How much does it actually cost to convert to Judaism? You’re not paying to become Jewish, but conversion can come with plenty of expenses – some obvious, and some you probably haven’t thought about yet. In this video, we’re talking about the costs you may encounter along the way. We’ll also talk about which expenses can wait, where you may be able to save money, and the one cost that could dwarf everything else.
Want to actually crunch the numbers? Join my mailing list to get the FREE Conversion Costs Planner that goes along with this video and start building a budget for your own conversion.
Transcript below.
Transcript:
How much does it cost to actually convert to Judaism?
You might have heard some people saying that they had to pay for their conversions. And that’s a little true, but you’re not actually purchasing a conversion.
What you are purchasing is time and resources. You are paying people for their time tutoring you. You are paying for the books that you study. You are paying for the class that you take.
You may pay an honorarium, a “donation” to the rabbis of the Beit Din, the rabbinic court who approves the final conversion. But it’s in return for their time, not for the conversion. ‘ Cause remember, folks, we live in a capitalist society here.
People gotta eat. And resources have to be paid for somehow.
Hi, I’m Kochava. I’m a Jewish convert, and I’ve been helping people convert to Judaism since 2010 through my blog, BuildingaJewishLife.com
I actually have two conversions under my belt. I first did a conservative conversion, and then I did a stricter Orthodox conversion.
If you don’t wanna take notes during this video, if you just click the link and join my mailing list at the link down in the description below, I’ll send you a FREE Conversion Costs worksheet of all this information.
First and foremost, you are not buying your conversion.
Judaism does not seek out converts. In fact, it discourages converts.
You may have heard the myth that a rabbi has to reject you three times. I talked about it in a video that I’ll link up here and down below in the description.
So while that is a myth, the underlying idea is kinda true that they will try to discourage you. Have you heard about this thing called antisemitism?
And also, a Jewish life can be hard. The People of the Book have a lot of rules. Not all Jews follow all rules. But you’re also taking on an entire culture.
Judaism is a tribe, a people. So it is far more than learning some Torah and saying, “I believe in the Torah.” It’s a whole package deal.
So conversion isn’t a one-and-done thing like it is in Christianity or Islam where you can say one sentence and boom, you are now a member of that faith. Judaism is run more like a traditional tribe, where you have to be approved by the community to join it.
It’s a blessing and a curse. Sometimes that’s a good thing, sometimes that sucks.
And that is the overarching theme of our YouTube channel here, is that Judaism is made up of human beings. Rabbis are human beings. They make mistakes, and sometimes some of them are jerks. Try not to throw the baby out with the bathwater if you come across a jerk in your process.
Most people are very nice, and most Jews admire converts a great deal. But that’s also a pros and cons situation too, which I’ll link to my video up there and down below about whether converts are treated the same as born Jews.
So the first consideration for trying to figure out what the cost of your conversion might be is it depends on your denomination. In broad strokes, there are three major branches of Judaism: Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox.
There are subgroups between those things, especially in the Orthodox camp. There are many ways of being Orthodox.
But there’s also Reconstructionist and Renewal down around the Reform end. That trifecta: Reform, Renewal, and Reconstructionist, you’ll find lesser requirements for your conversion, which means less stuff and less stringent requirements.
So for instance, every legitimate Jewish conversion, no matter the movement, requires you to be involved with an in-person Jewish community. I’ll link up here and down below to my video about whether you can convert online. The answer is n- no, but you can do some aspects of a conversion online.
Every group will require in-person community involvement. Like I said, we’re a people.
So you might need to move to be near a Jewish community. On the liberal end of the spectrum, and including the Conservative movement, you can drive on Shabbat. So you could live a pretty far distance away from the synagogue so long as you were regularly involved.
But if you are Orthodox, Orthodox Jews don’t drive on Shabbat. They have to live within walking distance of an Orthodox synagogue. Having to move in an Orthodox conversion is a much more expensive task than in a Reform or Conservative conversion.
