When most people think about the cost of converting to Judaism, they picture the big-ticket items: classes, ritual items, maybe a fee for the beit din. But for many of us, the real sticker shock comes from somewhere else entirely — the constant trickle of small purchases that never seem to end.
Books, kitchen tools, holiday groceries, modest clothing, even the quiet pressure of community expectations… it all adds up until you feel like you’re drowning in receipts.
In this post (and video), I’m breaking down the real-world costs of Jewish conversion — the everyday expenses no one prepares you for — and how you can navigate them with dignity and a clear plan.
Special note that I include the costs for people who are parenting while converting!
Part 1: Why Is Converting to Judaism So Expensive? 💸 (And How to Save) | Conversion on a Budget Part 1
Part 3: Is Converting to Judaism More Expensive Than You Think? | Conversion on a Budget Part 3
Transcript below.
Transcript:
Nobody told me the most expensive part of Jewish conversion wouldn’t be the big bills.
It would be death by a thousand tiny receipts.
When you think about conversion costs, you probably picture classes, ritual items.
Maybe a fee to the rabbis for their time.
The reality is it’s the small things that add up: the stacks of books,
the wardrobe shifts,
the extra groceries before every holiday, the kosher meat and dairy,
even the unspoken community expectations.
Bit by bit, these costs add up until it feels overwhelming.
In this video, I’ll break them down step by step so you can plan ahead with confidence.
Hi, I’m Kochava. I’m a Jewish convert and I’ve been helping people convert to Judaism since 2010 at my blog, Building a Jewish Life.com.
I converted twice myself, first conservative, and then orthodox.
And I did it all while a broke student.
I know how overwhelming it can feel when the expenses start adding up, and how easily you can get sucked into buying way more than you need.
That’s why I created this three part series about converting to Judaism on a budget. This is part two. Part one is linked down below.
It covers the costs of conversion itself.
What’s fair versus what’s a red flag?
This video is your practical guide to saving money in the big categories.
Classes, books, ritual items, even your kitchen setup. It’s the stuff of Jewish conversion
and like the, the learning too.
Part three is gonna cover the costs that almost no one talks about.
Hidden fees, long-term expenses,
and the emotional labor that comes with the journey.
No matter your path- orthodox, conservative reform, or something else-
this series will help you move forward
with your eyes open and your dignity intact.
We will cover everything from books and classes to kitchen staples to wardrobe changes.
Even what it means to convert while raising kids.
Jewish conversion doesn’t come with an itemized receipt, but I made you one anyways.
Here are the main categories where costs can pile up. And how to keep them in check.
Learning about Judaism can feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to empty your wallet.
Every conversion journey begins with study, this is where a lot of people end up shelling out thousands.
The truth? You can learn a lot without spending a dime.
And when formal classes are involved, the price tags can vary by a lot. So shop around.
So let’s talk about what’s free, what’s worth paying for, and how to avoid drowning in Amazon boxes.
There are so many ways to learn without going broke.
First and foremost, your public library. You would be surprised how many random Jewish books you can find in a library system. And even if your library doesn’t carry it, they may have inter library loans, which is where they request a book from a different library system.
Sometimes they can come from really far away. I’ve gotten books from Kansas before and I live in New York. You would be surprised what a library can do. Sometimes there’s a fee for this service and sometimes it’s free, but the fee’s usually very minimal. Dollar or two.
And of course there’s YouTube and Rabbi Google. You should take everything you hear on the internet with a grain of salt. Including myself.
But it’s a great place to get you started.
Another good place is borrowing books.
Most Jewish books are like a read once and you keep for reference, so most people aren’t gonna be rereading their books. And they’re just sitting around. Just as always, make sure you take very good care of them and return them in extremely good condition.
Your synagogue, and the local JCC, or the Jewish Federation may have programs or classes you could take. That’s probably going to be the place where you take an intro to Judaism class and those tend to start in the fall. So right now, if you’re watching this, when this video drops, this is the time to be registering for Intro to Judaism classes because they won’t come again until next year in most places.
