Sermon by Rabbi Andrea 18th July / 4th Av 5786
- 12 hours ago
- 12 min read
Shabbat Chazon: One Etrog, One People
Today is Shabbat Chazon, the Shabbat immediately preceding Tisha B’Av, and I would like to
speak about Sukkot.
It may seem slightly premature to speak about etrogim this morning. Nevertheless, one of the
Jewish controversies that has occupied me this week concerns precisely the etrog.
In certain diasporist circles, a new idea appears to be circulating. Progressive Jewish
communities, we are told, should seek alternatives to etrogim imported from Israel. Not because
anyone wishes to boycott Israel, of course. Heaven forbid. Openly advocating a boycott might
jeopardise support from organisations such as the United Jewish Appeal. So, let us pursue an anti-
Israel agenda by a more respectable route: ecology.
Israeli etrogim, it is argued, may have been treated intensively with pesticides and should
therefore be avoided. This is not exactly a staggering revelation. Indeed, the words “not for
consumption” are prominently displayed on the boxes in which Israeli etrogim are sold.
Or perhaps I should say: etrogim cultivated in the Zionist entity, on land originally belonging to
Palestinians, although there are no surviving title deeds, and although, for many centuries, the
word “Palestinian” was also commonly used to describe Jews living in the Land of Israel.
But never mind.
Our ethical conscience, we are told, demands that we find an alternative to Israeli etrogim. And
so, the search begins. Then comes the light-bulb moment, one of the more botanically adventurous statements I have encountered recently:
“All the cedros grown in Italy are equivalent to kosher etrogim.”
I wish I had never read anything of the kind. Because they are not. An Italian cedro may indeed
belong botanically to the species Citrus medica, which is also the botanical classification of the
etrog. But that is not sufficient. The central halakhic question is whether the citron tree has been grafted onto the rootstock of a lemon, a bitter orange or another citrus species. A grafted citron is called an etrog murkav, and it is invalid for the mitzvah. It is rather like placing a croissant on the Seder plate instead of matzah.
The difference, of course, is that we can recognise a croissant. By outward appearance alone,
however, we cannot always recognise an etrog murkav. That is why rabbinic supervision is
necessary from the very beginning of cultivation.
This is what happens today in Calabria, where etrogim are grown and exported under Chabad
supervision. Chabad has established a system of continuous rabbinic oversight in the area
known as the Riviera dei Cedri, the Citron Coast. Those etrogim are kosher because their
cultivation has been supervised, not simply because they were grown in Italy.
In discussing this question with colleagues, I found myself returning to another consideration:
the treatment of the people who actually cultivate and harvest our fruit. Israeli agriculture is
not the Garden of Eden. Israel, however, has a system of labour law and formal employment
regulation. Agricultural workers may have contracts defining regular working hours and
overtime, and they have access to union representation through the Histadrut.
In parts of Calabria, the situation has often been very different. A 2016 investigation by The
Guardian into the Calabrian citrus industry reported migrant labourers living in makeshift
camps and abandoned buildings, frequently without running water, electricity or adequate
sanitation. Workers were receiving approximately twenty-five euros for a day in the orange
groves, with further deductions taken by the intermediaries who transported them. At the time
of the investigation, a medical organisation estimated that more than eighty per cent of the
migrant agricultural workers in the area had no formal employment contract.
That investigation concerned the orange industry around Rosarno, not the supervised etrog
orchards of the Riviera dei Cedri. Indeed, workers employed in Chabad, owned and supervised
orchards are unionised.
It would therefore be inaccurate and unfair to claim that every Italian citron is produced under
the conditions described in that article. But the investigation should make us suspicious of the
easy assumption that Italian agriculture is automatically ethical, ecological and innocent, while
Israeli agriculture is automatically suspect.
When I read inaccurate statements claiming that any Italian citron may be used as an etrog, I
imagine myself holding a fruit that, unless it comes from a properly supervised orchard, may
not be kosher according to halacha and may also have been cultivated through the exploitation
of migrant labour. Even if no pesticide has touched it, such a fruit would not be kosher
according to my ethical standards.
And this brings me to a remarkable story from sixteenth-century Padua. For those who have
never visited it, Padua is an extraordinary city. It formed part of the Venetian territories for
many centuries and was the home of one of Europe’s oldest and most distinguished
universities. During the medieval and early modern periods, the University of Padua was one
of the few European universities willing to admit Jewish students. Jews came there from many
parts of Europe to study medicine, philosophy and law.
Padua was also the home of a prestigious yeshivah, highly respected throughout the Ashkenazi
world. For centuries, it offered the almost unique spectacle of Jewish students attending
lectures in medicine at the university in the morning and studying Talmud in the yeshivah in
the afternoon.
