do it. These are the real costs of running a religious community, especially one that is gonna be open seven days a week. Churches at least get to close the other days of the week.
At most, they might be open three days a week, you know, in regular mainstream American churches. I know there are exceptions to that rule.
But the membership fee of the synagogue isn’t the only fee there usually. You may also have an extra fee on top of the membership for security costs, which have only been going up in the last 10 years, and I’m seeing no end of that anywhere in the near future.
And also the building fund.
Sometimes building fund is raising money to build a new building. Sometimes the building fund is just paying for upkeep of the current building. It’s not cheap. It, at least in my experience, it is usually limited to a certain number of years when you first join.
But these are pretty common costs that you should ask about so that you are prepared for what costs you should expect to have after your conversion is over.
High holiday tickets. You’ve paid the synagogue a couple thousand dollars and you’re still expected to cough up more money for tickets to attend the holiest days of the year. Sounds super fair, right?
I get why this happens. It’s the largest fundraiser of the year for most synagogues, but boy does it grind my gears.
Your membership may include tickets. But in my experience it doesn’t. And tickets can be few hundred dollars up to over a thousand dollars for a family. Not cheap. For three days: the two days of Rosh Hashanah and the one day of Yom Kippur.
I do know that every community offers resources if you are financially unable to pay for that. They often offer reduced rates for students. But in my experience, asking for that help was miserable and shameful in far too many of the communities that I’ve lived in and that has continued to color my relationship with the High Holidays all the way to now.
I do not know why we can’t handle this system better and in a more respectful way in all of our communities. Hopefully your experience will be very different from mine. But at the end of the day, I don’t think any of us likes going with our hat in hand and saying, “I don’t have enough money for this.”
It’s not gonna be fun for anyone.
G-d-willing, you will have many life cycle moments in your life. Maybe you’ll get engaged, maybe you’ll get married. Maybe you’ll have children. Maybe your children will get married. There are so many things that can happen over a life that cost money. Bar/bat mitzvahs, bris, engagement party, wedding.
I mentioned in video number one of this series, weddings are wild in the Jewish community and can be several hundred people, so weddings are not cheap, and plus you’re catering it with kosher food on top of everything else.
These lifecycle events are a big place where “keeping up with the Steins” can come into play. Just because your neighbors use this catering company, maybe you should use it . These people invited you to their lifecycle event. Maybe you’re now obligated to invite them to yours. These are not easy questions.
It is very hard to do the bare minimum when the community is involved.
And now one category that actually is kind of specific to conversion candidates is you may have legal costs if you decide to change your name legally.
So you may need to make room in your budget for those legal costs.
So again, none of this is meant to scare you. I just don’t want you to be hit with surprises,
I vaguely knew that these things were a concern sort of. But I was young and I was naive, and I was kind of stupid with money. I got surprised by a lot of things that maybe I shouldn’t have. And I don’t want that to happen to you.
I want you to be able to budget, ask better questions,
and be able to make better plans because you were prepared.
Jewish life doesn’t have to wreck your finances, but it does help to plan ahead.
It’s not about a perfect budget. It is about having a plan that respects both your soul and your bank account.
Being intentional with your money is another form of kavana, a holy intention. Let’s walk through some of the things that might impact your Jewish budget.
If you don’t already have a category for Jewish stuff in your budget, you need one. You’re gonna need it for all those things we talked about in video one: books, classes, new kitchen stuff, all of the above.
You’re gonna wanna have line items in your budget for upcoming Jewish holidays. It’s probably better to just have a Jewish holiday budget in your budget, where you set aside a set amount every month, whether or not there’s a holiday. You’ll wanna consider travel new clothing.
Extra meals for guests, clothing for your kids, the normal extra expenses of a chag.
How do you wanna structure your Tzedakah, your charitable giving? That is a topic far beyond what we can discuss here, but it is an important topic that you need to take into consideration and work through in your budget.
Your food budget is probably gonna need to be higher, especially if you are eating kosher meat and kosher cheeses, and all the kitchen upgrades you might need.
You may wanna just make a line item for Jewish education for the books and classes that you wanna take.
So let’s talk about community expectations.
Jewish life comes with unspoken rules and sometimes unspoken expenses.
There is no shame in not knowing but there is pain in finding out too late.
Let’s have more intentional conversations about what expectations are, written and unwritten.
I mean, that’s literally how I founded my blog back in 2010. It was all about writing out the unwritten social rules that just kept me feeling like a fool.
Don’t guess at what’s “normal.”
Most of these people aren’t gatekeeping. They just do not know what it is like to be new or they have forgotten. Because fish do not see the water they swim in.
That is why your best resources for asking about community expectations are gonna be other converts and baalei teshuva, people who have become Jewish or religious later in life. Those are the people who are gonna have the best answers for you because they’ve done it before.
Definitely put a lot of effort into finding a mentor or good acquaintance that you can have on speed dial for weird questions.
Asking before you need it can save you from unexpected expenses and awkward surprises later on. Most people are happy to share.
Some final thoughts. Being broke doesn’t make you a bad Jew.
There are people who will make you feel like that is the case, but it’s not true.
Struggling financially does not make you unworthy.
And conversion is a spiritual transformation, not a financial transaction.
You are allowed to honor halakha and your budget.
You can take this one step at a time, find creative solutions,
And still build something deeply meaningful, beautiful, and deeply Jewish, and you don’t have to do it alone.
If you made it this far in the video, I assume you like real talk and real tools. And if that is the case, you should join my mailing list at Building a Jewish Life.com.
It’s full of free tools like the Jewish Experience Tracker, the Rabbi Meeting Prep Sheet, an antisemitism guide, and all sorts of tools that are totally free and to help you through the conversion journey or anyone who’s building a Jewish life from scratch.
If you need more support, I have a membership group called Bayit Builders, and you can find more about that at Building a Jewish Life.com too.
So I want you to answer down in the comments below:
what is your biggest cost related stress in conversion?
You deserve a Jewish life
that nourishes your soul and respects your reality. Let’s build it together.