For an intro to Judaism class, i’ve seen charges anywhere from $180 to $850. Your mileage will vary and it’ll depend on how the class is structured. Maybe they have more meetings, maybe they have less meetings, maybe there are more resources. Every class is gonna be a little different,
and so the price may be too. This is a place where maybe you wanna shop around. There are intro to Judaism classes online,
but I would check with your rabbi first because they may want you to take one that they specifically believe in and approve of.
Many people get tutors mostly in the Orthodox space, but sometimes in other movements too. Some places have official tutor lists and set rates that everyone in the community has to charge, but most things are kind of just put together higgledy piggeldy.
You know a guy or your rabbi knows a guy, and you set up some private arrangement with that person. It feels like for the last 15 years that the rates for tutors that I have seen has stayed pretty steady at $50 an hour,
but your mileage may vary a lot here.
And remember that a tutor doesn’t have to be a formal tutor who does tutoring. This could be just a friend in the community or an acquaintance in the community and you say, “Hey, would you be willing to tutor me for $50 an hour?” A lot of people will say yes. And especially if it’s on a specific topic,
you may only need one or two tutoring sessions. Keep that idea in your back pocket in case you need it.
If you can’t get into a local class, don’t worry. There are online options.
There are different online classes available on all sorts of topics. This is kind of wild West right now. There’s a lot of different places offering them kind of scattered. So know what you’re paying for and make sure that it’s a reputable place. Ask what you’re gonna get for the fee you pay.
Even your local synagogues or JCCs or Jewish federations
might have live or recorded classes online.
Just remember that if you’re converting,
your sponsoring rabbi will usually want you in their program or something that they approve of.
So think of online courses as supplements or stepping stones.
Do I support you taking classes that your rabbi might not approve of? Yeah, probably. You can learn a lot from a lot of different people.
A rabbi who is trying really hard to control what you learn and who you learn it from is a red flag to me. I’ll link above to my video about rabbinic red flags.
Okay, now the fun part, books. I have met a lot of conversion candidates in my time, and the Jews are called the people of the book, but conversion candidates, you people love books, you love learning. That has been a pretty unfailing characteristic in everyone that I have met.
I get it. They’re so tempting.
I cannot tell you how many literal thousands of dollars I have spent on books that I have not read. They’re still here just collecting dust, and I have moved them from house to house, across the country, but they’re there for when I get to it.
Always check online for resources where you could get the same text for free. Safaria is a really good place to start.
S-E-F-A-R-I a.org.
Let me double check that it is actually.org. yes.org.
Going back to what I said up front, the library is your friend, and the reference librarians are really your friend. Those are the people who are gonna hook you up with inter library loans.
You wanna build your Jewish library right away and you want it to be complete. It’s like Pokemon. You gotta catch ’em all.
But you don’t need to buy everything new. There’s a robust secondhand market. Even on Amazon, you can buy used books. You can find some of them actually quite cheap from Goodwills across the country and other charity shops that sell their used books on Amazon.
And there are lots of other used book websites. Search around. See what you can find.
Trade books with other students and remember to think about borrowing books.
Oh, and apps. So many apps.
When I was converting, it was still kind of early in the apps world and there were no apps for the most part. There was like one or two, probably all from Rusty Brick, which is still a developer who makes Jewish apps today. Thank you, Rusty Brick.
You have been a great help over the years.
So maybe you want apps for like Hebrew. There are apps for different sources for shiurim, classes.
You can find them for having Shabbat times and holiday times. There are so many Jewish apps out there today, but the quality of them varies widely. Try out an app before you pay for it.
But only do that if it actually makes your life easier or more enjoyable.
You might also want a good habit tracking app. So for instance, if you’re working on saying the morning prayers regularly, you could use a habit tracking app to make sure that you’re doing that, if you’re not already using one in the rest of your life. I would also recommend trying a journaling app. Journaling this period of your life
will be something that would be really cool to revisit in the future. I really wish I had done that myself. Some people like to do that physically. I am not one of them. So personally, I have really been enjoying a new app for journaling called 📍 Rosebud. It’s AI assisted journaling where the AI kind of responds to what you’ve written and pokes you a little bit to get you to go a little bit deeper, to maybe look at yourself a little deeper.
