Ahead of the upcoming annual Jewish holidays, Israelis are expressing a pessimistic national mood, although they are less negative about the coming year than they were at the same time last year.
Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year, celebrated for two days, beginning on the first day of the fall month of Tishrei. This month is the first in the civil year and the seventh in the religious year, which begins in spring with the month of Nisan.
Rosh Hashanah, which marks the creation of Adam and Eve and humanity’s entry into the world, begins ten days of repentance that culminate in Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when people fast and seek forgiveness. This is followed by the autumn festival of Sukkot, or the Feast of Tabernacles, which is a seven-day celebration commemorating the Jews’ desert wanderings after the Exodus from Egypt, but also a harvest festival. The autumn Jewish holidays conclude with Shemini Atzeret in Israel, a day of meditation on God’s goodness and prayer for rain. In the diaspora, this is followed by Simchat Torah, the joy of the Torah and a restart of the year’s Torah reading.
Ahead of the fall holidays, the national mood in Israel is pessimistic. On September 17, the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) published a survey showing that a majority of the population (71 percent) considers the national mood ahead of the new year to be fairly bad or very bad. This view is significantly more widespread among Jews (73 percent) than among Arabs (58 percent). A similar question was asked twice during Israel’s internal political crisis (in August 2020 and August 2021).
Religious Groups Most Positive
Even in these surveys—before October 7, 2023, and prior to the ongoing war—the majority’s assessment of the national mood was also pessimistic. At that time, Jews were also more pessimistic than Arabs.
A breakdown by political orientation among Jews shows that a majority in all three camps views the national mood as fairly or very bad, although this majority is smallest among right-wing voters (left: 93 percent, center: 89 percent, right: 61 percent).
49 percent of the religious group assesses the national mood as fairly or very bad. In all other groups, this is the majority’s view.
As in previous surveys, the study found that people assess their personal mood ahead of the new year more positively than the national mood, which could suggest that the public tends to perceive the national mood as worse than it actually is.
On the personal level, the total sample is almost equally divided between those who define their mood as fairly bad or very bad and those who define it as fairly good or very good (48 percent vs. 49.5 percent). Among Arab respondents, the proportion who define their mood as fairly or very good is significantly lower than the corresponding share of Jews (39 percent vs. 52 percent).
Personal Optimism
Among right-wing Jews, about half define their personal mood as fairly or very bad, which is about half (35 percent vs. 69 percent) of the corresponding share of left-wing respondents, who are the most pessimistic group. Center voters are closer to the left than the right, with 61 percent of them assessing their personal mood as fairly or very bad.
Religious groups have the highest proportion of people who define their personal mood as fairly or very good, while the secular group has the smallest proportion.
Among those who assess the national mood as fairly good or very good, an even larger majority (89 percent) also defines their personal mood positively. In other words, assessments on one level affect assessments on the other.
The survey shows that fewer expect the upcoming Jewish year to be worse than the one now ending—from 42 percent last year to only 24.5 percent this year. There was also an increase in the proportion who expect the next year to be better (from 23 percent to 33 percent) or similar to last year (from 22 percent to 30 percent).
The Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) is an independent research and policy center working to strengthen the foundations of Israeli democracy and uphold Israel’s values and institutions as a Jewish and democratic state. The survey was conducted from August 24–28 and is based on a representative sample of the population in Israel aged 18 and older, consisting of 600 Jewish respondents and 150 Arab respondents.
