![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Screenshot-2026-01-09-at-12.33.06-PM-scaled-e1767981324434.avif\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe Israeli TV host Ofira Asayag is secular but lit Shabbat candles on air in 2024, during the Israel Hamas war \u2014 reflecting a trend among Israelis. (Screenshot)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
In one viral TikTok clip, a young influencer solemnly shears her wardrobe to shreds, declaring it an offering for national deliverance. \u201cCreator of the world, as I cut these clothes, cut away the harsh decrees against Israel,\u201d she says, explaining that she would not even donate the garments lest she \u201ccause someone else to stumble\u201d by wearing them. <\/p>\n
Other images circulated too, of tefillin pop-ups, neighborhood challah-bakes and, on both social media and the street, a noticeable rise in religious amulets and pendants. Hamsas, Stars of David and necklaces shaped like the map of Israel or the ancient Temple in Jerusalem appeared everywhere.<\/p>\n
Two years later, as the grinding war in Gaza largely wound down, those early scenes have taken on the feel of a specific moment in time. Still, the spiritual jolt of those first weeks has not fully faded, and increased religious practice has become part of the country\u2019s daily rhythm.<\/p>\n
A poll released in November by the Jewish People Policy Institute found that 27% of Israelis have increased their observance of religious customs since the war began. Roughly a third of Jewish Israelis say they are praying more frequently than before the war, and about 20% report reading the Tanach or psalms more often. <\/p>\n
JPPI head Shuki Friedman said that many Israelis, and especially the young, felt the war had reconnected them to tradition and Jewish identity \u201cnot necessarily in a halachic way, but in a way that shows up very strongly in their lives and in the public space.\u201d <\/p>\n
Crucially, the shift has been most dramatic among Israelis who already had one foot in tradition \u2014 those raised in \u201cmasorti\u201d or traditional but not strictly observant, homes. While the masorti category has its roots in Middle Eastern and North African (Mizrahi) communities, where religious observance was historically more integrated into daily life but less rigid than in European Orthodoxy, today masorti Israelis span all sectors of Israeli society. (The category is distinct from the Masorti movement, the name for Conservative Judaism in Israel and Europe.) Roughly one-third of Israeli Jews identify as masorti, with JPPI breaking the group into two categories: \u201csomewhat religious\u201d and \u201cnot so religious.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Jewish demographer Steven M. Cohen once quipped that masorti Israelis are those who \u201cviolate the laws that they do not wish to change\u201d \u2013 meaning they accept traditional Jewish law, known as halacha, as valid, but selectively observe it in practice. Cohen also noted there\u2019s no real American equivalent, though the closest parallel might be \u201cnon-observant Orthodox.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among young Jews who identified as \u201csomewhat religious\u201d masorti, 51% of respondents in the poll reported deepening their religious practices during the war. <\/p>\n
David Mizrachi is one of them. Raised in a masorti home, Mizrachi had never been consistent about synagogue attendance, Shabbat observance or laying tefillin. Since Oct. 7, he said, he does all three \u2014 religiously.<\/p>\n
For him, the change grew out of the shock of the attacks and the losses that touched his own circle. He personally knew the Vaknin twins, killed at the Nova party, and Elkana Bohbot, the hostage snatched from the rave who was released after two years in captivity. Those events, he said, pushed him into \u201ccheshbon nefesh,\u201d a Jewish reckoning with his identity. <\/p>\n
\u201cI understood that these enemies and terrorists came because we were Jewish, not because we were Israelis,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
In some households the response went further still. Rozet Levy Dy Bochy, raised masorti and married to a non-Jewish Dutch man who decided after Oct. 7 to convert, said Oct. 7 drew her deeper into observance. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt felt like we were in a horror film, but faith provided an anchor,\u201d she said. \u201cKnowing that everything was part of God\u2019s plan and in the end something different, something good, was waiting for us was comforting.\u201d <\/p>\n
The dynamic experienced by Mizrachi, shaped by the violence that afflicted people he personally knew, aligns with another survey released in September by the Hebrew University, which found that direct exposure to the war, whether through bereavement or injury, was closely associated with changes in religiosity and spirituality. Roughly half of respondents reported higher levels of religiosity and spirituality, including a quarter who said they had become more religious and a third who described a rise in spirituality.<\/p>\n
That trend has been reflected most vividly in the accounts of released hostages that have filled Hebrew media over the past year, with former hostages describing making kiddush on water, keeping Shabbat for the first time or rejecting pitas during Passover in the tunnels beneath Gaza. <\/p>\n
It has rippled through pop culture, too. Actor Gal Gadot told her 106 million followers on Instagram that while she\u2019s \u201cnot a religious person,\u201d she had decided to light a candle and pray for the safe return of all the hostages. <\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s biggest pop star Noa Kirel, not known for religious observance, marked her November wedding with a mikveh immersion, a hafrashat challah (challah-separation) gathering, along with a henna party of the type that is common among Mizrahi Jews. <\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/DQ2Lt9jDCE_\/?hl=en&img_index=1<\/p>\n
Another of Israel\u2019s most popular singers, Omer Adam, long considered secular, now wears tzitzit, studies Torah, and keeps Shabbat. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s now common to see Israeli celebrities sharing Shabbat candle-lighting rituals, including secular TV host Ofira Asayag, who, a year into the war, pledged to do so on-air until the hostages came home. <\/p>\n
For sociologist Doron Shlomi, who studies Israeli religiosity, none of this is surprising, because collective crises often produce similar effects. Drawing on research from earthquakes, wars and the Covid-19 pandemic, he described the two years of war as \u201ca kind of laboratory\u201d for seeing how people turn toward faith. <\/p>\n
\u201cWar always brings two things,\u201d he said. \u201cMore religiosity and more pregnancies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shlomi argued, however, that the hostages and their families sit apart from the rest of the population. For many of them, he said, a turn to religion was a survival tool, and he expects some will go on to live fully observant lives. <\/p>\n
But in the broader public he sees two main patterns. The first is piety as a form of public service and solidarity that manifests in personal habits, like observing a single Shabbat or donning tzitzit in honor of the hostages, the fallen, and the soldiers. <\/p>\n
The other pattern runs through institutions and organizations that seized on the moment, from ultra-Orthodox groups like Chabad hosting barbecues on army bases to Christian evangelicals joining support efforts. <\/p>\n
Although increases outnumbered declines, the Hebrew University and JPPI studies both found a smaller counter-current. About 14% of secular respondents in both surveys said their religiosity had weakened, and 9% of Jewish respondents in the JPPI poll reported a drop in belief in God, a figure that rose to 16% among secular Jews. <\/p>\n
The Hebrew University researchers framed their findings through a psychological lens, drawing on terror management theory, which argues that confronting mortality pushes people to double down on their existing worldviews \u2014 deepening religious practice for some and weakening it for others. <\/p>\n