Reserve Duty During the Iron Swords War by Religious Self-Definition

This study presents a survey of the distribution of reserve duty among the various religious groupings within the Jewish population, along with more in-depth analysis regarding the age and gender of reservists.

Photo by Michael Giladi/Flash90

Introduction

This study presents a survey of the distribution of reserve duty among the various religious groupings within the Jewish population, along with more in-depth analysis regarding the age and gender of reservists. The IDF does not publish data on this topic, and seemingly does not gather information on the religious self-definition of reservists. Thus, the study is based on analysis of a comprehensive monthly survey conducted by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS)—the Labor Force Survey, which samples some 30,000 respondents in the relevant age groups.[1]

Methodology

The Labor Force Survey is conducted each month by the CBS to gather data on the labor market in Israel. In this survey, we relate to the Survey data from the last three months of 2023, and to the data from 2024 that were available to us at the time of writing (January through September). To focus on the population relevant to reserve duty, we selected the data regarding respondents aged 21–44.

The analysis of reservists in this study is not entirely complete, in that it does not include reservists who are not in the labor market, with the exception of those who responded that they were unable to begin a new job due to reserve duty. However, we believe that the relative size of the population of reservists not included in the Survey is not large, as the Survey data also relate to workers in part-time jobs, and past surveys have found that 65% of Jewish students work to at least some extent during their studies. Thus, the Survey data would seem to reflect to large degree, if not entirely accurately, the distribution of reservists throughout the population in general.

The study relates to reservists from the Jewish population, who according to the data constitute 99% of all soldiers in reserve duty (with Arabs making up the remaining 1%). We refer to five categories of religious groupings in the Jewish population: secular, traditional, national religious, Haredi, and mixed/don’t know. Three of these groups—secular, traditional, and Haredi—contain respondents who when asked for a self-definition in the Survey, identified with one of these groups. The fourth group, national religious, is a combination of two separate groupings of respondents—“religious” and “very religious.” As the second of these is small, we have joined the two together for the sake of convenience (and in practice, the patterns of reserve duty are very similar in both groups). Finally, the “mixed/don’t know” group comprises three different categories: those who define themselves as having a mixed lifestyle in religious terms (the majority of the group); those who responded “other” to the question about religious self-definition; and those who did not respond to the question, such that their religious self-definition is unknown.

Another group to which we refer in the study is the group whose nationality, according to CBS data, is “other.” This group is almost exclusively made up of immigrants under the Law of Return and their descendants (mostly from the former Soviet Union) who are not Jewish according to halakha (Jewish religious law);[2] that is, this is an administrative categorization that is not based on religious self-definition.

More details about the methodology (in Hebrew) can be found here.

1. Main Findings

1.1 Men

Figure 1 presents the data according to the distribution of men who performed reserve duty among the different population groups in 2023 and in 2024, compared to the distribution of men in the population among these different groups, in this age grouping. That is, the share of reservists presented for each group reflects that group’s share of the total population performing reserve duty (and not the percentage of the members of that group who performed reserve duty).

Figure 1. Distribution of men aged 21–44 in the total population, compared with distribution of those who served in reserve duty during the Iron Swords War, by religious self-definition, monthly average 2023 and 2024 (%)

Overall, the distribution of reserve duty among the various groups in the Jewish population approximately reflects their relative share of the population, with the exception of two groups: the Haredim and the national religious. Haredi men constitute 14.5% of the male Jewish population aged 21–44, but make up only between 1% and 2% of male reservists on a monthly average. By contrast, national religious men constitute 14.7% of the male Jewish population aged 21–44, but accounted for 21.9% of reservists by monthly average in 2023, and 27.4% in 2024. The most dominant group among male reservists is secular men, and, together with men with no religion (who have a high affinity for the secular group), constitute about half of the reserve soldiers in 2023 (49.7%) and slightly less in 2024 (42.3%).

A considerable increase in the share of male reservists who are national religious can be seen in 2024, compared with 2023, as well as a more moderate rise in the share of traditional reservists, versus a decline in the relative share of secular men and men with no religion. This trend may reflect greater perseverance in performing reserve duty among national religious men, or the finding may stem from differences in types of military service and reserve units. According to media reports, at the end of November 2023 the IDF significantly reduced the number of reservists in command centers, in units away from front lines, and in the Home Front Command,[2] which would seem to indicate that combat soldiers made up a larger proportion of reservists on duty in 2024 than in 2023. Thus, the fact that there is a larger proportion of combat soldiers in the national religious public[3] may be the reason for the rise in the relative share of national religious men among reservists in 2024, compared to other groups.

1.2 Women

The previous section focused solely on male reservists. The data show that during the war, women have constituted 13.5% of those in reserve duty on a monthly average. Accordingly, the sample contains a small number of observations of women, making it impossible to analyze the patterns of reserve duty among women by the various population groups without compromising the privacy of respondents. Thus, we restricted ourselves to using public data from the Labor Force Survey, which is currently available only for 2023. The public data does not contain the precise age of those surveyed, and instead is presented by age group. Thus, in this section we refer to women aged 18–44. Because women are released from regular service at an earlier age, this data selection better reflects the patterns of reserve duty among women.

