Etrog: How a Chinese Fruit Became a Jewish Symbol.

• Author: Weingarten, Susan

Etrog: How a Chinese Fruit Became a Jewish Symbol. By DAVID Z. MOSTER. New York: PALGRAVE MACMILLAN, 2018. Pp. xv + 144, illus. $54.99.

The Etrog Citron (Citrus medica L): Tradition and Research. Essays on the Scientific. Halachic and Historical Significance of the Etrog. Edited by ELIEZER GOLDSCHMIDT and MOSHE BAR-JOSEPH. Jerusalem: MOSSAD HARAV KOOK, 2018. Pp. 24 + 14 + 480, illus. IS96. [Hebrew with English abstracts]

The major use today of the etrog, the citron, Citrus medica L., is in Jewish religious ritual. Here it makes up part of the Four Species (etrog, lulav [= palm branch], willow, and myrtle) now used to celebrate the festival of Sukkot, Tabernacles, following the rabbinical identification of the biblical "fruit of a goodly tree" in Leviticus 23:40, as referring to the etrog. It is no accident, then, that both David Moster's Etrog: How a Chinese Fruit Became a Jewish Symbol, and Eliezer Goldschmidt and Moshe Bar-Joseph's The Etrog Citron (Citrus medica L.): Tradition and Research, begin in the same mode. Both books start with a description of the authors' experiences of buying an etrog in the special markets devoted to the Four Species held before the festival. Moster's market is in New York, while Goldschmidt's is in Jerusalem. Contrary to what we might have expected, however, Goldschmidt and Bar-Joseph's book is the more scientific production, while Moster's is a more romantic narrative, showing the journey of the etrog from China to its "new homeland where she is loved, honoured and esteemed," i.e., present-day Israel/Palestine.

Goldschmidt and Bar-Joseph have edited a thick volume of invited papers by experts in their respective fields (about half of them retired professors). There is hardly a field not represented here: Jewish law, tradition, and philosophy; botany; geography; history; art; literature; as well as cultivation practices; handling and marketing; biochemistry; genetics; and medicinal and culinary uses. Goldschmidt notes that he has deliberately aimed at a diversity of opinions, which means that there is a certain degree of overlap between the papers.

Moster's slim book, in contrast, takes as its main thesis a single line, and traces what he calls the "step-by-step journey of the etrog from its home in Yunnan in China, to Northern India, Iran and finally the land of Israel." Moster's claim that the etrog originated in China is, he tells us, based on the paper of G. F. Gmitter and Xulan Hu (1990), which puts forward the hypothesis that the etrog originated in Yunnan...