And honestly, in most cases, this is going to be the most expensive aspect of your conversion, unless you already happen to live at an acceptable distance from your Jewish community.
If that’s your case, you’re very lucky. There are many people out there who have to move to new countries in order to be able to join a Jewish community.
And another important thing to remember about these costs is that some of them are one-time costs that don’t have to be all made at once. But there are ongoing costs to being Jewish. Going forward, your cost of living will be somewhat higher. Again, the amount of that depends on which type of Judaism you’re converting into, and also where you live.
So the right question isn’t how much will my conversion cost? The conversion will bring costs into your life that will last the whole rest of your life. You can’t really put a end date cap number on a conversion.
And yes, sometimes some of these costs are waived. Like I said, we live in a capitalist society, but there are still kind people volunteering their time all over the place. But I wouldn’t go into a conversion assuming that you can find people to volunteer their time and effort with you.
The one exception to the time question is that as a general rule, you will not be required to pay for the time of your local community rabbi.
I won’t rule it out, but I have literally never had anyone tell me that they had to pay to have meetings with their rabbi about basic conversion things. Sometimes people took on weekly tutoring sessions with a rabbi, and they paid them for that time. But for, you know, a monthly update and the random question here and there, not a big deal. This is part of their job as the community rabbi.
So what’s the better question? ” What will building the Jewish life that I wanna live cost me?”
The most basic costs and the first costs you’re gonna come into are learning costs. We are not called People of the Book for nothing. And let me tell you, every convert that I’ve ever met is a book hoarder. Y’all have a problem. I have a problem. I mean, if you wanna call it a problem. I think it’s just fine.
Our eyes are bigger than our stomachs when it comes to books. We will buy way more books than we can read. The TBR pile will just keep getting bigger and bigger on your shelves. Get ready to invest in more bookshelves.
But you may also be expected to take an Intro to Judaism course. As a general rule, these are often run in local communities through the local synagogues or the JCC, the Jewish Community Center, or the Jewish Federation.
And they’re often a community class. There may be multiple synagogues working together to provide this course for the whole community.
They usually start at the beginning of the school year and go through until the spring. Once a week, usually about two hours a week.
And each class will focus on a specific topic.
There are online versions of this that start at different times of the year. And if you live in a big enough community, you might find in-person courses that start at different times of the year. But it is not uncommon to reach out to a local community in the spring and being told to hold off until the fall when the new course starts up. That’s very common.
If that’s your situation, you can keep learning and participating until that time.
But eventually, you’re also going to want to learn how to read Hebrew. You won’t need to learn how to understand Hebrew, but you will need to be able to physically read the words in a prayer book, and not even to a very fast pace. It’s quite a generous requirement.
If you have learning disabilities or other things that affect your ability to learn another language, that can be taken into account, but it’s fairly rare. Most people can learn to read prayers.
The most expensive cost you might find in here is that some people may hire a tutor or be required to hire a tutor. This is generally only in the Orthodox space. Some Batei Din, some religious courts, require weekly tutoring, and the Beit Din may set the price for the whole community or each tutor may set their own price. It depends on the community.
The most important thing to remember with books is you don’t have to buy them all at once. And you also don’t have to buy them new.
And you can even ask your library to buy these books. They won’t buy all of them, but they might buy some of them. Usually the process is to go to the Reference Desk and ask them about requesting a book to be bought.
You can also ask the Reference Desk about inter-library loan. Even if a book isn’t in your local library system, they may be able to request it from a different library system, and I’ve never seen the charge for that be more than a dollar. But in this economy, who knows? It’s still gonna be cheaper than buying it new, and probably cheaper than buying it used.
But for some libraries, like my system, inter-library loan is free. So I was able to get a book from Kansas for free. I have a really good library system.
I love it when my tax dollars work.
So as we said up above, geography is probably going to be your most expensive issue.
If you are in an Orthodox conversion, you will need to live within a mile of the synagogue you plan to attend. Even if you physically are healthy enough to make a two-mile walk, the Beit Din is generally not going to be okay with that. They want you within one mile. Because most people don’t go if it’s over a mile.
