TISHREI Table of Contents

"On the first day you shall take to yourselves the fruit of the goodly tree, branches of palm trees, boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days." (Lev. 23:40)

Observant Jews went to considerable trouble over the centuries to obtain an etrog, the fruit of the goodly tree*. We know of one family — the Spaniers of Frankfurt — who for generations were in the business of importing etrogim from Spain (hence the name Spanier) and whose house, occupied by the family for 150 years, bore the title "The Golden Apple" in honor of the trade. So important economically did trade in etrogim become in the Middle Ages that one of the terms of the peace treaty imposed upon the defeated Republic of Pisa in 1329 by the Guelph League of Tuscany (led by Florence) forbade her to continue her commerce in etrogim. Presumably, Florence and her allies intended to take over the flourishing trade with Jewish merchants from Germany, Austria, and Poland, as one of the spoils of victory.

Given changing economic and political realities over the past four hundred years, it grew increasingly difficult to obtain etrogim grown in the fashion permitted by Jewish law. The scarcity of etrogim gave rise to a rush of rabbinic discussions, arguments and responsa regarding the use of the fruit of the grafted citron (prohibited according to the original Jewish law), the geographic source of the fruit, and the definition of a "goodly tree."

At the turn of the twentieth century, a Fruit of the Goodly Tree Association was set up by Palestinian Jewish citron growers (and supported by then chief rabbi of Jaffa Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook), to promote the purchase of etrogim grown in the Land of Israel. Nevertheless, the wars of the twentieth century, natural limitations of supply, and the preferences of individual groups have prevented Israel from being the sole source of etrogim. Today the citron is grown on Greek islands, such as Crete, Naxos, and Corfu; in southern Italy in the regions of Cosenza, Salerno and Potenza; and in California, Morocco, Tunisia, Yemen, and Israel. In the United States today we find the main importers of North African etrogim to be Hasidim. Some of the North African etrogim are far from living up to the early rabbinic ideal according to which both fruit and tree had to be goodly; these etrogim are black and shriveled. The Hasidim argue that the very unattractiveness of the fruit is proof of its purity; no grafted fruit could look so awful.

While the traditional Jewish devotion to the etrog has not diminished, the etrog itself has perhaps subtly changed in significance. No longer primarily the concrete beautiful fruit described in Leviticus and the Talmud, it has become for many an ideal, almost a schematic object. The etrog is often considered as a collection of attributes — i.e., it is not grafted; the fruit is flawless; the stem is intact — rather than as a single essence. Perhaps for this reason a dark and shriveled fruit may today be preferred over the traditionally firm and golden etrog.

An outsider, hearing of the multiplicity of rabbinic interpretations, the endless squabbles, and the final seeming reductio ad absurdum of using a patently ugly object as "the fruit of the goodly tree," may well ask what the fuss is all about. Is the etrog just an excuse for the Jews to exercise their passion for the difficult, for the formal, and above all, for argument? Such a view has been expressed before: In the fourth century, for example, Methodio Eubulios, a Christian bishop and subsequent martyr, wrote that it was both shameful and foolish for the Jews to make such an issue over a lemon. Although this definition may seem adequate to other people, to the Jew the etrog is not merely the "Citrus Medica var. Ethrog Eng." To the Jew it is a tree rooted in eternity, its creation antedating man; a tree from whose branches sprang the fruit which, in bringing the end to man's sojourn in Eden, gave us human life and history as we know it.

According to one midrash, the etrog is "the heart of man." According to a Hasidic teacher it is "the orb of the world." The etrog is a national as well as a universal symbol to the Jew. Its fragrance was in Jacob's clothes when Isaac blessed him, bestowing upon the people of Israel, through Jacob, its identity, its rule over nations, and the favor of the Lord. The etrog calls up the glory of the Second Temple when the instrument of prayer became the fierce expression of a people's longing for freedom, hurled literally in the teeth of tyrannical power. Finally, the etrog symbolizes the continuity of Jewish history and its common aspiration, binding together the disparate geographic units of the Diaspora.

A symbol of world history and Jewish national persistence, a finite object in the natural world revealing God's divine and infinite mystery, the etrog is clearly an object of the highest significance. We therefore strive to make the etrog conform as fully as possible to its divine essence by following the specifications laid down by tradition and law. The trouble is great but the reward is high. When taking in one hand the palm branch and in the other — the true fruit of the etrog, the Jew is united in a chain of intimate association through Jacob with his people, through Adam with the race of man, and ultimately, through the fulfillment of a cherished commandment, with his God.