And I really enjoy it. I’ve been using it for two months every single day, and I am A DHD. I do not use things every day consistently, but that app I do. While we’re here, 📍 my plug for a habit tracking app would be Finch. I love Finch. It’s a self-care app and you take care of a little “bird.”
It’s really fun and highly recommend. I’m not getting paid by either of these companies. I just really enjoy them.
Now, especially if you’re in the conversion process or otherwise working with a rabbi, you should really be keeping track of all this stuff you’re doing and learning. People will tell you to like make a list of the books you’ve read, but that’s a really incomplete picture of your Jewish life.
If you join my mailing list, I have a Jewish Experience Tracker. It’s free, and it’s just a way for you to track all the parts of your Jewish life, kosher restaurants you go to, museum exhibits you see, movies you’ve watched, relationships you’re building, as well as the books.
So it’s a simple thing. If you’d like something like that, just go to Building a Jewish Life.com and sign up for the mailing list, and then you’ll get access to the full Resource Library, which has a ton of guides in it, all free.
Okay. So that’s the learning. Books, classes, online resources, but studying is only half the picture. At some point, you’re also gonna want the physical pieces of Jewish life. That’s where Judaica and ritual items come in. And the good news is you don’t have to spend a fortune.
You don’t need a fancy Judaica setup to start living a Jewish life.
Begin with what you have or what you can thrift, DIY, or borrow.
A lot of people are willing to pass down items.
You’d be really surprised what you can rig together from a thrift shop. You don’t even need Judaica specifically. For instance, your candlesticks can be any candlesticks you want. They don’t need to have a star of David on them to make them Shabbat candlesticks. Most people have just regular candlesticks.
Some things are harder to thrift and are more likely to be bought new, or maybe you can get them secondhand from someone else,
and these things are usually not cheap. The first thing that comes to mind for me is mezuzahs, the little case that has a scroll inside of it that’s on the doorframes of doors. So first off, you need a lot of them in your house. It’s on basically every door in your house.
If you’ve seen my Amazon Prime Day video,
you know that there are fake mezuzahs floating around on Amazon and other online sources
primarily from Messianic and other Christian sellers.
So only buy kosher Mezuzah scrolls from trusted Jewish sellers,
and you can still buy them online- from places like Eichler’s. Remember that you’ll likely receive some gifts of ritual items after your conversion. It’s the kind of gift people like to give after a conversion.
So skip the $200 Mezuzah case unless it’s incredibly meaningful to you in some way.
Your rabbi will tell you when it’s time to buy a tallit or tefillin, and usually that’s not until the end of your conversion to be worn after the conversion is complete.
But in general, sacred doesn’t mean expensive. It means intentional.
Now let’s talk about keeping kosher.
Keeping kosher doesn’t have to mean going broke or doubling or tripling your kitchen items overnight.
Much like a Jewish library, a kosher kitchen is not built in a day,
and it definitely isn’t built on a single paycheck.
So let’s talk about affordable ways to start keeping kosher.
So you think kosher meat’s expensive?
You’re right.
And if you want glatt kosher meat or Cholov Yisrael dairy, it’s gonna be even more expensive.
People don’t like hearing this, but really,
one of the simplest ways to cut costs, and is to eat either vegetarian or no dairy.
This simplifies the kosher learning curve because you’re only having to deal with one or two categories,
but it also cuts down on the number of kitchen items you’re gonna need.
I discovered this hack because I am not great in the kitchen. Or at least I wasn’t in the past, and I fell into a routine where I only ate meat out in restaurants. It was cheaper,
and it was simpler for kosher reasons and cooking reasons.
Speaking of which, yes, you might need multiples of certain kitchen items:
cutting boards, knives, pots and pans,
silverware, spatulas,
even sponges.
