The High Holidays can be deeply meaningful. They can also get surprisingly expensive.
Synagogue tickets, holiday meals, time off work, travel, childcare, new clothes, donations, a machzor – suddenly Rosh Hashanah has developed quite the shopping list. But a meaningful High Holiday season doesn’t require buying everything you see other people doing.
In this video, we’re breaking down how to celebrate the High Holidays on a budget. We’ll look at which expenses may actually be necessary, where you can save money, what’s merely nice to have, and what you can skip entirely. Because especially when you’re new to Jewish life, the goal isn’t to recreate someone else’s decades-old holiday traditions overnight. Do what you can with the resources you have this year – next year can look completely different.
Find out more in the video or transcript below.
Make Your Jewish Holiday Planning Easier
Not sure how to turn everything you’re learning about a Jewish holiday into an actual plan?
The Essential Jewish Holiday Planning Guide walks you through the practical pieces – what you want to observe, what you need to learn, what you need to buy or prepare, and how to make the holiday work in your actual life.
You don’t need to do everything. You just need to decide what you’re doing this year.
Machzorim
I mention in the video below linking to Machzors, specialized prayerbooks for holidays. Here they are!
In traditional machzors, there’s basically two publishers in English: Artscroll (the traditional) and Koren (the newer).
Artscroll is what you’ll usually find in synagogues, but I find the Koren better laid out and easier to read (and a better translation). However, there’s something to be said for using a set that is the same as the set you’ll use in synagogue. I didn’t find Sephardi versions from either publisher, so please let me know if you find any! There is one Chabad machzor listed under Artscroll.
Machzorim Sets
Artscroll
- Rosh Hashana & Yom Kippur: https://amzn.to/4ngunkf
- 5 Vol. set: https://amzn.to/46Y994Q
- 5 Vol. set, compact/cheaper: https://amzn.to/4diYSCX
Koren
- Rosh Hashana & Yom Kippur: https://amzn.to/3Kgdck3
- 5 Vol. set, compact/cheaper: https://amzn.to/41xjDVG
- 5 Vol. set: https://amzn.to/48q5IFe
Children’s R”H & Yom Kippur: https://amzn.to/3W1Eqxv
Machzors/Prayerbooks for Rosh Hashanah (R”H)
Artscroll:
- R”H: https://amzn.to/4nNpKhy
- R”H Transliterated: https://amzn.to/46hHtaP
- R”H Interlinear: https://amzn.to/4ngPmTS
- R”H Sefard (Chabad): https://amzn.to/3Ky5HoG
Koren:
- R”H: https://amzn.to/4nMOkyV
- R”H, compact size/cheaper: https://amzn.to/46g8A6a
Machzors/Prayerbooks for Yom Kippur (Y”K)
Artscroll:
- Y”K: https://amzn.to/4nQoZUQ
- Y”K Interlinear: https://amzn.to/3IGPZXP
Koren:
- Y”K: https://amzn.to/3VyKT2S
- Y”K, compact size/cheaper: https://amzn.to/3IBRpD5
Transcript below.
Transcript:
The Jewish High Holidays are coming, and sometimes repentance isn’t cheap.
Well, the repentance itself is free, obviously. But depending on what you decide to do these High Holidays, you could spend a lot of money.
So let’s talk about how to do this on a budget.
Synagogue tickets, new clothes, big meal, lots of guests, donations, childcare, maybe you’re taking time off work. There are lots of costs that you could have.
So let’s separate what you actually need compared to what is just nice to have.
Hi, I’m Kochava. I’m a Jewish convert and I’ve been helping people convert to Judaism since 2010 through my blog, Building a Jewish Life dot com.
And if you want a guided plan for building the High Holidays for yourself, in my shop, I have the Essential Jewish Holiday Planning Guide.
It’s useful for every Jewish holiday, and these are certainly the Jewish holidays. In fact, their nickname is the Chagim. Chag means holiday, so the holidays: the Chagim.
