The High Cost of Being Jewish

Wall Street Grill was ready to host a party of twenty-five. I drove up at 3:00 p.m. and grabbed an available parking spot right in front of the restaurant, a real luxury in the financial district of NYC. My job was to sing for a group of twelve teenage Israeli boys who had all lost their fathers on the front lines of the War in Gaza.

I started unloading my gear. Then I looked up at the sign: “Commercial Vehicles Only, 9 a.m.–6 p.m., Monday through Friday.”

But today is Presidents' Day, I thought to myself. Do the rules apply on a holiday? Alternate side parking was suspended, but what about commercial vehicles?

I called my brother-in-law, a knowledgeable Torah scholar and a wellspring of practical knowledge in all domains. We held a short Talmudic discourse on the topic of NYC municipal parking laws. We checked ChatGPT. We determined that Presidents' Day was a holiday but not a major holiday. Parking meters were in effect. I started saying I’d just leave my car and get the ticket. He quickly shut down my idea, saying my car would get booted. They don’t make it easy for drivers in NYC. The thought of a boot on my car was unpleasant. Plus, I had to get to a flight after the gig. So I unloaded my gear and drove around to the parking garage. Fifty dollars. Bill it to the host.

Inside the restaurant, I set up quickly. The guests started to arrive. Israeli boys—some seemed somber, others excited. This event was part of a ten-day trip that included stops in NYC, Orlando, Miami, and Washington.

“Washington?” I thumbed my nose at the nation’s capital to one of the counselors. He assured me the boys were very interested. They were going to meet with some high-ranking politicians.

“Trump?” I teased him. “JD? Elon?”

The counselor, a bearded American Chabad man of about twenty-two, didn’t give me a straight answer. Instead, in typical Chabad fashion, he suddenly remembered needing to call his contact in Washington. He whipped out his phone, let it ring, then put it down, saying the very important person on the other end “must be traveling.”

The event was sponsored by a well-known Orthodox Jewish philanthropist. At this point, he walked into the room, and everyone began to take their seats. Speaking in English, he told the boys that the purpose of this dinner was to send a clear message to the boys that American Jews are with them all the way and that we appreciate the sacrifices their families made on our behalf.

I was touched by this statement and used the moment to break the crowd into singing, “Hashem Yitbarach Tamid Ohev Oti.” The entire group—the boys, counselors, and the host and his friends—joined in enthusiastically, and I immediately knew we were in for a good time.

Appetizers were served: tacos, sushi, and poppers. The steak was on the way. The boys began to introduce themselves to the table. The theme was always the same—a typical Israeli kid, usually from a religious Zionist home, finds himself without a father, who died while fighting the Arabs in Gaza.

A particular story stood out. Benny Hershkowitz told us about his father, Yossi, a forty-four-year-old school principal who voluntarily reenlisted, saying he had a duty to fight and protect his people. On one mission in Gaza, a melody popped into his head to the famous words “Gam Ki Elech B’Geh Tzalmavet”—Even when I walk in the shadow of death, I am not afraid, for You are with me. Yossi returned home, and being a talented musician and violinist, he recorded his original composition with vocals contributed by his wife, small children, and friends. They filmed the recording sessions and turned them into a home music video. Yossi then returned to battle and shortly after was killed in an enemy explosion, making the ultimate sacrifice.

His son Benny told the story well. Holding up his phone speaker to my microphone, he asked us which version of the song we would like to hear: the family version or the cover by Avraham Fried? I immediately yelled out, “The family! And even though I wasn’t an official guest at the party, my yell worked, and he played the family version—Kol Isha and all. Aside from the sentimental value, I can say it’s actually a quality recording. The song opens with the sweet voice of Yossi’s daughter, soon joined by other family members, including Benny, his mother, and Yossi’s beautiful violin.

At this point, I’m crying. I sing at events for a living, and many of them are fundraisers for nonprofits. Often, an actual recipient of a charity shows up to speak, attempting to make an emotional appeal for why we should feel responsible to pay into the organization. In this case, however, I was the recipient of the kindness. These boys’ fathers died protecting my homeland, my safe haven from a world whose treatment of my people is at best spotty. I live in the comfort of the United States, fully engrossed in a life of freedom and pursuit of happiness, knowing that should anything go wrong here in the US, Israel will always be there to catch me. The men who died, died to protect my safe haven. They died leaving behind their children. And what have I done? Can I really ever repay that debt? What do I owe their children who are sitting right in front of me?

