Are Israelis really as happy as the world reports?

The UN issued its annual World Happiness Report on Wednesday, and Israel again ranked exceptionally high, earning the title this year of the fifth happiest country in the world (down a single notch from last year).

Every year since 2012, the UN has issued these reports, and every year since 2012 Israel is way up there in the rankings. Every year as well, Israelis ask themselves after hearing about the report: “Are they talking about us? Can’t be.”

Not only Israelis have that reaction. Here’s how CNN reported the news on its website on Wednesday: “Given the war with Hamas, Israel may come as a surprise at No. 5.”

One can’t really blame CNN for that framing. With Israel at war after having just experienced the single bloodiest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust, with 134 of its citizens being held hostage in Gaza, with tens of thousands of people evacuated from their homes, with hundreds of thousands of reservists and their families feeling the effects of extended and grueling army duty, Israel these days does not seem synonymous with “happy.”

Not only these days. Even before October 7, with the country roiling from the judicial overhaul debate and protests and in the midst of a mini-wave of terror attacks, the country did not exactly feel like Disneyland.

Yet, year after year, the UN issues these reports, and year after year, Israel is right up there with the happiest Nordic countries in the rankings. (Finland has led the list for the last seven consecutive years.)

In America, there is a folk saying that describes the dissonance between how things are and how they feel: “If things are so good, why do I feel so bad”?

In Israel, at least according to the UN report, that saying should be flipped: “If things are so bad, why do I feel so good.”

Why, indeed?

First of all, according to David Leiser, a professor of social psychology and dean of behavioral sciences at Netanya Academic College, the report is misnamed. What it ranks is not happiness – which is a fleeting emotion – but rather life satisfaction. One can be satisfied overall with life, even if, at present, one is not feeling jump-for-joy happiness.

The study is based on the Gallup World Poll, which asked respondents to evaluate their current life using the image of a ladder, with the best possible life a 10 and the worst possible being zero.

“This is not about whether you are having a difficult time right now, it is not related to how happy you felt yesterday, or what bad experiences you had. We are talking really not about happiness but satisfaction with life,” he said.

“That is something different, because if you feel that your life is meaningful, you may have all kinds of issues and still feel that your life is satisfying. Consider even the case of someone very ill and about to die. If you ask that person, ‘What do you think about your life?’ he may say, ‘I had a full and fulfilling life, but now I have to go.’”

Leiser said that since October 7, the degree of happiness in Israel has been obviously low –just look at the somber mood as the country enters the Purim holiday on Saturday night – but that does not detract from life satisfaction.

Or, as Edith Zakai-Or, the CEO of the Maytiv Center for Positive Psychology at Reichman University, said, it is essential to differentiate between how a person feels at a certain point in time and how they view life in general.

“When my sons were both serving during this war – one in Gaza and the other up North – I wasn’t that happy. But I was able to distinguish between not being happy at a certain point because I was very, very worried, and understanding that I have a good life.”

According to Zakai-Or, there are several reasons why people in Israel say they are happier than people elsewhere whose countries face fewer “horrible challenges.”

“First of all, one of the things that make people happier in Israel is connecting to meaning. And in Israel, there are many opportunities to connect to something that is greater than yourself. There is a lot of ideology around here. We are here for a reason.”

Zakai-Or said this sense of meaning makes people happy “because when you feel that you are doing something for the greater good, it makes you happy.”

Religion, Leiser said, is also a factor in life satisfaction. He said that Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics’ studies consistently show that the more people are religious, the more they say they are happy. “This is rock solid and has been going on for many, many years,” he said.

“It’s not a matter of whether you believe in the God hypothesis; that’s not the point,” he asserted. “But if you live in a religious community, or if you live in a community in Samaria, you have a great deal of community support.” You are not isolated, he said.

Zakai-Or said the sense of being a part of a community, of not being alone, of having someone to lean on, and of being connected to family and friends is a major factor in explaining Israeli happiness despite all the country’s issues.

“In Israel, if you don’t go to a Shabbat dinner, it is a crisis in the family. So there’s always someone that you are connected to. And this is a great source of happiness and of resilience. Because you know there is someone who cares about you.”

Further, she said, friendships in Israel are often deep and intense, especially those forged in the army, increasing happiness.

“When you have profound life experiences, like serving with your friends in a war, and you know that your lives depend on each other, it’s a friendship forever. I see my father and his friends from the army from the wars in 1967 and 1973. They are like family. They still get together.

“Many Israelis have a much wider family than their genetic family because they create friendships that are as good as family and sometimes even better, and that is a major part of happiness.”

Israel’s abundant challenges, she added, do not necessarily diminish happiness, but instead could enhance it.

“When you have no challenges, then something inside you doesn’t grow,” she said. “Here we are challenged all the time, and we have succeeded. We grow, and this is also a part of being happy.”

How so?

“Because when you feel that you have coped well with a challenge, and that you grew from it, that makes you proud. It gives you a sense of self-confidence, it makes you happier.”

According to Zakai-Or, “saying that you are happy doesn’t mean you’re not challenged, afraid, or concerned. They all come together. The fact that you’re happy doesn’t mean that you don’t have other emotions as well. They live together pretty well. People are very sophisticated creatures.”

THE STUDY, said Anat Fanti, a researcher in happiness policy at the Science, Technology, and Society program at Bar-Ilan University, does have questions about emotions – positive emotions and negative emotions – but these are placed in one of the appendices and not factored into the final “happiness” ranking.

Fanti said that one reason Israel ranked so high this year despite the war—the poll was taken in Israel after October 7 – is that the score is an average of the last three years to minimize the impact of one cataclysmic effect.

If the results had been based only on data from 2023, she said, Israel would have been ranked 19 out of 143 countries, not No. 5. But this, too, she acknowledged, is “incredible” given everything the country is going through right now and has gone through over the last three years. It is especially impressive considering that the UK is ranked this year at 20 and the US at 23.

Despite Israel’s enormous challenges and despite complaining being a national pastime, “things are not so bad in Israel,” she asserted. “When you ask people how satisfied they are with their lives, they look at their family, their homes, their jobs, their friends and they say, ‘Hey, our lives here are not bad.’”

Fanti said a powerful sense of shared destiny is also a significant factor in satisfaction.

“I always say to non-Jews whom I meet – research colleagues and people I meet at conferences – who ask me if I am religious, because the research shows that religious people are usually happier all over the world, that I am completely secular. I then tell them that although I am completely secular, I feel Jewish, and I cannot disown being Jewish because I carry my family history on my shoulders.

“You never forget that as an Israeli,” she said. “You never forget it. People ask questions about my history: where my mother and father were from, where my grandparents were, who survived and who didn’t. We all have those histories. You carry all those generations on your shoulders. You are not alone in the world.”

But how, she is asked, does that add to a person’s happiness or satisfaction?

“Because you feel you have a reason,” she said. “You feel you have purpose in your life here.”