So you’ll hear people saying things like, “Where are you spending the Chagim?”
Honestly, most of these costs are gonna be associated with Rosh Hashanah.
Yom Kippur is partially about ignoring your bodily needs. We don’t eat or drink We don’t wear leather shoes. We don’t wear lotions or other beautifying things. We don’t have sex.
So there’s not a lot of “stuff.”
Except for one exception, which we’ll talk about down below.
When you’re thinking about these costs, I want you to ask three questions.
What’s essential for my observance?
What would genuinely add something to it?
And what am I buying because I think I’m “supposed” to?
That last one is the kicker.
If you’re on social media, you’re seeing a lot of ideal circumstances going on from people who’ve been observing for probably decades. When this is new to you, it’s gonna look messy and put together, and some of it will be wrong.
But you know what? It makes for good stories later. You do the best you can with the resources you have at the time, and next year will take care of next year. It will probably look very different than it looks this year.
So don’t kill yourself over this. So many people burn themselves out over holidays, and it’s really just not necessary.
Going zero to 60 burns people out, and then they end up leaving Judaism altogether because it feels impossible. Building practices slowly and steadily is the key.
So let’s start at the beginning with the costs that are hard to change.
Lost income from taking time off work.
And if you need help figuring out how to tell your boss you need time off for Jewish holidays, I’m gonna link up here and down in the description below to my video about how to ask off.
Then there’s transportation.
One you might not think about is childcare.
You may or may not need childcare. Most families do without it. However, I do especially recommend it on Yom Kippur if you’re fasting.
The Yom Kippur fast is very long and very difficult for many people. Having some support caring for especially young children is a great help. It doesn’t even have to be a full babysitter, something like a mother’s helper where you have a preteen or a teen come over and play with them while you’re still home.
And then you can lay there on the couch and rest.
A couple of hours of help on Yom Kippur afternoon for under $50 is really worth it for a lot of people, especially those who have disabilities.
The other thing you can’t change a whole lot is travel. If you are traveling to a Jewish community, you can take all the normal travel hacks to make it more affordable, but it’s kinda gonna be what it is.
Next let’s talk about the meals.
Holiday meals, Yom Tov meals, don’t need to be big in order to be special.
When you’re new to this, just make them a little bit nicer than normal. That could be adding dessert, or adding a vase of flowers on the table, or a tablecloth, or inviting a guest or two, or just making your favorite recipe, even your favorite takeout.
It doesn’t have to be a five-course production that you would see on Instagram.
And another place you could spend a lot of money with a meal is Simanim. It translates as signs, but it is… How to describe this? Food analogies? There has to be a phrase for this in English.
But it’s like good luck wishing So for instance, most people know about apples and honey. You dip the apple into the honey and then you eat it. It’s amazing, by the way, if you haven’t done that before.
We make a blessing when we do that, that we should have a “sweet new year.”
But the apples and honey is not the only siman that you can use. There are lots of them, and there’s new ones being invented every year. Most of them are puns on Hebrew or Yiddish or whatever language.
So probably the second most common is a fish head, that “you should be the head and not the tail.”
Being a Southerner, I find it very interesting that black-eyed peas also stand for an increase. Though in merits rather than dollars, or at least that’s how I’ve heard it.
So if you’re on a budget, I’d do the apples and honey and maybe one other siman. You can find lots of lists online for something that you like.
But there are lots of people who only do apples and honey. You don’t have to do more simanim if you don’t want to.
Next, going to synagogue.
In case you haven’t already figured this out, synagogues usually require tickets to come to High Holiday services. For the grand majority of Jews, they come to synagogue once a year on the High Holidays. And synagogues are nonprofits, and they know that this is going to happen. So this is the biggest fundraiser of the year.
But it also has a practical side. It limits the number of people who can be in the sanctuary, because there are definitely many synagogues that would be too full and run out of seats. So synagogues also sell tickets to make sure that they have enough seats for everyone who wants to come.
And as a side note to that, in many synagogues, you may actually have an assigned seat, so you may need to look for a map that lists your name showing where you should sit.
