The Journey to the Citron Trees of Morocco

Sept. 24 2015

The ritual observance of the holiday of Sukkot, which begins Sunday night, involves an etrog (citron). Since this Sukkot falls on the heels of a sabbatical year, Israeli-grown etrogim are off-limits, so Jews the world over will import them from elsewhere, especially Morocco. Ben Sales recounts his trip to a remote region in the Atlas Mountains where citrons are grown for this purpose:

As we got to flatter terrain, my fixer stopped and grinned at me. He raised his fists in triumph and motioned at me to take a photo. Down the path, as we passed by a river, he pulled a cluster of grapes off a vine; we all shared the snack. I allowed myself to exhale. I looked back at the sandy brown mountainscape we’d just traversed, freckled with palm trees and set against a bright blue sky. Maybe this would all work out, I thought.

A few hundred feet later, a man stood in front of us wearing a caftan and snow hat with what looked like a bush to our left. The fixer shook his hand. My translator pointed at the bush.

There it was, hanging just inches above the ground: a bright green etrog.

I soon saw others camouflaged among wide green leaves and weeds. The bush was, in fact, part of a grove. It looked less like the orchard I expected and more like a bramble—as if the fruit just happened naturally to grow there. I followed the branches down a rocky, uneven slope, dodging errant etrog vines and trying, once again, not to lose my balance.

Read more at JTA

More about: Etrog, Morocco, Religion & Holidays, Sukkot

A Letter to the Liberal Jews of 2024

One of the phenomena Wertheimer discusses in that essay is the people who call themselves “October 8 Jews” to describe “their transition from slumbering complacency to vigilant activism.” But there is no small number of American Jews who slumber on, or remain half-awake, unable to process fully events that run deeply contrary to their assumptions about the world. John Podhoretz addresses this group:

[I]n the year since October 7, you have taken odd solace at odd moments, as when Israel comes under criticism for the supposedly indiscriminate tactics it’s using in Gaza. That wouldn’t seem to be a good thing, but it does allow you to express that wondrous complexity, according to which, yes, of course, Israel must be allowed to defend itself—but within limits, within reason, and certainly not with this brute at its helm. Gazans must eat! Israeli soldiers must be put at greater risk of harm to lower the death toll!

Does it matter that Hamas has rejected fourteen separate cease-fire proposals designed with that very purpose? It doesn’t. Because the harsh reality—that Hamas and the Iran axis are evildoers who seek the mass murder of Jews and the elimination of the Jewish state—is just not very complicated at all. [This truth] compels you to accept that the blessed gift of being an American Jew over the past century has lulled you and people like you into an entirely false sense of safety and security. From your privileged perch, you have spent decades viewing with withering contempt others who take in the span and arc of Jewish history and say, as on Passover, “In every generation, they stand against us to destroy us.”

So simplistic, you thought. So vulgar. And yet, so true.

Read more at Commentary

More about: American Jewry, Gaza War 2023, Liberalism