A green tax imposed on single-use plastic four years ago — and later repealed — led to a long-term drop in support for environmental issues among ultra-Orthodox Jews, a new study shows.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.
The ultra-Orthodox community … use disproportionate amounts of disposable kitchenware
Is this because it’s kosher? I remember once a family member was going to host an ultra-orthodox person and had to figure how to cook for them. Everything got cooked in tin foil because that’s fresh and new and won’t be contaminated. I wonder if the disposable kitchenware is the same thing.
How can it be, it’s millions of microplastic particles. Am I wrong? Those single use plastics produce a ton of microplastics, right?
Maybe the Ultra ortodox want to have not one but TWO credit cards embedded in their grey matter.
I guess washing stainless steel is against their religion.
Someone in the world tries to make a tiny bit better …
The ultra-Orthodox community viewed this as a direct attack upon its way of life.
It’s almost a meme at this point
I can’t even count the number of times the Torah talks about how important cheap plastics are to their way of life.
orthodox jews tend to be very religious and don’t usually believe in environmentalism.
they go by the philosophy that “בשבילי נברא העולם” (the world was made for me). meaning that they can do whatever they want because God made the world for them specifically.
My parter watched that show Shtisel and everybody was always carrying around single use plastic bags to the point that it was noticable. I still don’t get it.
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.
need these things to adhere to their religious and cultural prohibitions
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!
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.
The community is more highly affected by poverty,
Durable reusable utensils are wayyyy cheaper in the long run than disposable. So, bullshit. Poverty has absolutely nothing to do with this.
and families are often large, making affordable disposable kitchenware useful in easing the heavy burden of housework.
Wut? With that many people you can very efficiently distribute the work load and get things done a lot faster than one person living alone can do the equivalent amount of housework. So, again, utter bullshit.
This just sounds like self-righteous laziness.
Durable reusable utensils are wayyyy cheaper in the long run than disposable.
For real, I could go get a basic stamped set of metal utensils from Walmart for less than 50¢ each. They would look like cheap diner utensils, but I’d never need to spend that money again. And besides, if I’m using plastic utensils, I’m probably not worried about my stuff looking like it came from a diner. Instead of spending $10 on a pack of single use plastic utensils, I could get a full set of silverware.
Wut? With that many people you can very efficiently distribute the work load and get things done a lot faster than one person living alone can do the equivalent amount of housework.
While I agree, this is orthodoxy we’re talking about. I can almost guarantee that the mother and daughters are the ones who default to doing all the housework and homemaking. Orthodox Judaism doesn’t enforce straight up tradwife roles, but it often sits across the table and swaps notes.
I’m guessing strict gender rules about who does the washing up and a very zealous interpretation of ritual purity rules has something to do with the preference for disposables, as well.
Whether that falls under self-righteously lazy, I’ll leave as an exercise for the reader.
Our ancient tradition since the 1960s.
Before that, they had to be more moderate to get by. It was terrible! /s
$10 says the “disproportional usage” is largely tied to them not “working” on the Sabbath and using disposable utensils as a loophole.
See, this is how I know religious people are full of shit. “God is all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-powerful! Anyway here’s one of a couple simple tricks we do to get around his rules.”
They believe that the loopholes around the rules make the lifestyle that God intended for them.
Don’t forget the eruv circling Manhattan so they can ignore other Sabbath rules wholesale while going about their days.
Yeah, that’s dumber than magic underwear. That might be the dumbest religious thing (with the exception of, you know, wars) that I’ve seen. Calling all of Manhattan your (and specifically your) domicile doesn’t stretch the meaning of domicile, it completely ignores it.
if god is real, i truly believe people like this will not “pass” whatever test life is… if you think “god” is rules lawyering you’re a complete idiot… what you’re gonna sovcit an all seeing, all powerful entity? either strictly follow all the rules or make the choices based on the intent of the rule or the origin (ie someone saying people always get sick from eating X so god must not like it is, imo, not valid when we find out about allergies and food poisoning but was probably a good general rule before then!)
This is incredibly wasteful
Just pile them in the sink like a normal roommate!
clearing the table is work, tossing trash is not
You can get a family pack of metal utensils at the dollar store for like $5
Orthodox Jewish families managed to do just fine without plastic for thousands of years.
These ones think they need to destroy the environment instead of learning to wash.
Your religion is a choice. If single-use plastics make it more convenient for you to practice your chosen religion, to the detriment of everyone, go fuck yourself.
You don’t get to make the whole world pay for your choice.
Religion is not so much a choice, it is a conviction. If you believe in God and his laws, then you have to observe them as good as possible.
That is also not the point here. Jews did just fine without single use plastic for thousands of years. There is no religious reason as to why they need that stuff. I am not familiar enough with the specifics of Judaism to say for sure, but i would expect that the preparation for and work that is left over after the Sabbath is part of the concept.
So just leave the dishes and clean them the next day.
The research concludes that policymakers need to better explain the purposes of environmental legislation in culturally sensitive ways
I am so sick of the willfully ignorant expecting society to repeatedly bend over backwards to slowly drag them out of the dark ages without hurting their feelings. Fuck!
Is this because they can’t do the dishes between Friday night and Saturday night? Feels like a bit of a self-own. Haven’t people been Orthodox for thousands of years?
Yes they have. Also “Orthodox” is a quite difficult term in regards to Judaism. “Orthodox” Jews outside of Israel are among the strongest critics, as Israel is a direct violation of Gods command for Jews to remain in exile until the Messiah appears. (According to Jewish scripture). The Zionist “Orthodox” are already quite selective of which parts of their faith they emphasize and in which they are “flexible”.
Ultra-orthodox anything is going to be filled with nutjobs like this. They feel anything that slightly inconveniences their chosen brand of religion is an attack on religion itself. They want to have their stupidly large families but don’t want to pay for it themselves, either through work to wash dishes or through the tiny tax on their plastic forks. Same shit happens with Christians here in the US.
I recommend we export all of our plastics to them instead of weapons.
super concerned about cross-continuation in kosher context
wears mask below nose. And mouth.
There should probably be a tax on anything that can be described as “ultra-orthodox” of any kind. I’m not a theologian but I’m pretty sure the concept of “plastic” isn’t banned in any faith tradition’s holy book.
