Reserve duty falls unevenly across Israel’s religious groups, study finds

Several factors may explain the disparity, including higher rates of combat service among graduates of religious state schools, differences in motivation and willingness to extend service, and community support.

By Pesach Benson, TPS

After nearly three years of war, the composition of Israel’s reserve force is changing.

Overall reserve mobilization has declined, but religious men now account for a disproportionately large share of those still serving.

The shift reflects how prolonged military service is being distributed unevenly across Israeli society.

A study by the Israel Democracy Institute, released Thursday, examined reserve service among Jewish Israelis based on religious self-definition, using Central Bureau of Statistics Labor Force Survey data from the final three months of 2023 and all of 2024 and 2025.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) does not publish reserve-service data by religious self-definition.

Israel’s religious Jewish population is broadly divided among religious Zionists, who generally serve in the military and often combine religious observance with participation in national life; traditional and secular Jews; and the Orthodox (Haredi) community, whose members have historically been largely exempt from mandatory military service.

Among Jewish men aged 21-44, 15.2% of religious men served in the reserves during an average month in October-December 2023, compared with 11.2% of secular and traditional men.

Reserve-service rates declined across all groups as the military reduced and rotated mobilization. By 2025, however, the gap had widened.

An average of 4.3% of religious men served each month, compared with 2.6% of traditional men, 1.7% of secular men and 0.3% of Haredi men.

“By 2025, however, the relative weight of religious men in reserve service had risen sharply,” the researchers wrote.

Secular men nevertheless remained the largest single group among male reservists, and the study cautioned against interpreting the figures as a moral ranking of Israeli communities.

“The strongest conclusion is structural: as the war became longer, the burden of reserve service became increasingly uneven across Israeli Jewish society,” the researchers wrote.

The Reserve Gap

The disparity was particularly pronounced among older men. In 2025, religious men aged 35-44 represented 13.1% of the relevant Jewish male population but 28.7% of reservists in that age group.

The researchers said the age pattern is significant because men aged 35-44 are more likely to have established careers, spouses, and children. Prolonged reserve duty can therefore have a greater impact on families and employers.

The study also found differences in reserve service across the labor market.

In 2025, 5.0%-5.4% of religious men working in the public sector, high-tech, and other business sectors served in the reserves during an average month.

Among secular men, the corresponding rates ranged from 1.6% to 2.1%.

The disparity among men contrasts with a less pronounced pattern among women. In 2023, 2.0% of secular women and 1.6% of traditional women served in the reserves during an average month, compared with 0.7% of religious women.

Women accounted for 13.5% of average-month reservists in 2023-2024.

The researchers said several factors may help explain the growing disparity among men, including higher rates of combat service among graduates of religious state schools, differences in motivation and willingness to extend service, and community support.

They stressed that these explanations remain “hypotheses rather than proven causal findings.”

The study concluded that the uneven distribution of reserve duty has implications for “social cohesion, family life, employers, and public policy.”

The figures measured the average monthly reserve-service burden rather than the total number of individuals who served during the war.

Because the survey captured people whose employment was affected by reserve duty, it may therefore undercount reservists who were not participating in the labor force.