On a latest stroll round Williamsburg, Brooklyn, I occurred upon a curbside stand the place a number of Orthodox Jewish males had been stooped over an etrog (the Hebrew phrase for citron, pronounced “ET-rog”). As they scrutinized the citrus fruit with a magnifying glass, they gently rubbed its knobby, shiny yellow pores and skin: If it was blemished within the slightest, the fruit was dominated out. Then they labored their means as much as the pittom, Hebrew for the extruding prime, and sniffed the citrus up and down to make sure it exuded a rare aroma.
I can nonetheless bear in mind my first whiff of the etrog’s ethereal scent, fruity and extra perfumed than any citrus I’d encountered. From that second, I used to be below its spell.
However why would a citron, with its thick, bitter pith and little edible pulp, be of such intense curiosity—and sometimes fetch upwards of $1,000 apiece? Contemplating that an etrog’s lifespan is mere weeks, that value might sound unthinkable to the typical grocery shopper, however as I’d quickly study, it’s laborious to place a value on perfection.
The boys in Brooklyn had been searching for an ideal etrog for the harvest competition of Sukkot, celebrated this yr from October 16 to 23. In early Judaism, the vacation was related to the harvest of grapes, olives, figs, dates, and pomegranates. However for many modern-day Jews—from Buenos Aires to Belgrade to Boston—Sukkot celebrations the world over are synonymous with citrons.
Citrus medica, the Persian citron, whereas principally grown at present in Israel, is neither indigenous to the Holy Land nor talked about within the Outdated Testomony. But the fruit, resembling a big lemon and tasting like an particularly bitter one, is regarded by some because the true forbidden fruit of the Backyard of Eden.
David Karp, a citrus researcher on the College of California, Riverside, recognized within the meals world because the “fruit detective,” tells a special story. Scientists have discovered that the etrog diverged from its two different main species, the mandarin and the pomelo, 6 to eight million years in the past in Northeastern India and Southwestern China. From there it unfold throughout India, the place it continues to be cultivated for its medicinal qualities, purportedly enhancing sexual efficiency. In Chinese language conventional drugs, dried citron is used as a tonic to control qi, the life drive. In response to a Chinese language people perception, a lady who bit into an etrog would grow to be pregnant inside a yr.
Round 500 B.C.E., the etrog reached Persia and the Mediterranean basin, and finally Jerusalem, to adorn Persian “paradise” gardens, in line with Dr. Rabbi David Moster in his Etrog: How a Chinese language Fruit Turned a Jewish Image. The fruit was so enchantingly unique that the sages concluded it was peri etz hadar, the “lovely tree fruit” talked about in Leviticus 23:40. “You shall take the product of hadar (lovely fruit) bushes, branches of palm bushes, boughs of leafy bushes, and willows of the brook, and also you shall rejoice earlier than your God seven days.” (“Hadar” in Hebrew means splendid, decorative, and likewise citrus.)
With the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. and exodus of Jews from the Holy Land, an etrog enterprise shortly developed. Touring by boat, buggy, and on foot, retailers ventured to southern Europe and the Center East searching for etrogs, then bought them as far afield as Japanese Europe, the place non secular Jews wanted the warm-weather citrus to make the Sukkot blessing.
However that blessing doesn’t depend on the citron alone—it requires the lulav, or foliage described within the aforementioned biblical verse. On every of the seven days of Sukkot, the observant maintain branches of myrtle, date palm, and willow bushes in the fitting hand and the etrog within the left, then shake their arms whereas praying. When my kids had been little, that’s how we rang in every Sukkot—waving our lulav and etrog within the customary 4 instructions in our yard sukkah, the shelter Jews erect for the vacation symbolizing a biblical desert hut, earlier than sitting down for a harvest meal.
Immediately, in Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods reminiscent of components of Brooklyn or Mea Shearim in Jerusalem, there are etrog markets come September; you may as well discover inexpensive fruits on-line. Jewish custom holds that an individual who does the mitzvah of etrog-selection is blessed. Yossi Altein, 70, is one such purveyor (an “etroger,” in Yiddish) in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Since 1929, his household has been delivery entire heaps from Calabria to the USA, and earlier than that, to Russia, from the place his ancestors got here.
“When the Lubavitcher rebbe got here to America in 1929 and noticed the Calabrian etrog, he was ,” says Rabbi Altein. “For millennia, sages have advised tales of visiting these wild groves.”
In Italy, he provides, folks make etrog-scented shampoo and fragrance. “After I was a bit of child, my mom soaked the pith and the pores and skin in honey for just a few months, and I ate it like sweet,” he says. That confection, additionally known as cédrat glacé, is widespread in fruit muffins and liqueurs.
In my opinion, I’ll go away the etrog liqueur, fruit muffins, and jam to the professionals, however I stay up for potting my very own plant on the terrace, savoring the aroma whereas watching the bumpy fruit develop all year long—and typically pondering its lengthy journey.