The office of Chief Rabbi of Padua was formally recognised by the civic authorities, who
needed an authoritative representative with whom they could negotiate the conditions under
which Jews were permitted to live in the city. The position was therefore generally occupied
by a scholar of considerable standing.
One such figure was Rabbi Samuel Judah Katzenellenbogen, a member of a distinguished
rabbinic family whose origins lay in Central Europe.
As Chief Rabbi of Padua, he corresponded with none other than Rabbi Moses Isserles, the
Rema, author of the Ashkenazi glosses on the Shulchan Arukh. The two men were also
related, because that is how things worked among prominent rabbinic families.
In one of their letters, we find an amusing and instructive sixteenth-century story about an
etrog. Katzenellenbogen explained that the Jews of his region would not use a grafted etrog,
even in an emergency. He had heard from his father that, during one particular Sukkot, there
was only one acceptable etrog in the whole of Padua.
Only one.
So much for the assertion that every Italian cedro was automatically an etrog. Now, Padua was
a university city. Its students were overwhelmingly young men. To use contemporary
terminology, it was therefore a city hopelessly afflicted by toxic masculinity, where banter and
bravado were part of everyday life.
The single kosher etrog was being carried from the Ashkenazi congregation to the Sephardi
congregation when a group of students intercepted the messenger, seized the fruit and
demanded money for its return. It is not entirely clear whether the culprits were students from
the yeshivah, students from the university, or young men who managed to attend both. The
community paid a substantial ransom to recover the etrog. Admittedly, they did not yet face
the grave problem of fruit contaminated by Zionist pesticides. But they did not possess easy
alternatives either.
Grafted citrons could be found in abundance in the gardens of the local nobility. But the Jews
of Padua, guided by some of the greatest halachic authorities of their time, would not use them
for the mitzvah. They preferred to pay a ransom for the one etrog they trusted rather than use
one of the many beautiful but grafted citrons growing around them. So much, once again, for
the claim that every Italian cedro was automatically regarded as a kosher etrog.
But notice something else. The single etrog did not belong exclusively to one congregation. It
was travelling from the Ashkenazi community to the Sephardi community. One fruit was
being shared among Jews of different rites, customs and geographical origins.
One of the important principles of Sukkot is that the arba’ah minim, the Four Species, may be
shared. We do not each need to possess a separate set for the entire festival. A person may
make the set available to another, transferring possession temporarily so that the other person
can perform the mitzvah.
That is why, every year, we order four sets of arba’ah minim for our Synagogue. They are not
decorative objects reserved for the rabbi or the wardens. They are there so that everyone can
have access to the mitzvah.
A few years ago, we even experienced our own version of the students of Padua. Someone
removed some of the myrtle branches from our sets. I can assure you that I raised my voice
with sufficient force for them to be returned. History occasionally repeats itself, although not
always on the same scale.
Samuel Judah Katzenellenbogen is also connected with another extraordinary story, from
which I believe we have much to learn.
In 1582, a Polish-Lithuanian prince named Mikołaj Krzysztof Radziwiłł, known as “the
Orphan”, passed through Padua while travelling towards the Holy Land. He had converted
from Calvinism to Catholicism and was undertaking a penitential pilgrimage. He appears to
have been a sincerely religious man. He was nevertheless still a prince, with the lifestyle and
distractions typical of the nobility. Gambling, women and costly travel continued to make
considerable demands upon his purse, and he had somehow managed to run out of money.
Katzenellenbogen spent time in conversation with the pilgrim prince.
They spoke in Latin, the language that made communication possible between a rabbi and a
Polish nobleman. From the correspondence I have already mentioned, we learn something
about the remarkable intellectual world of the Chief Rabbi of Padua.
Katzenellenbogen understood the theological and political differences between Catholics and
Protestants. He was also impressed by the extraordinary organisational abilities of the Polish
Jesuits, whatever reservations he may have had about their theology. The principal reason for
the conversations between the rabbi and the prince, however, was more immediate. The prince
needed money to continue his journey. Katzenellenbogen helped him obtain it.
The Jewish community of Padua raised the necessary funds through an appeal to Jewish
communities across Northern Italy. In return, the rabbi asked the prince to use his authority to
treat the Jews living in his territories fairly and to protect them against accusations of ritual
murder, the blood libels that members of the lower clergy were continuing to spread during
those decades.
