(JNS.org) — Hagai Kirshenbaum is a member of the fourth generation of his family to harvest etrogim (singular: etrog) on a large orchard outside of Rehovot in central Israel. Each year, he personally oversees the annual export of thousands of what the Torah calls the \u201cfruit of a beautiful tree.\u201d<\/p>\n
But not this year.<\/p>\n
This fall marks the culmination of the Jewish shmita (sabbatical) year, which began on Rosh Hashanah in September 2014 and corresponds to the Hebrew calendar year 5775. Though Kirshenbaum\u2019s orchards produced just as many of the yellow citron fruits that Jews around the world will use this holiday season for Succot (Sept. 27 at sundown through Oct. 4), he projects he will sell only about two-thirds of his usual crop.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople choose not to buy from Israel after a shmita year despite there being poskim (religious decision-makers) who say you can,\u201d Kirshenbaum says.<\/p>\n
While he doesn\u2019t want to judge others\u2019 decisions, Kirshenbaum says he feels Jews should make a point of buying religious and spiritual items from Israel, and that those who choose not to do so are impacting the lives and livelihoods of people like himself.<\/p>\n
Kirshenbaum is not alone in his sentiments. On average, Israeli farmers export 350,000 etrogim to the United States each fall holiday season\u2014but only about 50 percent of that amount on the tail of a shmita year, according to a report by Israel\u2019s Ministry of Agriculture.<\/p>\n
Shmita is a Torah commandment (Leviticus<\/em> 25: 3-6) observed exclusively in the land of Israel. As soon as the Jews settled in Israel, they began to count and observe seven-year cycles. Every cycle would culminate in a sabbatical year\u2014\u201cshmita,\u201d which literally translates as \u201crelease.\u201d During that year, Israeli farmers must completely desist from cultivating their fields. They also relinquish personal ownership of their fields; whatever produce grows on its own is considered communal property, free for anyone to take.<\/p>\n After the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, rabbis were forced to grapple with how to support local farmers whose lives were built on working the land. One method is much like the one we see on Passover, when Jews \u201csell\u201d their chametz (leavened foods) to non-Jews but still keep it in their homes. Then, the chametz is \u201creturned\u201d to its Jewish owners after the holiday.<\/p>\n In this instance, Jews \u201csell\u201d their farms and\/or orchards to non-Jewish neighbors and receive them back (profits and all) in the fall, at the end of the shmita year. While this works for the majority of Israelis\u2014including the religious Zionist community\u2014there are many Orthodox Jews in the U.S. who instead will simply buy their produce from somewhere other than an Israeli source, rather than risk a potential transgression of the shmita law.<\/p>\n Rabbi Yosef Carmel of the Israel-based Eretz Hemdah Institute for Advanced Jewish Studies says those who choose not to buy Israeli produce during the shmita year are \u201cstringent where they don\u2019t need to be stringent, because they don\u2019t know the Jewish law.\u201d<\/p>\n Carmel, working with rabbinic colleagues, has compiled an extensive Jewish response on the subject detailing areas in the Torah that make clear \u201cthe special obligation to use a set of the four species\u2014etrog, lulav, boughs with leaves from a myrtle tree, and branches with leaves from a willow tree\u2014from Israel. This should be a consensus.\u201d<\/p>\n But there is not a consensus. Yeshiva University (YU) recently put out a primer that demonstrates the complications and options for dealing with Israeli produce during the shmita year. In that document, YU lists five ways farmers can handle shmita and explains that buyers need to decide what makes sense for them based on each methodology\u2019s pros and cons. It notes that many buyers choose a combination of methods:<\/p>\n Steve Berger, president of the MyIsraelConnection.com tourism and product sales website, agrees with Rabbi Carmel. His company has become a major distributor of the four species of Succot. Berger tells JNS.org<\/em> that while shmita \u201cis a beautiful and ancient ideal that is at the heart of Jewish tradition\u2026it is not designed to create a situation where Jewish consumers are hurting the Israeli economy.\u201d<\/p>\n Berger\u2019s business partner, Micky Katzburg, supervises the Israeli distribution of the four species for MyIsraelConnection.com. He has been selling the species as a fundraiser since he was a religious Zionist youth leader in Israel and brought the business to the U.S., when he came as a Jewish studies teacher several years ago. Katzburg and Berger explain that growth and sales of the four species has become a major enterprise in Arab countries such as Egypt and Morocco, who are now distributing these items to the U.S. They fear that if too much of the American purchases of etrogim this year come from Morocco, the farmers there will be able to develop a farming infrastructure faster and at a more competitive rate than their Israeli competitors, thereby continuously seizing market share in the coming years. Moroccan farmers have reportedly planted some 2,500 etrog trees in recent years in preparation for this year\u2019s sale.<\/p>\n Israeli etrog exporter Kirshenbaum, meanwhile, says he wants to ensure that the mitzvah of using the four species stays \u201cpure and Jewish.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf the four species is just another business, they (the species) will lose their holiness,\u201d says Kirshenbaum. \u201cDo you want your etrog to say \u2018Made in China,\u2019 or do you want the real thing from the holy land of Israel?\u201d<\/p>\n Maayan Jaffe is a Jerusalem-based freelance writer. Follow her on Twitter at @MaayanJaffe.<\/em><\/p>\n\n
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