On my family chat, a question arises about whether a certain hired Hasidic singer would be willing to sing “Mi Sheberach L’Tzahal” at an upcoming wedding. I truly hope there won’t be any issue. If he does refuse, I hope they find someone else to sing it in his place instead of simply letting the idea go.

The relationship between ultra-Orthodox American Jews and Israel is complicated. There is a deep love of the land. There is some resentment against the secular government. When it comes to the treatment of the IDF, the reaction is mixed. There is no ambition to enlist. There are different levels of appreciation depending on who you ask. I personally know several families who flew from New York with young children, visiting Kibbutz Be’eri, the Nova festival grounds, and, more importantly, Israeli army bases to thank the soldiers and give them gifts.

None of this should be taken for granted. The parents of these children were raised in black-hat yeshivas where the topic of Zionism was completely ignored, aside from an occasional zealot high school Rebbi speaking against the state. Yet despite the lack of formal education, these very committed Jews actually feel a kinship to the entire Jewish nation living in Israel and understand better than most that the war in Gaza is a war against every Jew in the world.

They understand it better than Charedim in Israel, members of Satmar in New York, and washed-out, klezmer-loving American secular Jews who denounce Kanye but ignore Hamas’s Jewish baby coffin parade. All in all, a good percentage of American Orthodox Jews at least have their hearts in the right place when it comes to this war.

Yet, there is another pressing issue that the American Orthodox Jewish community is dealing with: the high cost of living. Tens of podcast episodes and articles are attempting to tackle this problem. People are struggling to keep up. Debt is rising. The projected number for a family’s cost of living keeps going up. Recently, I heard a friend in Monsey who is raising a family of four say he feels he needs to earn five hundred thousand dollars a year just to keep up with tuition, mortgage, and general expenses. There is a victim mentality. People say they have no choice but to pay twenty thousand dollars per child annually for private yeshiva tuition. When it comes to taking a family midwinter vacation to Orlando or inviting four hundred people to multiple children's weddings, people raise their hands, saying, “It’s just what it is, I’m not trying to live a lavish lifestyle, there’s nothing I can do!”

For a while, I was swayed by this argument. Being an Orthodox Jew is expensive, and these people are simply doing the best they can. For a while, I was even impressed with the willingness to talk about these issues. I was happy that Living L’Chaim was creating podcasts to teach the masses about financial literacy and investing. I, too, was troubled by this question. What can our beautiful, well meaning, community do, to better afford our fiscal obligations as good Jews?

But recently I’ve begun to think differently.

Let’s go for a second with the premise that God exists and the Torah is a divine document from Heaven given to Moshe and correctly interpreted throughout the ages by legendary Jewish scholars. After two thousand years of European exile, there comes a watershed event: the Holocaust, the total destruction of European Jewry.

Legendary rabbis make their way both to the United States and British-Palestine. In New York, in just a few years, we have Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, and Rabbi Aharon Kotler. I’m just naming these three because of the famous movements they created that are the core of American Jewish Orthodoxy today—namely, Satmar, the largest Chassidus; Lubavitch, the most famous and impactful Hasidic group on the rest of the world; and Lakewood, which started as a remote village for a couple of bnei Torah but grew to be the largest yeshiva with the largest community of Orthodox non-Hasidic Jews, on track to surpass Brooklyn.

All three of these leaders rejected the Zionist revolution in Israel, stating that Zionism is against Torah values and has no place in the life of a Torah Jew.

This was not always the stance in American Orthodoxy. For example, before the war, under the leadership of Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendelowitz, Yeshiva Torah Vodaath sang Hatikva. At that point in America, Judaism and Zionism were linked. But after the war, it changed. Modern Orthodox Jews continued to support the state. Ultra-Orthodox yeshiva curriculum barely mentioned it. The first time I heard Hatikva was from an amateur elderly Russian Jewish choir singing it for Mayor Bloomberg in Gracie Mansion.

I am twelve years old in school, and our menahel is filling in for an absent teacher. As a joke, one of my classmates, who I guess overheard the word Zionism from his older siblings, says, “Rebbi, can we talk about Zionism?”

