The true cost of keeping kosher

And not only at this time of year - as the JC revealed last week with a heart-wrenching investigation exposing the number of Jews relying on charitable support to meet the cost of Pesach - but every time we buy supervised products.

It's a seemingly intractable issue, thrown into acute perspective with the news the other week that Kelly Eroglu, a 40-year-old mum of two, from South Wales, had slashed her £90-a-week food shop to a frugal £20 by memorising all the times her local supermarkets reduce their produce.

The media were slack-jawed with amazement. So were many Jewish men and women like me. Not because Kelly feeds a family of four on £20. But that she ever managed to do it on £90 a week in the first place.

As one chap I bumped into by the chill section of our delicatessen last week opined while we had a mutual moan about the price of fish - well, smoked salmon - "at this rate, it won't be assimilation that finishes off the Jews; it'll be the butcher's bill!"

Indeed, a survey earlier in the year by the JC found that kosher meat prices had doubled in little over a decade, compared with non-kosher meat prices which rose by 40 per cent.

When our two older sons left home for university, I consoled myself about my half-empty nest with the belief that our food bills would decrease.

These tall, strapping lads were permanent fridge-browsers and the sheer volume of food that I would buy each week for the family would be enormous.

Yet, even without having to stoke their weekly fix, I still have two younger ones at home. And there's not much difference since staples remain so expensive. (That'll be £1.10 for a 250g packet of kosher digestives compared to 89p for a very well-known brand.)

Throw in the fact that, like many busy working Jewish women, my social life revolves around entertaining family and friends on Friday night or for Shabbat lunch and the food bills continue to soar. That is something I'm deeply aware of as I call into my local butcher every Thursday morning to stock up on ingredients for my weekly chopped liver/chicken soup/roast fress combo.

Even my husband, a self-confessed carnivore (whose mantra is that there is ''no such thing as a decent milchik meal'') has begun to understand the value of my vegetarian lasagnes after reviewing the weekly meat bill. As an accountant, he has had to swallow his words along with several servings of mushroom quiche.

Sometimes, costs are so high they are beyond ridicule. At the moment there is a ''Kosher for Pesach'' Swiss roll on the shelf of my local deli which is priced at just shy of £8. Imagine what Kelly from South Wales could do with that?

Since the cake has already sat there for a week, she'd probably conclude it would be more cost effective to use it as a draft excluder to keep the heating bills down.

It is estimated that it costs £12,700 a year to keep kosher - that's around half of the UK average £26,500 average salary. And even though average earnings for a Jewish household are some 54 per cent higher than the UK average, there are still plenty of cash-strapped Jewish families who struggle to keep kosher.

Meanwhile our students - who are already vulnerable to a variety of influences and assimilation at university - would clearly struggle to pay for kosher meat.

I know when my own come home, I take them meat shopping. Or make individual dinners for them to take back. Nothing gourmet, just crowd-pleasing shepherd's pies or spaghetti bolognaise. However, with 500g of kosher mince around £2 more expensive than some supermarket brands, it's still not a cheap option.

Of course animal welfare is vital - and shechita remains undoubtedly the most humane way to kill animals. What's more, we know what's in our kosher meat. And, yes, all our suppliers have to make a living and supervision is expensive.

There is, however, a bigger issue. The struggle to be Jewish is said to be a constant prompt of our faith. But we already have plenty of laws and restrictions to remind us of that.

If the ever-increasing price of keeping kosher prevents people from doing so then we may well see even more people turning away from their Judaism.

And the cost of that compared to a hunk of salt-beef really is incalculable.