The Tuition Crisis And The Question We’re Afraid To Ask

By Juda Honickman

Every few months, another article or social media post goes viral about the “tuition crisis” in the Jewish community. Parents working extra jobs. Families moving to cheaper neighborhoods. Schools scrambling to stay open. And behind every headline are real people. Exhausted, devoted parents who simply want their children to grow up knowing who they are.

It’s one of the great paradoxes of Jewish life in the Diaspora: that preserving our identity often comes with an enormous price tag. That something as basic and sacred as a Jewish education has become one of the most crushing financial burdens on the very people fighting to keep Jewish life alive. And yet, we’ve come to accept it as though it’s just part of the deal. As though paying tens of thousands of dollars a year per child is simply the modern cost of Jewish continuity.

But maybe the real question isn’t about tuition at all. Maybe it’s about geography.

In most of the world, parents pay a premium to create a Jewish environment: tuition, summer camp, kosher food, youth groups. Everything costs more because you’re swimming against the current. But there’s one place on earth where that current flows with you, where Jewish life isn’t something you manufacture, but something you breathe.

In Israel, the holidays aren’t “observed,” they’re lived. The language of Torah is the language of the street. The heroes your children learn about in class are the ones who built the nation they live in. The rhythm of life is Jewish by default, not by effort. Why are we paying to imitate in the diaspora what exists naturally in the land that was always meant to be ours?

People often say life in Israel is expensive. Maybe it is. But the cost of living abroad includes something most of us never put on paper, the price of constantly having to defend who we are. To remind our children why they’re different. To live Jewishly in a world that doesn’t always make space for it. In Israel, that cost disappears. Here, you don’t have to fight for your child’s identity, you just have to raise them.

Yes, salaries might be lower. The homes might be tighter. But the trade-off is immeasurable: children who never question whether they belong, who never have to hide a Star of David, who grow up surrounded by a people, a history, and a purpose that are entirely their own.

There’s a myth that it’s harder to “make it” in Israel. And sure if “making it” means luxury SUVs, big backyards, and country clubs, maybe that’s true. But if “making it” means raising children who know who they are, who love being Jewish, who feel proud and rooted in their Yiddishkeit, then maybe this is the only place on earth where we can truly say we’ve made it.

For generations, our ancestors prayed toward this land. They risked everything for even a glimpse of it. We have the privilege not only to visit Israel, but to live it, to be the generation that turns their prayers into our reality.

Aliyah isn’t simple. Not everyone can pick up and move tomorrow. There are financial, emotional, and logistical challenges. But maybe the point isn’t that everyone must move, it’s that every Jew should at least ask themselves why not? Because when we talk about the future of the Jewish people, about education, continuity, and raising the next generation, the truth is that there’s only one place on earth where that future isn’t a struggle to sustain, but a reality already set in motion.

Maybe, for the first time in 2,000 years, the ends can actually meet. Our faith, our families, our history, and our homeland. All in one place. We’ve spent generations paying for what Israel gives freely: belonging, identity, purpose. Maybe it’s time to stop renting our Judaism and to start living it in the only home that was ever truly ours.

Because the question isn’t whether we can afford to live in Israel. The question is whether we can afford not to. 

Juda Honickman is a writer from Woodmere who now lives in Israel.