The Buddha’s hand citrus fruit is used as an etrog in some communities.
which sprouts finger-like protrusions due to a genetic mutation. Rabbi Asher Oser of Hong Kong’s historic Ohel Leah synagogue has researched the subject heavily for classes he has taught. He found documents revealing debates among Baghdadi rabbis about the Bud- dha’s hand citron, which is often not con- sidered an etrog at all. (“All etrogim are cit- rons but not all citrons are etrogim,” Moster wrote.) Most important, the rabbis wrote, was continuing tradition. “In the city of Baghdad we don’t allow the Dibdib tree, which has all the signs of an etrog, except it is sour,” wrote Yosef Hayyim of Baghdad in 1909 in response to ques- tions about the Buddha’s hand. “If a person is in a strange place and they find a fruit completely similar to etrogs of the place
ter Pearl Harbor, when patriarch David Abra- ham was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp and the family’s property was seized by the Japanese, who had occupied parts of the city. With the Jewish community desperate for the ritual fruit at Sukkot, someone was sent to climb the walls around the family’s garden and pick etrogs to distribute. The Japanese army then cut down the tree in retaliation. With no other choice, the Jews were left to source local etrogs and were again faced with the Buddha’s hand variety. The community was conflicted. In today’s world, importing fresh fruit across borders is a complicated process that can require significant paperwork and sometimes diplomatic intervention. Chabad was reportedly only able to legally import etrogs into China beginning in 2017, af-
dollars for the perfect fruit and spend hun- dreds more on etrog boxes. Most important to observant Jews today are the rules proclaiming that an etrog must be clean and without blemishes; that it re- tains its pittam (a protrusion separate from the stem); and that the plant must not be grafted. “Etrog is a weak tree,” said Rabbi Shalom Chazan, an emissary for the Hasid- ic Chabad-Lubavitch movement stationed in Shenzhen, China. “Usually, farmers will make a graftage between an etrog and lem- on tree to make it stronger. That makes the etrog not kosher. We don’t know if the Chi- nese farmers do it or not, therefore we buy from Israel or Italy, and Morocco, to make sure it’s kosher.” Scientists have traced the fruit’s genetic origins to the triangle of southwest China, northern Myanmar and northeast India. Today the etrog still grows in abundance in that area. But it was after the fruit migrated that it caught on with ancient Jews. According to David Z. Moster, a Bible scholar and author of Etrog: How a Chi- nese Fruit Became a Jewish Symbol , the etrog was the first citrus fruit that trav- eled from East to West—likely because of its thick rind that hardens rather than rots over time, preserving the fruit and seeds inside. It arrived in Israel around the fourth to third centuries BCE, and while it is not clear when exactly the etrog became the “choice fruit of the tree,” it quickly rose as an important symbol to distinguish Jews from Christians and Samaritans while ful- filling rules laid out in the Torah. “Every Jewish community has, in the past, found what they wanted the most,” said Moster. “There’s the Yemenite etrog, which, if you get a really good one, you get the size of a football.… A lot of the European Jews are looking for [an etrog with] a gartel, a belt… Now, in the modern world, a person like me can go to Borough Park [a heavily Orthodox neighborhood in Brooklyn] and see 10,000 etrogim in one day.” In modern times, most Jews in the West used etrogs grown in what is now Israel, the Caribbean or North Africa, including Morocco. But in the East, where most Jew- ish communities formed in the 18th and 19th centuries, debates over the etrog continued, especially with the discovery of the Chinese “Buddha’s hand” citron,
Rebecca Kanthor, far left, celebrating Sukkot with members of Kehilat Shanghai.
where they are coming from, then they can be used. If they’re not completely similar … they should not be used.” According to researchers, etrogs from what is now Israel or Iraq have long been prefer- able in Asia. Jewish communities in Shang- hai and Kobe, Japan, for decades in the late 19th and early 20th centuries received etrogs from the wealthy Abraham family, international traders who had brought a Baghdadi etrog plant with them to Shang- hai. It was planted outside the Abraham mansion and tended by Chinese gardeners, according to Yecheskel Leitner’s 1987 book Operation–Torah Rescue. Leitner wrote that this tradition ended af-
ter a Chinese professor of Jewish studies helped the communities provide adequate documentation. Before then, emissaries had to come up with “creative alternatives,” said Rabbi Shalom Greenberg of Shanghai. (Chabad emissaries did not elaborate when asked what those solutions were.) The etrog has long been hard to get, said Moster. “In many Jewish lands, if they wanted an etrog, they [would] have to send someone on a multi-thousand-mile trip and cross many nations, just to be able to pick this thing up and get it there in time,” he said. “So the idea of it being historically hard to get also added to its value.” n
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