Kosher kitchens separate out meat, dairy, and pareve, which basically just means neutral, neither meat nor dairy.
So some but not all items may have to be purchased in triplicate. One of the ways to make this easier is to color code your purchases. Blue for dairy, red for meat. Some other color for pareve. It’s pretty common. There are also specialty labels made that you can stick on them. I have some linked down below.
I have had them on my kitchen items for 15 years and they are still going strong.
So here’s my tips. Build slowly. Label what you already own. And here if you’re converting it can be tricky because some things will have to be replaced after you convert.
So some things you will be using now but you will not be able to use after you’ve converted. So like that day of conversion, you need to have some kitchen items ready to go, but you can, you know, essentially play act kosher with what you have now. Like play acting isn’t the nicest word, but I don’t have another word for it.
So you can label what you’re already using so that you get into that habit of practicing how to keep these things separate.
Start small and expand your reach in the kitchen as your knowledge and experience grows. Just start with a few things. Maybe just start with your plates and your silverware. Maybe pots and pans. I didn’t get new pots and pans. I just took the pots and pans I had and I divided them into half of them for meat and half of them for dairy, and one or two for pareve.
All this said, talk to your rabbi before you invest in replacements. ‘ cause like I said, some of them may need to be replaced after you convert, so you don’t wanna have replaced them while you were working through the conversion. Ask me how I know.
But others might be totally fine to replace now. Don’t guess.
Ask.
And remember, mistakes can and will happen in your kitchen.
Everyone has a “whoops, I used the dairy knife on the chicken” moment.
It’s part of learning and part of living real life.
It’s not a reason to panic or overspend.
Always ask your rabbi.
You would be shocked what doesn’t ruin something. So always ask.
So food aren’t the only daily shifts that people might experience during a Jewish conversion.
Your closet might be next.
This is mostly an orthodox thing. But there are some clothing items that apply across the board.
So for women, you might be having more skirts or higher neck lines. For men, it could mean adding a kippah, tallits, tzitzit, or suits for Shabbat.
Modest clothing, however your community defines It,
doesn’t have to mean maxing out your credit card or tossing every tank top you own.
You can shift how you dress without breaking the bank or throwing away your entire closet.
Before you panic order a dozen long skirts or 15 kippas, which are yarmulkes, take a breath.
Don’t make the mistake that so many of us did, including me.
I threw out half my closet, maybe more.
And later, I really regretted it. I wish I had kept certain pieces for sentimental reasons. And other pieces I just realized could have been worn with my more modest ways of dressing. I just didn’t know how to at the beginning, I had a very fixed idea of what those clothing could do.
You don’t have to wear them if they don’t work for you anymore,
but there’s no harm in keeping them until you figure out whether maybe you can use them or especially if they have sentimental value. Band T-shirts. I’m looking at you.
You can modify or layer nearly any piece of clothing.
There are undershirt “shells” worn under tops, cardigans over dresses, leggings under skirts.
You’d be surprised how much of your current wardrobe can work with just a few tweaks.
And yes, for women who are switching to skirts only, I also mean not throwing out your pants. You don’t know how you’re gonna feel in the future. Try it out, see how it goes. But it’s expensive to replace those pants if you decide in the future that maybe you do wanna wear pants sometimes. There are lots of Orthodox communities where women do wear pants.
So when you do wanna add new pieces, start with thrift shops.
Modest fashion is one of the few things you can find abundantly at thrift shops. A lot of it’s very vintage style, and thankfully vintage is back in these days.
You can even find head coverings, especially scarves.
Hit up Goodwill, consignment shops, or apps like Poshmark and Thread Up.
You can look for clothing swaps in your community or online. You can get a group of your friends together and host your own clothing swap.
Ask your local friends if they’re downsizing or if they have modest pieces to spare.
And try the clearance racks at mainstream stores.
You don’t have to shop at a Jewish boutique in order to dress modestly.
Men also may not be going shirtless anymore or you may wanna change the length of your shorts. Each community has its own ideas about what modest dressing means.