Sometimes I wonder whether one of my own ancestors contributed to that collection. Perhaps
one of my ancestors gave a few coins to enable the prince to continue his pilgrimage. And
perhaps those coins helped to save the ancestors of Polish and Lithuanian Jews. Perhaps they
even helped to preserve the ancestors of some of the Ashkenazi intellectuals, and some of their
Ashkenazi students, who today reproduce anti-Italian stereotypes on social media and have
targeted me and members of my family because I have spoken publicly about antisemitism in
Muslim-majority countries and about the experiences of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews.
History possesses a rather refined sense of humour. Perhaps the ancestors of some of those
who now stereotype Italian Jews survived, in part, because Italian Jews once raised money to
protect them.
We cannot know. That is precisely the point.
It is also one of the fundamental rules of Jewish history: our ancestors survived because Jews
whom they did not know acted on their behalf. And this is why an apparently eccentric
discussion about etrogim is appropriate today, on Shabbat Chazon, the Shabbat before Tisha
B’Av.
It is striking that Isaiah, in the very haftarah from which Shabbat Chazon takes its name,
describes the vulnerable remnant of Jerusalem with the words:
בַּת־צ ִ יּוֹן כּ ְ סֻכָּה ב ְ כָר ֶ ם
“The daughter of Zion is left like a sukkah in a vineyard.” [Isaiah 1:8]
Before the destruction has even taken place, Zion has already become a sukkah: a fragile hut,
isolated, exposed and apparently abandoned.
On Tisha B’Av, we remember the destruction of the Temple. But we also remember the
fragility of Jewish existence in exile.
In the haftarah we have read today, Isaiah expresses that fragility through the language of
Sukkot. A sukkah is temporary. Its roof is incomplete. Its walls cannot offer the security of
stone. It exposes us to wind, rain and darkness. But the language of Sukkot is not only the
language of fragility.
It is also the language of unity. A famous Midrash in Vayikra Rabbah [30:12] teaches that the
etrog, lulav, myrtle and willow represent four kinds of Jews. The etrog has both taste and
fragrance and represents those who possess both learning and good deeds. The date palm has
taste but no fragrance and represents those who possess learning but not good deeds. The
myrtle has fragrance but no taste and represents those who possess good deeds but not
learning.
The willow has neither taste nor fragrance and represents those who appear to possess neither.
God commands us to bind all four together. The Four Species become an agudah achat - a
single bundle.
This year, on Tisha B’Av, I would like us to consider how our mourning for the destruction of
the Temple and our mourning for 7 October can hold us together, just as the Four Species are
held together at Sukkot. When we sit on the steps of the synagogue and hear the words of
Eikhah, we will not be performing an archaeological reconstruction of the emotions of people
who lived two thousand years ago.
We will bring with us the grief of 7 October: the grief for the hostages who have not returned,
the grief of families whose lives have been destroyed, and the grief of a Jewish people who
have once again discovered how fragile our security can be.
But we will also bring the knowledge that grief can either bind a people together or be used to
drive its members further apart.
Tisha B’Av teaches us the cost of fragmentation.
And I hope that the memory of that single etrog travelling between the congregations of Padua
will remind us that mitzvot can unite us.
May we learn once again to bind ourselves together, Israel and Diaspora, Sephardi and
Ashkenazi, Italian, British and Israeli, into an agudah achat: one bundle, one people,
responsible for one another.
Shabbat shalom.
Further readings
I have written a short essay on the problem of the etrog murkav and on the erroneous assumptions frequently made concerning the halakhic status of Italian citrons: “Are All Italian Cedri Kosher Etrogim? A Progressive Rabbinic Responsum.” It is available here:
All the primary sources cited in the essay were translated by me.
A more extensive treatment of the same question is Gerson Bacon, “The Hybrid Etrog,” UTJ Viewpoints, 13
May 2017: https://utj.org/viewpoints/responsa/the-hybrid-etrog/ Other useful studies include Gina Maruca, Gaetano Laghetti, and Karl Hammer, “Religious and Cultural Significance of the Citron (Citrus medica L. ‘Diamante’) from Calabria, Southern Italy: A Biblical Fruit of the Mediterranean,” Journal of Environmental Science and Engineering A 4 (2015): 203–209; and Maria Luisa Crosina, “Rito e natura: la festa ebraica di ‘Sukkoth’ o dei Tabernacoli e il ruolo del cedro italiano attraverso i secoli,” Annali di studi religiosi 2 (2001): 77–100.
