Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky

As many can attest, going to synagogue isn’t as easy as putting on a rumpled shirt and tie or throwing on the same dress as the previous week. For better or worse, what you wear to shul is often a fashion statement.

And as the High Holidays roll in this September, perhaps no group acknowledges the inextricable link between clothes and services better than Chabad.

Chabad of the West 60s, in Manhattan, announced yesterday it will host free Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services in support of New York’s Fashion Week. But there’s a catch. Chabad wants you to ring in the year 5771 buy purchasing some Vera Wang or Michael Kors.

“Many Jews may be conflicted between synagogue and Fashion Week,” Rabbi Yehuda Lipsker of Chabad of the West 60s said in a statement. “We are offering free Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur tickets to anyone attending services at our synagogue this year, and asking only that they use what they would have spent to buy fashion to support New York’s economy.”

And if no shul-goers buy any clothes, at least services will contain special prayers for Jewish designers, like Zac Posen and Isaac Mizrahi, according to Chabad’s statement.

Hey, maybe Diane von Furstenberg has a 2011 sheitel line.

This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.

We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.

This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.

With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.

The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.

Don't just read the Forward - invest in it. Make a matched gift today.

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$120 $180 $360 OTHER AMOUNT