A green tax imposed on single-use plastic four years ago — and later repealed — led to a long-term drop in support for environmental issues among ultra-Orthodox Jews, a new study shows.
The ultra-Orthodox community viewed this as a direct attack upon its way of life. Israel is one of the world’s leading per capita users of single-use plastics, partly due to the Haredi community, which uses more single-use plastics than any other demographic.
In November 2021, the government coalition headed by prime minister Naftali Bennett introduced a tax on disposable plastic plates, bowls, cups, and straws. The environment minister at the time, Tamar Zandberg, predicted that it would reduce purchases of plastic items by 40%.
This became a major political issue, including during the national election. The Haredim joined the coalition headed by Benjamin Netanyahu. The repeal of the plastics taxes were the first decision by new Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of the far-right Religious Zionism Party.
banningslightly increasing the price of plastic forks is anti-semiticIt’s not really a question of antisemitism - this is a kerfuffle between Jewish groups.
The ultra orthodox in Israel are on a whole new level of Judaism with prescribed clothing, hairstyles, foods, language, sabbath rules, and marriage practices. Many in-groups around the world insulate themselves by creating all these little divides with the out-group. “Oh no, you can’t eat with them - their food is contaminated and dirty. Of course you can’t marry one of them!”
So there’s quite a cultural divide between them and every other Jewish person there, many of whom are devout but live a modern lifestyle, and many of whom are just cultural members of Judaism, citizens of Israel, and not religious at all.
The reason disposable cookware is a division point has to do, I expect, with keeping kosher / observing the sabbath. Kosher isn’t just for food - a plate or spoon can be kosher to use or not, depending on whether it has ever touched anything “unclean.” Single-use plastics new from the box have never touched anything. And washing dishes counts as doing work (a sabbath tabboo) but dropping a plastic plate in the trash might not count. Hence: anything that affects single-use plastics may have an acute impact on the orthodox because they believe they need these things to adhere to their religious and cultural prohibitions.
I’m not justifying, just explaining. I think this shit is cuckoo.
i guess orthodox jews didn’t exist until the ~60s if the tools to practice their religion weren’t available before then… i always assumed they were around much longer than that! /s
also, thanks for the explanation!
Not even a joke, but orthodox Judaism is an invention of modern times, and ultra orthodox Judaism didn’t come about until the early 1900’s and was popularized until after WW2.
I mean I see the point that people used to live without these things but I’m not sure how much it matters. Any of us could be exhorted to give something up and it would be a poor consolation to say “people lived without xyz for centuries!”
Medieval times are hardly some kind of healthy baseline everyone should be prepared to return to. Much though we may all be just about to.
absolutely! it’s the “need” that i have issue with. we need to protect the environment from plastic. they don’t need to reduce their burden by washing a few dishes the next day