On Moses Isserles, see Asher Siev, Rabbi Moses Isserles: Ramo—His Life, Works, and Ideas; His Colleagues,
Pupils, and Descendants (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1972). A concise biography of Samuel Judah
Katzenellenbogen is available through the Posen Library. On his father, Meir Katzenellenbogen, known as the Maharam of Padua, see Neil Weinstock Netanel, “Maharam of Padua v. Giustiniani: The Sixteenth-Century Origins of the Jewish Law of Copyright,” Houston Law Review 44 (2007); and Simon Schwarzfuchs, “I responsi di Rabbi Meir da Padova come fonte storica,” in Scritti in memoria di Leone Carpi (1967), 112–132. Here you can find the family tree of the Katzenellenbogen. It includes, among others, Karl Marx, Moses Mendelssohn, Marcel Proust, Helena Rubenstein, Sigmund Freud, Martin Buber and the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
On the history of the Jewish communities of Padua, see Pier Cesare Ioly Zorattini, Adolfo Locci, and Stefano Zaggia, eds., Gli ebrei a Padova dal Medioevo ai giorni nostri: Il valore di una presenza (Florence: Giuntina, 2022), and Stefano Zaggia, Lo spazio interdetto: Il ghetto ebraico di Padova (Padua: Padova University Press, 2020). Benjamin Ravid’s edited volume The Jews of Padua (Padua: Il Poligrafo, 1999) is also frequently cited as a major reference. Unfortunately, I have not yet had the opportunity to consult it directly — a limitation worth acknowledging, rather than concealing behind the confident recycling of other people’s bibliographies.
On everyday student life in early modern Padua see Maria Cristina La Rocca and Giulia Zornetta, eds.,
Stranieri: Itinerari di vita studentesca a Padova tra XIII e XVIII secolo (Rome: Donzelli–Padova University
Press, 2022). For Jewish students see David B. Ruderman, “Padua and the Formation of a Jewish Medical
Community in Italy,” in Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1995), 100–117.
For the broader encounter among rabbinic learning, Renaissance humanism, and the University of Padua, see David B. Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), and Robert Bonfil, Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). On the pilgrimage of Prince Mikołaj Krzysztof Radziwiłł “the Orphan,”, see Eleonora Terleckienė, “The Pilgrimage Account of Mikalojus Kristupas Radvila Našlaitėlis: German Edition (1603),” Senoji Lietuvos literatūra 55 (2023): 115–136.
On fundraising among Italian Jews during the early modern period, particularly for persecuted communities and for the redemption of captives, see Bracha Rivlin, Mutual Responsibility in the Italian Ghetto: Holy Societies, 1516–1789 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1991; Hebrew); and Minna Rozen, The Mediterranean in the Seventeenth Century: Captives, Pirates and Ransomers (Palermo: Mediterranea, 2016). Throughout the early modern period, substantial sums were also collected for Jewish communities in the Land of Israel—a subject that remains, for reasons of its own, somewhat delicate for certain anti-Israel academics. See, for example, Matthias B. Lehmann, Emissaries from the Holy Land: The Sephardic Diaspora and the Practice of Pan-Judaism in the Eighteenth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014). For relations between Jews and Christians in early modern Poland, see Magda Teter, Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland: A Beleaguered Church in the Post-Reformation Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Edward Fram, Ideals Face Reality: Jewish Law and Life in Poland, 1550–1655 (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1997); and Jacob Goldberg, Jewish Privileges in the Polish Commonwealth: Charters of Rights Granted to Jewish Communities in Poland-Lithuania in the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1985).
For the religious and political history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, see Daniel Z. Stone, The
Polish-Lithuanian State, 1386–1795 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001); Robert I. Frost, The
Northern Wars: War, State and Society in Northeastern Europe, 1558–1721 (London: Longman, 2000); and Janusz Tazbir, A State without Stakes: Polish Religious Toleration in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (New York: Kościuszko Foundation, 1973).
On the Jesuits and print culture in the Commonwealth, see Magdalena Komorowska, “‘To Have a Printer at Hand’: Jesuits and the Dissemination of Printing in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth before 1620,” Journal of Jesuit Studies 10, no. 3 (2023): 503–519.
On Ashkenormativity see Devin E. Naar, “Our White Supremacy Problem: Exposing the Roots of Intra-Jewish Prejudice,” Jewish Currents, Spring 2019. On the exclusion and marginalisation of Sephardi and Mizrahi historical perspectives—and, more specifically, on the relative neglect of the displacement and persecution of Jews from Arab and Muslim-majority countries—see Lyn Julius, “Why Has the Exodus of the Jews from the Arab World Been Forgotten?,” lecture delivered for Lockdown University, 25 April 2022, transcript available online. See also Emanuela Trevisan Semi and Piera Rossetto, “Memory and Forgetting among Jews from the Arab-Muslim Countries: Contested Narratives of a Shared Past,” Quest: Issues in Contemporary Jewish History, no. 4 (November 2012): 1–14.
Comments