So on top of that, you’re gonna want tzitzit, the little fringes that are worn on an undershirt. You’ll want kippot, yarmulkes. You’ll want both everyday and nicer ones. Some people like themed ones, like for their favorite sports team.
And you’ll wanna make sure you have a couple of outfits for Shabbat and holidays.
In an increasing number of places, men are only wearing black and white. You show up with a yellow or pink shirt, you could have some issues. So know your community first.
Women, you can also run into this with some communities don’t wear the color red. But for women with colors, there’s a whole lot more leeway. Just because the majority of women in your community wear black, white, and navy blue usually doesn’t mean you have to.
So women who are exploring head coverings can start small.
Just a couple of scarves or hats is plenty. You do not need to start with a wig.
Even if that’s where you expect you will be one day. The learning curve is steep
If you do decide to wear head scarves, I really recommend the videos from Wrapunzel. Which it’s spelled like wrap, like W-R-A-Punzel. It’s a scarf company that is owned by an in real life friend of mine, and she’s fantastic and she has great tutorials on cool ways to style headscarves. I learned everything I know about tichels from her.
You can find them right here on YouTube.
So more broadly, remember that conversions take time. Your body could change. Your understanding of your community’s standards could change in one direction or the other.
Your style might shift. The styles of society might shift.
And your understanding of what modesty means to you will likely also shift.
You are not entering Project Runway: Modest Edition. There is no prize for the quickest transformation of your closet. Take your time, curate your wardrobe,
and take that budget seriously.
Kind of a side issue here. You can likewise see people do this with entertainment, throwing out everything they’ve got.
Music, movies, Spotify playlists. And later they often wish they hadn’t,
especially for things that carried memories or sentimental value.
Here’s the truth. You do not have to delete everything.
You can pause what you listen to, curate what feels good now,
and keep the rest for when or if it feels right again.
You don’t have to watch or listen if it doesn’t feel aligned with where your practice is right now,
but you also don’t need to erase the soundtrack of your life.
This will save you money in the long run because you’re not gonna replace what you wish you hadn’t thrown out, and you will also be very mad at yourself for it.
It’s really easy to feel pressured to toss your clothes, music, and videos
like you have to “prove” your commitment and purify your life, especially if you come from a Christian background where it was really common to like host Harry Potter book burnings, where people are getting rid of their secular music to prove their seriousness.
I fell into that trap to a lesser degree than some people, but I did still do things I regret,
and I know a lot of others who did too.
Fundamentally, one of the lessons of my YouTube channel is that I want you to understand that 📍 you don’t have to burn down your past in order to build a Jewish future.
Press pause on things that don’t feel right right now.
But don’t let community expectations or what you imagine community expectations are
it cause you to erase what’s meaningful to you.
A strong Jewish life is built on the foundation of your current life. If you tear your life down to the baseboards, you’re not gonna have a good foundation to build a new life on.
A strong Jewish life is built upon the foundation of who you already are and what you like and what you enjoy,
not a scorched earth version of your life.
You do not have to erase who you are to create who you are becoming. Those things should flow naturally into each other, and any rabbi who makes you feel that you do need to throw away everything in your life, that’s a red flag.
Well, now that we’ve covered the light stuff, let’s talk about converting with children.
Are you converting with kids, raising a family while becoming Jewish?
You are not the only one. It’s actually quite common. Yes, it’s complicated, but it’s completely doable.
But it does come with some extra logistics and costs.
The biggest question that should be on your mind
is do your sponsoring rabbi and Beit Din expect your child to attend a private Jewish day school?
It is important to ask that very early in the process, and yes, in most cases your children can attend a Jewish school before the conversion process is finished.
Usually it’s just a approval from the Beit Din.
In many Orthodox conversions, unless you have a good reason not to, Orthodox day schools are usually required,
or at least that’s what they’ll require you to agree to. But real life has its own ways of throwing you curve balls.
Within the 15 years I’ve been in the community, I’ve seen the pendulum starting to swing back where people are accepting the idea of, “yeah, some kids need to go to public school.” There’s still a lot of social pressure there in the Orthodox community. But it’s not what it was 15 years ago, and I think homeschooling during Covid really helped fix a lot of that.
