Is The Fruit of Leviticus Really an Etrog?

Besides the sukkah itself, nothing is more associated with the holiday of Sukkot than the “four species” — the arba’a minim, as they are called in Hebrew. These are the etrog or citron fruit; the lulav or palm shoot, and the willow and myrtle branches in which the base of the palm shoot is set before it is blessed and waved in the synagogue.

Despite minor disputes over the ritual requirements for each of these items, Jews have agreed on what they are for roughly the past 2,000 years.

And yet when we look at the verse in the Bible commanding the display of the four species, Leviticus 23:20, the identity of three of them is far from clear. This verse reads, leaving the problematic parts of it in the original Hebrew: “And you shall take the fruit [p’ri] of ets hadar, fronds of palms trees, branches of an ets avot, and arvey naḥ al, and rejoice seven days before the Lord your God.”

This is strikingly at variance with a description in the somewhat later, fifth-century B.C.E. book of Nehemiah, in which Nehemiah tells the Judeans to celebrate Sukkot in Jerusalem with “olive leaves, and oil tree leaves, and myrtle leaves, and palm leaves, and the leaves of an ets avot.” By “oil tree” (ets shemen), Nehemiah, who lists five items rather than four, may have meant the resinous pine tree. (He couldn’t have meant the olive, which he had already mentioned.) No fruit is on his list at all.

And was the fruit of Leviticus really a citron? If one reads the passage there as though it were modern Hebrew, ets hadar means “a citrus tree,” this being the collective term for citrus trees today — and since the citron was the only known citrus tree in the Land of Israel in ancient times, the Bible would definitely have been referring to it. And yet this would be circular reasoning, inasmuch as ets hadar came to mean “citrus tree” in modern Hebrew only because of its traditional association with the citron. Taken literally, ets means “tree” and hadar means “splendor” or “majesty,” so that the biblical p’ri ets hadar simply means either “the fruit of a splendid tree” or “the splendid fruit of a tree.”

This is exactly how the third-and-second-century-B.C.E. Greek Septuagint, our oldest record of Jewish biblical interpretation, translates it with karpos horaios, “splendid [or “goodly”] fruit.” Just what this “goodly fruit” was, the Septuagint does not say; presumably, it could have been anything ripening around Sukkot-time, such as dates, pomegranates or late figs. Only in the Mishnah, redacted by the early rabbis in the third century C.E., do we first find this fruit designated the etrog or citron. A native of East Asia, the citron may have arrived in Palestine after the period of the Septuagint. Not as beautiful to look at as the pomegranate, and inedible unless made into a conserve, it was chosen as “the goodly fruit” by the rabbis for its divine smell.

The ets avot, or “thick tree,” whose branches accompany the “goodly fruit,” is equally nebulous. The Septuagint translates the term as kladoi xulou daseis, “thick branches of trees.” A klados is most commonly the branch of an olive tree, which is consistent with the verse in Nehemiah; yet though a thick olive branch may have been practical if placed in the Temple before its destruction in 70 C.E., it would have been ungainly to bring to a synagogue in rabbinic times. The rabbis, therefore, interpreted ets avot as a tree with dense branches and identified it with the hadas or myrtle. This is a seemingly puzzling choice, since myrtles, though densely branched, commonly grow as bushes, not trees. The explanation would seem to be that there was a desire to reconcile Leviticus with Nehemiah, and that possessing an old tradition that the myrtle was one of the four species, the rabbis took it to be the ets avot, even though Nehemiah lists them as two different plants.

This brings us to Leviticus’s arvey naḥ al. Naḥ al is biblical Hebrew for a winter stream that runs dry in summer but still has underground moisture, and arava is the name of a tree that grew by such a watercourse. Here, the rabbis and the Septuagint saw eye to eye that this “tree of the stream” was the willow (Greek itea). Yet there was also a tradition, strong enough for the rabbis to have to warn against following it, that the arava was a poplar — and just to confuse things more, in Hebrew’s sister language of Arabic the word for poplar is gharb, a cognate of arava, while the word for willow is safsaf, akin to Hebrew tsaftsafa, which means poplar!

At least there’s no dispute about the palm branch. Leviticus, Nehemiah, the Septuagint and the Mishnah all agree on it. Count me in, too.

Read more: http://forward.com/culture/184150/is-the-fruit-of-leviticus-really-an-etrog/ 

He Negotiated for Forgiveness.

Moses knew that he had found favor in God's eyes. By deliberately identifying himself with Israel, he extended that favor to the whole nation.

(Photos: Bigstock / Composition © FFOZ).

Special Shabbat Reading.

Special readings are applicable this Shabbat.

