Jewish institutions are funded in three completely different ways depending on where you are. In North America the synagogue runs on membership dues, typically over a thousand dollars a year per household, plus High Holy Day ticket revenue, plus school fees, and the model has been criticised from inside for a century for making the religion look like a country club and for making the poor ask for a reduction. In Germany, Austria and parts of Switzerland the state collects a religious community tax from registered members and passes it to the community, which produces stable funding and a strong incentive not to deregister. In Israel the Chief Rabbinate, the rabbinical courts, the religious councils and municipal rabbis are on the public payroll, which means the state funds a specific Orthodox interpretation and does not fund Reform or Conservative ones — a subject of continuous litigation. Kashrut supervision is a substantial private industry, and the structural conflict of interest, where the producer pays the supervisor, has produced recurring scandals and an Israeli reform in 2022 opening certification to competition that the rabbinate fought hard. Underneath all of it sits the gemach, the free-loan society, which is unpaid, unregulated, and in Haredi neighbourhoods enormous.