The problem is the rents and the housing prices get higher the closer you get to a synagogue ’cause we all have to be there. It’s a very unforgiving limit. And so that puts pressure on the housing market.
But also most Orthodox communities are gonna be in the suburbs and not have a lot of nearby apartment living. And full houses for rent can be a much smaller market.
So you could get moving costs, you could get higher rent or mortgage payments, higher buying prices.
You might need to change jobs.
You might need to change your commute or other transportation costs.
And as a general rule, you’re probably going to find that the Jewish neighborhood is a higher cost of living neighborhood.
The most expensive thing that you might buy during a Jewish conversion is not a ritual object. It’s an apartment.
Three, actually practicing Judaism.
Judaism is a very embodied religion. We have a lot of ritual that involves our bodies and our actions.
So on Chanukah, we light the menorah. On Sukkot, we eat and maybe even dwell in a sukkah, which is kind of a hut. If you’re not there yet, don’t get weirded out. It’s one of the best holidays. You will love it.
At Passover, we completely change our diet to take out any leavened grains. On Rosh Hashanah, we blow a shofar. You may not need to buy a shofar, though. That is something that you can usually get away with not owning one personally.
And of course, on Shabbat and holidays, you’re gonna be lighting candles, so you’ll want candlesticks that you love to light.
Only a few of these things require Jewish-specific stuff. But having Jewish-specific stuff can be really nice.
And over time, you will build up your own ritual item collection. Again, this isn’t a thing where you have to buy all at once. For one, all the holidays are spread throughout the year fairly evenly.
But also you have multiple years. You can get away with a basic something for year one or two, and then invest in a nicer piece in year three or four.
If you’re in a larger Jewish community, you might be able to find these things at thrift stores or antiques shops or estate sales.
The two most basic things that you need to buy relatively soon are a prayer book called the siddur and candlesticks, because we start every Shabbat each week and every holiday by lighting candles. I’ll put a link down in the description below to my article about how to choose the right prayerbook for your situation.
Four, if you’re going kosher, your food budget will change significantly, especially if you eat meat and dairy, which are the two most expensive categories of kosher food.
If you’re a vegetarian or a vegan, you can get away without a whole lot of changes to your food budget. And I’ll link up there and down below to my video about whether you can convert if you’re a vegetarian or vegan. The answer is yes, but it’s a little more complicated than that.
There isn’t just one way of keeping kosher. The gamut runs from people who don’t eat pork to those who hold by the very strictest Orthodox standards.
Even within Orthodoxy, there is a wide variety of how to interpret kosher rules.
The stricter you go, the more expensive things are going to be because they have to pay for more supervision. To make sure that it’s actually kosher.
Related to this, Shabbat and holiday food are a different category. Because if you’re doing a traditional Shabbat, you’re essentially making two to three Thanksgiving meals a week.
You don’t have to make meals that big or that many courses, but that is fairly standard in religious homes.
I am disabled. I do a very simple Shabbat spread each week.
Now there are other costs to Shabbat and holidays. Guests is a really popular category. You may have people staying at your home. You may have people coming over for meals. That adds to the costs. Having guests and being guests is very much a big part of Jewish culture.
But you also might miss work or even have to change your career or even change your workplace if they can’t accommodate Shabbat and holidays.
It’s pretty common for people to start the conversion process while working a job that requires them to work on Shabbat, and figuring out how to have that conversation with their boss is one of the earliest big decisions they have to make.
And it’s completely situation-dependent whether people end up changing jobs or not. But it’s pretty common.
Some people may need to change fields altogether. When I first got involved in Judaism, I was working in the theater.
I’m not an actress, despite being on a YouTube channel. I am a backstage person. One of my degrees is in scenic design. I paint and I use drills.
But I couldn’t do that anymore because all the shows are on Friday nights and Saturdays. I had to choose between continuing in my ideal c- career path or Judaism. And obviously, you see which one won.