Shabbat Chol Hamoed Sukkot (סוכות שבת חל המועד | Intermediate Day of Sukkot on Shabbat).

 Torah: Exodus 33:12-34:26.

 Maftir: Numbers 29:23-31.

 Haftarah: Ezekiel 38:18-39:16.

Sukkot (Hebrew: סוכות or סֻכּוֹת, Feast of Tabernacles) is a Jewish holiday celebrated on the 15th day of Tishrei (late September to late October). It is one of the three biblically mandated festivals, shalosh regalim, on which Jews were commanded to make a pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem.

According to the prophet Zechariah, in the messianic era, Sukkot will become a universal festival and all nations will make pilgrimages annually to Jerusalem to celebrate the feast there.

On the first day of Sukkot, the following Torah portions are read: Leviticus 22:26-23:44; Numbers 29:12-29:16. On the intermediate days of Sukkot (Chol HaMo'ed), portions from Numbers 29:17-31 are read. When an intermediate day of Sukkot falls on Shabbat, read the portions below.

The Shabbat during Chol HaMo'ed on Sukkot is known as Shabbat Chol Hamoed Sukkot and in addition to the designated Torah reading, maftir, and haftorah readings for that day, Ecclesiastes (Kohelet) is read aloud in synagogue in its entirety with special cantillation prior to the Torah reading during services.

After forty days of fasting in his tent of meeting, Moses began to negotiate with God. Ever since the sin of the golden calf, the LORD had not referred to Israel as His people. Rather, they were Moses’ people: “Your people, whom you brought up from the land of Egypt” (Exodus 32:7).

Moses, on the other hand, remained in God’s favor. As he negotiated for forgiveness and atonement, he banked heavily on God’s favor for him. He complained that, although he remained in God’s favor, he felt disfavored because he was told to lead the people without God’s presence.

The Hebrew word translated as “favor (chen, חן)” can also be translated as “grace.” Thus Moses argued for mercy and forgiveness on the basis of God’s grace toward him.

You have said, “I have known you by name, and you have also found favor in My sight.” If I have found favor in Your sight, let me know Your ways that I may know You, so that I may find favor in Your sight. Consider too, that this nation is Your people. (Exodus 33:12-13).

On the basis of Moses’ complaint, the LORD relented ever so slightly. Whereas previously He had declared that He would not go with Israel as they went up from Sinai, now He conceded that He would go with Moses. He said to Moses, “My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest” (Exodus 33:14). Note that the pronoun “you” appears is in the singular form. The LORD only promised to go with Moses and give Moses rest. He did not say so regarding Israel, nor did He acknowledge them as His people.

Moses rejected the offer. Speaking in the first-person plural form, he said, “If Your presence does not go with us, do not lead us up from here” (Exodus 33:15). It was not adequate for God to accompany Moses, He needed to accompany the whole people. Moses deliberately identified himself with the people. It was as if Moses said, “If you want to show me favor and go with me, you need to show us all favor and go with all of us, because I am with the people.” Moses would accept nothing less than grace for the whole nation. He knew that he enjoyed the favor of the LORD; he sought to include the nation in the merit of God’s favor for him:

For how then can it be known that I have found favor in Your sight, I and Your people? Is it not by Your going with us, so that we, I and Your people, may be distinguished from all the other people who are upon the face of the earth? (Exodus 33:16)

Moses deliberately identified himself with the people, saying “us,” “we,” and, “I and Your people.” He no longer appealed to the covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He no longer appealed to the “what-will-the-Egyptians-think” argument. He appealed merely to God’s expressed favor for him. On his own merit in God’s eyes, Moses hoped to atone for the entire nation. It was the only thing he had left with which to negotiate.

The LORD conceded again and responded, “I will also do this thing of which you have spoken; for you have found favor in My sight and I have known you by name” (Exodus 33:17). God agreed to forgive the nation, go with them, and acknowledge them as His people on the basis of His favor for Moses.

This story illustrates the Chasidic concept of tzaddikism where the merit and favor of a single righteous person can be extended to others. On the basis of God’s gracious favor for one man, the entire nation received the forgiveness of sin and a restoration of relationship with the Almighty. On the merit of one righteous man’s standing with God, all Israel is granted standing with God. These are the mechanics of the gospel. The ultimate redeemer is like the first redeemer, making atonement for the entire nation on the basis of His merit alone.

The story also illustrates the meaning of the word grace. Christian teachers sometimes define “grace” as God’s unmerited favor. On the contrary, grace (chen, חן) implies merited favor. Someone did merit it. Our righteous Messiah merited God’s favor, and He identified Himself with us so that we might share in that favor.

http://torahclub.ffoz.org/portions-library/weekly-torah/grace-negotiations.html