Saying that as I became a homeschooler and am now sending to a public school. I agreed to send to an Orthodox Day school. That is not what has currently been given to me. Do I worry about someone trying to use that against me in my conversion? Sure, it’s possible. I mean, they’d be a jerk, but it’s, that’s the sort of question that kind of just lingers over your head for the rest of your life.
Isn’t that fun?
I know I seem really like calm and chill on these videos, but really, the fuel of this channel is rage.
Got a little more than you expected in this video, didn’t you?
But it isn’t just the Orthodox. During my conservative conversion, I was expected and I signed a piece of paper saying that I would give my children a Jewish education. And it was explained to me that ideally that would mean a Jewish school, but it would at least mean Hebrew school on the weekends, that sort of thing
that is more common. So it’s not only the Orthodox where you might get a hard sell for the Jewish school system.
That doesn’t mean you need to pay out a full Yeshiva tuition on day one.
Financial aid exists, scholarships exist. Ask about them. And it may not be that you are supposed to put your kid in the school right now, maybe only later down the road.
But beyond school, there are other costs to keep in mind. You’ll probably want Jewish books and toys.
As I said, I think in the last video, really look up PJ Library. Along with all these other things I’ve mentioned in this video, I’ll put the links down below in the description. PJ Library gives you free Jewish books every month.
You may need to transform your kids’ closet
just as you changed your own to meet community standards.
You’re gonna need Shabbat and holiday clothing for those kids who just keep on growing. All the time. Can you tell that we’re between sizes right now?
You may need to pay for lifecycle events like a bris
or a bar or bat mitzvah.
Also, this community is so into summer camp. I didn’t go to summer camp as a child and I didn’t know anyone else who went to summer camp as a kid. It’s really common in the Jewish world, I have to say. We had our first year of camp this year. Cannot recommend it enough. It was fantastic.
Highly recommend Jewish camp, especially if you’re not able to put your kid in a Jewish school.
Youth groups, teen programs also exist.
But you’re also gonna wanna think ahead for long-term expectations for your kids.
You don’t have to have it all figured out while you’re still in the conversion process,
but being aware of the likely asks down the road can help you prepare for them and save for them.
I want you to be able to plan rather than react.
Case in point, weddings are no joke in the Jewish community.
They’re one of the most fun parties you will ever go to, but they’re huge. Several hundred guests is not unusual at a Jewish wedding.
The people around me are saving for their children’s weddings when their kids are five and six. At least in my specific community, they’re putting away for both a wedding fund and a college fund. In stricter communities, you might find people only putting away for a wedding fund, but yeah, those wedding funds exist for children.
Never occurred to me that such a thing would exist.
What if your kids are not converting with you? That’s also quite common, especially if you have custody issues.
My background happens to be in family law,
so that’s a whole other conversation, but it will cut out some of these costs for you.
So that’s the breakdown. Are you depressed yet? I am.
So while these costs are really affecting you as a conversion candidate, please know that it’s not just you. All of us, to some degree or another are facing these same costs and figuring out how we’re gonna deal with them. You are not alone.
In part three of this video series, we’re gonna dig deeper into more of
the hidden and long-term costs that no one prepares you for. We’ve done a little bit of that here with like summer camp and weddings,
but believe me, there’s more.
Don’t forget to subscribe so that you get notified when the third video drops.
And don’t forget to check out my free Resource Library at Building a Jewish Life.com. Just join the mailing list in the little sidebar on the right, and you’ll get access to a lot of resources that could be helpful to you, like the Jewish Experience Tracker we mentioned before, but also the Rabbi Meeting Prep Sheet, and antisemitism guide.
Lots of other guides in there. And if you’re looking for more support and more step-by-step guidance, there’s my membership Bayit Builders. It only opens three times a year so that we can spend the rest of the time focusing on the members inside.
So if that sounds interesting to you, again, check out Building a Jewish Life.com and you can get all the details.