Is the trade-off worth it? I think it was for me. I still love to go to theater shows, and I make my kids go to so many local plays. When they are older, I hope to try to volunteer in some aspect in the local community theater scene. I’m confident that something will be able to be worked out eventually.
It’s not what I expected, but it’s worked out for the good, which is what we all hope we’ll feel when we look back on our decisions from the future.
Now synagogue and community costs. Synagogue membership is not cheap. There is a sticker shock for people who are coming from the Christian Church, where pretty much all giving is voluntary. It’s pretty standard for membership for a year in a synagogue to be over $1,000, potentially several thousand dollars for a family.
But this is what makes the community work. The lights have to stay on. There has to be someone to answer the phones. In Orthodox cases and in many non-Orthodox cases, the synagogue is in use every day of the week, unlike a church, which can be rented out at other times, or they can turn the lights and the heat off the other days of the week.
Synagogues, not so much.
But while you’re converting, you’re not eligible to be a synagogue member as a general rule. That is often one of the big costs that you have immediately after you finish your conversion. And you will generally be expected to become a paying member of your community.
All communities will work with people who have financial difficulties. But it’s a case-by-case basis. And no, it is not fun to have to ask, but it is not uncommon to need to ask.
Especially since most people convert when they’re really young or they’re really old. Neither group is known for having a lot of disposable income.
And nowadays, there is a lot more fees that go into security and building protections.
Many of the classes are free at a synagogue.
Events are more likely to have prices because it’s usually for supplies that are needed for the event, or hiring someone to come in, like for a speech or a performance.
One thing that your membership fees do not include is tickets to the High Holiday services. I will link above and down below to my video about High Holiday tickets. The CliffsNotes is that most Jews only come to synagogue once a year, the High Holidays time, and it’s got two purposes.
One is being the biggest fundraiser of the year for the synagogue. Two is making sure that they have enough seats for everyone who wants to come. Because many synagogues have to rent larger spaces for the High Holiday services because so many people wanna come.
While you are converting, you would need to purchase High Holiday tickets. There is a possibility that maybe you could get a member rate, since you aren’t actually allowed to become a member yet. So that is something you could talk to with your rabbi about.
And also, like with synagogue fees, if these would be financially difficult for you to buy, please be in contact with them to ask if there are reduced price or free options available.
Now the costs that people associate with the conversion itself. We already talked a little bit about the Beit Din, the rabbinical court. Generally, you will pay some sort of money to or for each of the people who sit on the rabbinical court. It’s usually three rabbis.
It’s often phrased as a “donation” to the synagogue on their behalf or something like that, but really it’s an honorarium.
Second, if you have a penis, you need to have either a circumcision or a Hatafat Dam Brit. I will link up above and down below to my video about those ceremonies. And that video even includes estimated costs for it. The circumstances depend a lot on what kind of ceremony you need.
Third is the mikveh, which is a ritual bath, which is where the actual conversion itself happens. You go into the water a non-Jew, you come out of the water a Jew.
Normally, a mikvah is used at nighttime only. So for a conversion, they will usually be opening up the building and having someone come in special to oversee your conversion. And so this fee can be a nominal fee or it could be as high as like $180.
( 18 is a important number in Judaism and so we tend to price things in multiples of 18.)
And then there’s the costs of traveling to that final Beit Din and Mikveh ceremony.
There may be administrative costs involved. Like for instance, you may have an application fee when you first put in an application at the beginning of your conversion process. You may have an administrative fee for the paperwork that they’re going to create for you, which that is very valuable legal paperwork.
You should always keep multiple copies of it and make sure that you have copies backed up to the cloud, because these papers will prove that you are Jewish anytime you need to do that, which comes up. So don’t lose those papers. They’re very important.
This is a general list of what costs you might expect. Absolutely explicitly ask your sponsoring rabbi what expenses they expect you to have.
Now that you’ve learned about the costs, how do you actually contact a rabbi without ruining your chances? Watch this video next.