Figure 2 Women aged 18–44 who served in reserve duty during the Iron Swords War, as proportion of the religious group with which they self-identify, monthly average October–December 2023 (%)

In 2023, the largest average monthly share of female reservists was found in the secular and no religion groups (2%), while the equivalent share among national religious women was relatively low (0.7%). The share of traditional women was in between, albeit closer to that of secular women (1.6%). That is, the proportion of secular women performing reserve duty was three times that of national religious women. This finding accords with the fact that the share of national religious women who enter regular service in the IDF is relatively low, as these women are eligible for an exemption on religious grounds. Analysis of the data regarding female graduates of the state religious education system who have enlisted to the IDF since 2000 shows that in most of those years, the enlistment rate among these women was between 20% and 30%, while the enlistment rate among female graduates of the state education system stands at 92%.[4]

1.3 Total Population (Men and Women Combined)

The two figures below present a summary analysis of reserve duty among the total population, men and women together, broken down by religious self-definition. Figure 3 shows the share of those who performed reserve duty represented by each of the groups, while figure 4 presents the distribution of reservists compared to the relative share of each group in the total population in the relevant age group.

Figure 3. Total population (men and women) aged 21–44 who served in reserve duty during the Iron Swords War, as proportion of the religious group with which they self-identify, monthly average 2023 and 2024 (%)

Figure 4. Distribution of total population (men and women) aged 21–34, compared with distribution of those who served in reserve duty during the Iron Swords War, by religious self-definition, monthly average 2023 and 2024 (%)

In the combined analysis of men and women together, we again see a relatively high rate of reserve duty in the national religious population, and a very low rate of reserve duty in the Haredi population. At the same time, because the share of religious women who perform reserve duty is relatively low, the figures show that the secular public forms a larger share of the total population of reservists, relative to its share of male reservists, as shown above. Thus, during the period of large-scale reserve duty in the last months of 2023, the secular group and the no religion group (which are strongly connected) together constituted 51.6% of reservists, while their relative share of the Jewish population stands at 46.4%.

2. Analysis by Age

The analysis presented in the previous sections related to the overall population of reservists aged 21–44. In this section, we examine the distribution of reservists by religious self-definition, distinguishing between two age groups: 21–34 (younger) and 35–44 (older). The findings show that older men constitute around 33% of men aged 21–44 in reserve duty in an average month, while older women constitute around 10% of women in reserve duty aged 21–44. The main reason for this is that women often receive exemptions from reserve duty due to pregnancy or parenthood, and also that the age of exemption from reserve duty is lower for women (38). Consequently, we focus the following analysis solely on men. Because the analysis by age reduces the sample size and leads to a small number of observations in some groups, we focus in this section on the three main groups among male reservists—secular, traditional, and national religious—and combine all the other groups (Haredim, no religion, and mixed/don’t know) into a single category we call here “other groups.”

Figure 5. Distribution of men aged 21–34 in the total population, compared with distribution of adult males who served in reserve duty during the Iron Swords War, by religious self-definition, monthly average 2023 and 2024 (%)

Figure 6. Distribution of men aged 35–44 in the total population, compared with distribution of adult males who served in reserve duty during the Iron Swords War, by religious self-definition, monthly average 2023 and 2024 (%)

Figures 5 and 6 show that the relative share of national religious men performing reserve duty is especially large in the older age group, and particularly in 2024. National religious men constitute 12.8% of the male Jewish population aged 35–44, but 32.1% (monthly average) of those performing reserve duty—2.5 times their relative share of the population (figure 6). In the younger group of reservists (21–34), meanwhile, the share of national religious men is 1.6 times their relative share of the male Jewish population (figure 5). The relative share of traditional Jews among younger reservists was similar to their share of the population in 2023 and larger than their relative share of the population in 2024, while in the older group, their share was similar to their relative share of the population in both 2023 and 2024. Among secular men, their share among younger reservists was slightly larger than their relative share of the population in 2023, and similar to their relative share of the population in 2024. The share of secular men among older reservists was similar to their relative share of the population in 2023, and smaller than this relative share in 2024.

Conclusion

This analysis of the patterns of reserve duty according to religious self-definition reveals significant differences between the various population groups. Among most of the groups, around 10% of men have performed reserve duty, rising to around 15% of national religious men, while the equivalent share of Haredim is close to zero. Meanwhile, between 1.5% and 2% of women in most of the population groups have performed reserve duty, compared with around 0.7% of national religious women and a percentage equivalent to zero of Haredi women.

Along with those classified as having no religion, the secular constitute around half of those in reserve duty, similar to their relative share of the overall population. The relative share of national religious men among those in reserve duty was considerably larger than their relative share in the population in 2023, and was even larger in 2024. Naturally, the relative share of Haredim among the reservists is very small compared to their relative share of the population. Analysis by age reveals that the differences between the national religious and other groups are larger among the older age groups, such that the relative share of national religious reservists aged 35–44 is 2.5 larger than their relative share in the population.

Footnotes

[1] The study was conducted using the research environment of the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), based on files containing records of individuals that were prepared by the CBS for research purposes, and from which all identifying details have been removed.

[2] Yossi Yehoshua, “Thousands Released, Without a Formal Announcement: The IDF Reduces the Scale of Reserve Forces,” Ynet, November 20, 2023, https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/b1gcgzynp.

[3] See, for example, data on the distribution of soldiers completing the IDF officer training course over the years, by the education system from which they graduated: Ariel Finkelstein, The National-Religious Society in Data (Ne’emanei Tora Va’Avoda, 2021), 276–280, https://tinyurl.com/yz9sjw2f.

[4] Finkelstein, National-Religious Society in Data, 259–261. Since the beginning of the war, there has been a sharp rise in the enlistment rate among young women from the national religious public, and according to different sources, this rate has reached 45% during the war. Naturally, this rise will only influence the number of female reservists from this public in several years’ time. See, for example, Meirav Arlosoroff, “National Religious Women Discover Military Service—And Their Self-Actualization,” The Marker, November 1, 2024, https://www.themarker.com/weekend/2024-11-01/ty-article-magazine/.premium/00000192-e1f0-dd31-a9be-fbfbde1a0000.