Over recent years, the phenomenon of voluntarism has become ever more relevant at a national, European, and even international level. A number of assumptions, some of which problematic, loom over the circumstances and dy-namics of this complex historic and cultural event: among these, the issue of the multiple versions of voluntarism tied to the prevalence of a religious ethic orientation or a secular one. After reconstructing the conceptual basis of the contemporary theoretical and empiric assumptions of voluntarism, the second part of this essay analyses four of the most common welfare states, of which voluntary service is one of the possible institutional and organizational forms: the Scandinavian model, the Anglo-Saxon model, the Continental model and the Mediterranean model. In the likes of a meditative appendix, the reader is presented with a case truly original for a number of historical and cultural reasons: the case of Israel.