The principal, not missing a beat, says, “What’s there to talk about?” Checkmate.

Beyond knowing the actual word, we are just a bunch of twelve-year-olds. We have no context. We can name Beis Shammai and Beis Hillel, but nobody has ever heard of Herzl or Ben Gurion. We can read Aramaic, but none of us can hold a conversational Hebrew. We all plan on learning for a year in Israel, in the Mir or Brisk, but no one would dare join a Hesder Yeshiva or enlist in the IDF. The gedolim won.

Fast forward almost twenty years, and I am singing at a bar mitzvah. The date is October 19th, 2023. It’s an upscale Monsey event. The boys are wearing black hats. Who do I see? My old menahel. He looks older. Gone is the stern look. His eyes look tired. I walk over to him and give him a big hug. He seems relieved to meet a former student who is happy to see him. He tells me he is the great-uncle of the bar mitzvah boy.

I ask him to join me at the kumzits. I pass him the mic, and he sings a heartfelt chorus of Sharei Shomayim while I strum my acoustic guitar enthusiastically. Then the bar mitzvah boy’s mother gives me the signal, and I start singing Mi Sheberach L’Tzahal, a prayer for the soldiers. Then, on cue, the mother is passing around tens of miniature Israeli flags to the boys. It’s a sea of black hats waving the Zionist flag. My menahel is standing next to me.

Is there still nothing to talk about?

Attitudes change over time, and that’s okay. The mid-century American Orthodox leaders had the rare opportunity to build a brand-new Jewish community. They did it the way they saw best. Clearly, Zionism was not part of the package. The State of Israel had the same opportunity. They also built a new world. A Jewish world without Torah observance. Two parallel worlds that seemingly can never meet aside from a few students of Rav Kook, who neither side takes seriously.

We can’t go back in time and change anyone’s choices, and perhaps there is no need. At the end of the day, even without Zionist literacy, without annual celebrations of Yom Ha’atzmaut, the majority of American Orthodox Jews intuitively feel a tremendous kinship and connection to the tragedies of October 7th, to the cruel murder of the Bibas children, and to the death of every Israeli soldier.

It takes a Neturei Karta level of brainwashing to completely divorce one’s Jewishness from the events in Israel. Put it this way: whatever anti-Zionist sentiments lay in our ranks, they are currently laying low. ’Tis not the season to recall various Zionist injustices committed against our religion. We hold off those memories for a different time.

One can attack religious Zionism if they’d like. One can point to the lack of certain stringencies in their halachic observance and weaponize it as proof that the ultra-Orthodox American Jew is better than a religious Zionist soldier. Or any soldier. But can anyone actually make that argument? Is there a Jew among us who can dare claim to be a better Jew than the above-mentioned Yossi Hershkowitz?

I am not saying to make Aliyah or to teach Zionism in yeshiva. But we are taught that as Jews, we need to follow the will of Hashem. And what is His will? Is it to take the opportunity that was historically denied to our ancestors and settle in our land? Is it to use all of our resources and energy to fight and protect our brothers and sisters in our land? Or is it to remain in the United States, with its message of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—which in turn translates to five-thousand-square-foot homes, mandatory midwinter trips to Florida, two car leases, five-hundred-person weddings, expensive tuition bills—all while claiming that we are simply following the will of Hashem and trying to be good Jews?

I believe there was a point when being a Jew in New York meant freedom from religious persecution and the best opportunity to live a good Jewish life. At some point, we will need to reevaluate if this is still the best option. In Israel, even secular Jews are marrying other Jews and building Jewish families. In the U.S., outside of Orthodoxy, the intermarriage rate is seventy percent. So if you are not a member of the Orthodox community, you are not serious about Jewish continuity.

Now we are being told that to remain an upstanding member of the Orthodox community, to afford the lifestyle it imposes, a family needs to earn three to five times the national average. This is how a good American Jew practices his Jewishness; he earns lots of money.

But after coming face to face with children of people who actually gave their lives for the Jewish people, I've lost some of my empathy for this American Jewish Money Project. Are we here to be good Jews, or are we here to make money? And if money is the goal, then why are we complaining about living costs?

Rest in peace, brave soldiers. Thank you for giving your life to protect our homeland. We appreciate it. Also, why does American Jewish life need to be so expensive?