These tickets are not cheap. There is immense sticker shock the first time you run into them because they are often multiple hundreds of dollars.
Usually I would say around 2 to $400 for a single person, usually about 5 to 7 for a family. But that’s just been my experience in the United States. There are synagogues who don’t charge at all. If that is you, I would encourage you to still make a donation to them. Because they’re still probably doing a fundraising drive right now.
So what if you can’t afford tickets?
Every synagogue has free and reduced price tickets. You just have to ask.
And no, asking is not fun. I have done it before. It was very humbling And in at least one case, the person doing that job made me feel worse about it because they were just not a very nice person. And that brings us to our number one rule here on this YouTube channel: all Jews and rabbis are human. They make mistakes, they are imperfect, and sometimes they’re jerks. So if you run into a jerk, please know that they’re just a jerk.
Most people are very nice.
It’s not a guarantee you’ll be approved for a reduced price or free ticket, but it’s always worth asking if you need it.
And some language you could use for that is “I’d really like to attend the services for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but the ticket price isn’t affordable for me. Are there reduced price options available?”
You don’t need to go into your whole story just in this email. If they want more information, they will ask you for it.
So don’t word vomit on them because you will be tempted to word vomit on them.
And if you’re converting, you probably are not a member of the synagogue yet. Because as a general rule in synagogues, non-Jews can’t be members. But if you are converting in the community, it’s very possible that you may still be able to use the “member price” for tickets. You should just talk to your rabbi about that to see if it’s possible.
Fourth, clothing.
It is a common Jewish custom to get new clothes for a Jewish holiday, and that custom is strongest for the High Holidays.
Also, on Yom Kippur, it’s very common for people to wear white. Do you need to go out and buy a bunch of new clothes? No. What you already own is fine.
And if you don’t own anything white, which I don’t, you don’t have to wear white I am clumsy. White clothing is just asking for it for me. So what I do instead often is I’ll have a white hair covering. Which I think I still have. I haven’t seen it in a while.
But if you do really want or need something, always try the thrift store first, consider borrowing from a friend, all the normal low-budget options.
Fifth, the machzor.
A machzor is a prayer book that is specific to a certain holiday. So for instance, there is a machzor for Rosh Hashanah and there is another machzor for Yom Kippur.
Do you need to buy them? In almost all cases, no.
If you are davening in a synagogue on these holidays, the synagogue will have copies of them.
The times when you may want a machzor of your own are when you are praying at home, like if you don’t live anywhere near a community.
Or if your native language is different than the community language where you live. Having a Machzor in your language with the instructions in your language is useful if you are not fluent in the local community language. Which comes up more than you would suspect, apparently.
I’ve been kind of surprised by that.
So there is the possibility of borrowing a machzor if you ask around.
There is also the possibility of used copies online.
And most full siddurs that have Shabbat and holidays or a specific “Shabbat and holidays” siddur should have all the parts you need. You’re just gonna have to flip around a lot. You’re gonna have to pay very close attention to the instructions.
It’s gonna be like the worst Choose Your Own Adventure book ever. Because when you mess up one of those pages, you are just lost. Ask me how I know.
If you do decide to buy a machzor, you can buy them individually. If you do have the funds available, it is cheaper to buy them as a set.
You can find links to machzorim down in the description below.
So the set includes five volumes: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Pesach (Passover), and Shavuot.
The set also comes in two sizes.
The cheaper version is going to be the pocket size, which is not very pocket size, but it is smaller than the full size. However, because they want the page numbers to be the same, the full size and the pocket size are paginated the same. Which means that the compact version has much smaller text.
If you’re getting older like myself, the pocket version may not be for you.
So if you want more details about the holiday and what might affect your budget, i’m gonna link here to my playlist for the High Holidays. It’s got several videos inside listing out the most common mitzvot for all of these holidays but also includes alternatives if you’re practicing at home and not in a synagogue this year. Shanah tovah. Have a good year!
