There are no typical families that walk into a conversation about debt. Everyone is different.
Many of the US-Jewish families silently struggling are the ones you would never imagine. Dual-income, six-figure households, several children, day school tuition for multiple kids, a kosher house, full Shabbat tables, and much more.
These are people who are up-to-date on their mortgage. They show up to synagogue (shul). From the outside, they look fine. Inside, they are sinking. They are the new Jewish middle class.
Three structural expenses define the crisis Jewish families are facing. Tuition is the first; a family with three children in a yeshiva or day school can pay up to $25,000 a year per child. Housing is the second; homes within walking distance of shuls, schools, and eruvim (boundaries that allow Orthodox Jews to carry on shabbat) have become some of the most competitive real estate in the country.
Kosher food premiums are the third; a weekly grocery run that costs a non-kosher family $250 can cost an observant family $400 or more. A fourth force combines all three: the Jewish life-cycle itself. Weddings. Sheva brachos. Bar and bat mitzvahs. Summer camp. Yamim Tovim (holy days). None of these are optional in our community, and most arrive in compressed seasons.
The national picture has looked bleak for years when it comes to credit card debt. In the first quarter of this year, the percentage of credit card balances at least 90 days delinquent rose to 13.12%, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
That is the highest level in 15 years, the worst since the period following the 2008 financial crisis. Total American credit card balances now stand at $1.25 trillion.
Bruce McClary of the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, tracking the data, described what is happening as “a pattern of survival debt:” families using credit cards not to splurge, but to bridge the gap between what they earn and what their lives cost.
Jewish families are not exempt. The cost structure of frum (Orthodox) life means the pressure lands harder and the debt accumulates faster.
Among Jewish families, the picture is clear. In my work with Kosher Debt Help, families arrive carrying more than $60,000 in credit card debt at rates above 25%.
Many owe more than $100,000. These are dual-income households paying tuition on time, hosting Shabbat meals, and working full-time jobs. They look stable, but they are not.
Think about it this way: A parent will admit to a rabbi that they need tuition assistance long before they will admit to a friend that they owe $80,000 to their bank. And that is why so many families do not ask for help until it is almost too late.
Breaking the debt cycle
There are tools beginning to emerge. The federal Educational Choice for Children Act, recently signed into law, created a tax credit of up to $1,700 for donors who contribute to qualifying scholarship-granting organizations, a meaningful new source of scholarship dollars for Jewish day schools willing to use it.
Communities are experimenting with interest-free lending paired with structured debt recovery, and financial literacy curricula in yeshivas and seminaries. None of them by themselves can fix the underlying mathematical equation.
The Jewish community needs to have an honest, nationwide conversation about whether Jewish life is worth the cost and how we can fix this issue.
Jews have already answered that question with the way we live. This is a discussion about what we owe each other when the cost of that life puts working families into debt they cannot escape.
Schools owe parents transparency. Communities owe families a path out of debt that does not require humiliation. And families themselves owe each other something simpler: the willingness to admit the debt out loud, so the silence stops compounding alongside the interest.
The writer is co-founder and executive director of Collective Kindness, a nonprofit supporting Jewish families navigating financial challenges. He was previously an editor at The Wall Street Journal.