Jewish communities know how to help a family in crisis; emergencies are, for better or worse, our specialty. Our communities can write checks. We can cover the rent. We will fill the fridge. 

What we do not know how to do — and what a growing number of families actually need — is to help them with debt.

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The families I am describing are not the ones you might expect. They are dual-income households. They are paying tuition. They are showing up to synagogues. They are hosting Shabbat meals when they can. They are your neighbors, and parents to the friends of your children. From the outside, they look stable. Behind closed doors, they are drowning in credit card balances, minimum payments and interest rates that make the math impossible.

I have written before in these pages about the broader middle-class squeeze facing Jewish families: tuition, housing, kosher groceries and everything else that leaves even high earners one emergency from collapse. What I want to focus on now is one specific piece of that crisis that I believe the community has dramatically underestimated, and a pathway for addressing it.

Fifty percent of Americans are struggling with credit card debt, and the Jewish community is not immune to what is happening across the country. Total credit card debt in the United States crossed $1.3 trillion in 2026, the highest level ever recorded, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and the average credit card interest rate sits above 22%. In 2024 alone, Americans were assessed $160 billion in credit card interest charges, up from $105 billion just two years earlier, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Jewish families are inside these numbers. From Brooklyn to Boca Raton and Boston to, yes, even Beverly Hills, Collective Kindness is seeing too many people struggling with today’s high interest rates. Average workers, mid-level managers, business owners, successful rabbis — this is not just a regional problem, a denominational problem or an occupational problem, and it is showing up in every kind of Jewish community we touch.

The internal findings are sobering. Among families who have sought help through Collective Kindness’ Kosher Debt Help initiative, average credit card debt at intake exceeded $60,000, with average interest rates above 23%. Some households arrived owing well over $100,000. At those levels, balances grow faster than families can realistically pay them down, no matter how many hours they work or how carefully they budget.

The picture changes dramatically when families receive the right guidance. Among families who completed the Kosher Debt Help debt-reduction process, average rates dropped from 23.5% at intake to 1.4% after intervention. In under eight months, participating families have collectively saved over $1.2 million in projected interest costs. Approximately 560 families have significantly lowered their annual percentage rate in this time, all while receiving debt education with honesty, integrity and compassion.

Those numbers represent more than spreadsheets. They represent marriages under less strain, parents sleeping through the night, families catching up on tuition and households able to think about the future again instead of only the next bill. What felt permanent for many families has turned into a manageable problem.

Debt is likely underreported across Jewish communities. People speak openly about tuition pressure, housing costs or grocery bills; far fewer will admit they are buried in credit card balances. For many families, the monthly margin between income and expenses has disappeared.

That distinction matters.

Emergency help can cover this month’s rent. Tuition assistance can keep children in school. A gemach can give an interest-free loan. These are vital forms of communal generosity and they should be celebrated; but many families today are not facing a one-time emergency. They are trapped in ongoing debt cycles. High-interest balances compound month after month. Minimum payments create the illusion of progress while families fall further behind. A short-term check eases today’s pain while doing little to solve tomorrow’s problem.

However, when families receive sustained, strategic guidance, average rates are reduced by more than 18%. Households that looked stuck become solvent.

The intervention works. What it needs is scale, and scaling requires communal buy-in.

Synagogues, schools and federations already know how to respond when a family needs a one-time gift or a rent check, but, quite simply, there has been no place for Jews in debt to turn; nowhere to refer a family into a structured debt recovery process, or how to fund that work at the level the problem demands. Some encouraging models are emerging, including partnerships that combine interest-free lending with debt recovery guidance, but these efforts remain limited relative to the size of the problem.

This is not about replacing generosity. It is about making it more effective. A dollar spent helping a family restructure $60,000 in high-interest debt does more durable good than the same dollar spent on a one-time emergency grant, because it changes the underlying trajectory.

Jewish life has always depended on more than charity alone. It has depended on wisdom, responsibility and building institutions that meet the needs of the moment.

The families are already here. The debt is already here. The infrastructure to help them recover, not just survive, is what the community still has to build.

Shalom Goodman is co-founder and executive director of Collective Kindness, a nonprofit supporting Jewish families navigating financial challenges. Goodman was previously an editor at The Wall Street Journal.