Etrog: How A Chinese Fruit Became a Jewish Symbol*

*A must-read by David Z. Moster, published in 2018! Or check out this review from the Jewish Review of Books:
https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/3467/the-peculiar-history-of-the-etrog/

Sukkah 35a:1-5
GEMARA:The Sages taught that the verse states: “Fruit of a beautiful tree,” meaning, a tree that the taste of its tree trunk and the taste of its fruit are alike. What tree is that? You must say it is the etrog tree.The Gemara asks: And say that it is referring to the pepper tree, since the taste of its trunk and the taste of its fruit are alike... Therefore, it is impossible. The verse “the fruit of a beautiful tree” cannot be referring to peppers.Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi says: Do not read the verse as it is written, hadar, meaning beautiful, but rather read it hadir, meaning the sheep pen. And it means, just as in this pen there are large and small sheep, unblemished and blemished sheep, so too, this tree has large and small fruits, flawless and blemished fruits... so too, on an etrog tree, when the small ones come into being, the large ones still exist on the tree, which is not the case with other fruit trees.Rabbi Abbahu said: Do not read it hadar, but rather read it haddar, meaning one that dwells, referring to an item that dwells on its tree from year to year. Ben Azzai says: Do not read it hadar, but rather read it idur, as in the Greek language one calls water idur. And which is the fruit that grows on the basis of all water sources, and not exclusively through irrigation or rainwater? You must say it is an etrog.

RaMBaN on Leviticus 23:40:
" 'the fruit of a beautiful tree' is the fruit regarding which there is the greatest desire, and it was in it that Adam sinned. As is said, 'And the woman saw that the tree was good to eat, and attractive to the eyes, and the tree was pleasant to make wise, and she took of its fruit and ate' (Gen 3:6)."

"...The grammatical construction of this phrase, a chain of three dependent nouns, renders the meaning ambiguous. “Pri etz hadar” could mean “beautiful tree fruit” (emphasis on the fruit as being beautiful), “fruit of the beautiful tree” (emphasis on the tree that bears the fruit as being beautiful), or perhaps “beautiful fruit tree” (not a fruit at all but rather a tree that bears fruit and is beautiful)." - Rachel Scheinerman, "The Peculiar History of the Etrog"

"The etrog is indigenous not to the Land of Israel but to China (most commonly associated with mandarins but a cradle for many citrus species). Several millennia ago it grew most abundantly in Yunnan, a southwestern Chinese province, where it is still used, to this day, in traditional Chinese medicine."

"From there, it travelled to northeastern India and westward across the subcontinent, where it was now called bijapura (meaning “seed-filled”), matulunga, or jambhila and became a component of traditional Ayurvedic medicines used to treat everything from stomach complaints to hemorrhoids to infertility. One of the Buddhist gods, Jambhala, was often depicted holding an etrog as a symbol of fertility because of its high density of seeds. (One is reminded of the medieval Ashkenazi custom for a pregnant woman to bite off the tip of the etrog at the end of the holiday.)"

"When Darius I conquered India in 518 B.C.E., the fruit spread to Persia. Now it was called wādrang, which seems to be the linguistic precursor to the Aramaic word “etrog” (and also the English word “orange”). It later became known to Greek and Latin writers as the “Persian apple”... Throughout their vast empire, the Persians built royal outposts bedizened with generously irrigated ornamental gardens called pairidaeza or “paradises.”... One of these paradises was constructed after the Babylonian exile and before the conquests of Alexander the Great—that is, sometime between 538 B.C.E. and 332 B.C.E.—in Ramat Rachel, which sits on the outskirts of present-day Jerusalem and is today home to a kibbutz. Archaeologists have recently positively identified (based on an analysis of fossilized pollen trapped in the plaster of one of its pools!) the presence of 11 native and foreign species in that paradise, including the etrog."

"It was by no means predetermined that the etrog was to become the peri ‘eṣ hadar of Leviticus 23:40... Yet, despite the many possible interpretations, the etrog won out, and has come to be cherished in antiquity and today as the most beautiful and important Jewish fruit. Perhaps, in the twenty-first century in which we live, with its globalism, mass migrations, and melting-pot ethos, the fruit should be conceived of as “beautiful” (hadar) for the successful journey it has made. In many ways, there is nothing more beautiful than a migrant who has been able to leave behind the pressures of his or her youth to find a new homeland in which he or she is loved, honored, and esteemed." - David Z. Moster