The Hybrid Etrog

The following responsum is reprinted from Tomeikh KaHalakhah volume 3.  Tomeikh KaHalakhah is UTJ’s series of volumes of responsa (teshuvot) promulgated by the Union For Traditional Judaism’s Panel of Halakhic Inquiry.

 

An employee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, at the USDA’s National Citrus Repository at University of California, Riverside, had in his possession a budding branch of an Israeli etrog tree that had been confiscated (as it is illegal to bring growing citrus into the USA). Knowing that an etrog grown from a grafted tree is not kosher, he wanted to know if by putting this branch through the established “cleaning” process, the resulting fruit would be acceptable for use. The following is the cleaning process: A piece of the budding branch is grafted onto a living stem that is known to be free from disease. As it grows, it can be determined what, if anything, is wrong with the plant. Any defects are then fixed. A cutting can then be made and caused to grow its own roots. This rooting plant can be grown and will produce fruit which is not the product of a graft. According to the USDA employee, throughout this process, there is no transfer of genetic information. The purpose of this “cleaning” process is to protect American citrus from disease and attack by insects. Would the etrog produced from the final rooted tree be kosher for use on Sukkot?

The question under consideration is but another link in a chain of ongoing halakhic controversy stretching back to the sixteenth century C.E. concerning the permissibility of hybrid etrogim (etrogim murkavim) for ritual use during the festival of Sukkot. For a short overview of the controversy and, more particularly, one of its most intense stages, the nineteenth-century debate over the so-called “Corfu etrogim,” see Solomon B. Freehof, The Responsa Literature (Philadelphia, 1959), pp. 173-177. A fuller treatment of the Corfu etrogim controversy can be found in Yosef Salmon, “Ha-pulmus Al Etrogei Corfu Ve-Etrogei Eretz Yisrael,” Zion 65 (5760), pp. 75-106. For a guide to the halakhic sources on this issue, see Eliahu Weisfish, Sefer Arba’at Ha-Minim Ha-Shalem (Jerusalem, 1979), pp. 51-59, 292-295, and the sources cited there; see also Kaf Ha-Hayyim, Orah Hayyim 648, pars. 133-142.

The Torah commands us (Lev. 23:40) concerning the taking of the Four Species: “On the first day [of Sukkot] you shall take for yourselves the fruit of a beautiful tree (pri etz hadar) etc.” Oral tradition identified the etrog as the “fruit of a beautiful tree” referred to in the verse (see, e.g., Targum Onkelos to Lev. 23:40). In the Talmud (Sukkah 35a), the rabbis attempted to find in the words of the verse some hint that would back up this identification: “Pri etz hadar—a tree whose tree and fruit have the same taste…Rabbi says: do not read ‘hadar’ [beauty] but rather ‘ha-dir’ [the cattle pen]—just as the pen has within it small ones and bigger ones, blemished ones and unblemished ones, so also here there are small ones and bigger ones, blemished ones and unblemished ones…that is, until the small ones come along the bigger ones are still in existence [the fruit stay on the tree more than one year]. Rabbi Abahu says: do not read ‘hadar’ [beauty], but rather ‘ha-dar’ [that dwells], something that dwells on its tree from year to year. Ben Azzai says: do not read ‘hadar’ [beauty] but rather ‘hidor’ for in Greek ‘water’ is called ‘hidor.’ What is it that grows near all kinds of water? The etrog.” A variant tradition is found in the halakhic midrash in the Sifra (Parashat Emor, ch. 16): “…the fruit of the tree—that which the taste of its tree resembles that of its fruit—that is the etrog. Ben Azzai says, hadar—which dwells on its tree from one year to the next.”

Until the late sixteenth century, we do not encounter the matter of hybrid etrogim in halakhic literature. Indeed, the Shulhan Arukh, in its discussion of the laws of the etrog and the Four Species (Orah Hayyim 648-649), does not raise the issue at all. Some nearly contemporary sources (various responsa and the Levush of Rabbi Mordecai Jaffe), however, do discuss the issue, and these early sources determine the direction of much of the subsequent halakhic discussion of the question to this day. Thus Rabbi Mordecai Jaffe (Levush Ha-hur, Orah Hayyim 649, par. 4) reports that “there are those who wish to permit those etrogim that come from the orchards called ‘gartezia,’ and I say that they are unfit according to the Torah, for it is know that they are hybrids, where a branch from an etrog is grafted onto an orange or lemon tree or vice versa. Now this means that the transgression of grafting two species (Lev. 19:19) has been done to it, and even if a Gentile made the hybrid, for there is an opinion in the chapter ‘the four methods of capital punishment’ (Sanhedrin, ch. 7) that even a Noahide is forbidden to make grafts. Since a transgression has been performed on this, even though it is permissible to be eaten, it is obnoxious to the Most High. The same is true in this case, so it seems to me.” Thus the hybrid etrogim, as the product of a forbidden act, even though such products are permissible for human consumption, are deemed unusable for ritual purposes.

In a responsum from 1586, Rabbi Moshe Alsheikh (Responsa Rabbi Moshe Alsheikh #110) notes that one rabbi in Safed had wanted to permit the use of hybrid etrogim, but the entire rabbinate of the city had decided as one not to permit their use. Rabbi Alsheikh gives several reasons for the prohibition, among them that according to a principle discussed in Sotah 43b, a branch of an etrog tree grafted onto a lemon tree is consider to be annulled and becomes in effect part of the lemon tree. The two species are thus mixed, and the Torah commands us to take the etrog alone as one of the Four Species. Even if the branch would not be considered annulled, the resulting fruit is still part lemon, part etrog, and like a person half slave, half free who cannot sound the shofar on Rosh Hashanah and fulfill the mitzvah, the part that is lemon cannot fulfill the obligation of taking the etrog on Sukkot. Furthermore, if the hybrid etrog would be of the minimum size, then it is actually less than the minimum size, since only half of it is etrog, the other half being lemon. At the close of the responsum, Rabbi Alsheikh writes that the whole matter is quite obvious, and he would not have bothered to cite sources, had it not been for one rabbi in Safed who was determined to permit the hybrid etrogim. That rabbi’s view, says Rabbi Alsheikh, is incorrect.

Finally, in a responsum written to Rabbi Moshe Isserles in sixteenth-century Poland, Rabbi Shmuel Yehuda Katzenellenbogen of Padua (appearing in Responsa Rabbi Moshe Isserles [Rema] #126, pp. 495-496 in the edition of Asher Siev) remarks that “it is a matter of elementary knowledge in our land not to use them [hybrid etrogim] even in a time of emergency. I have heard from my master and father of blessed memory [Rabbi Meir Katzenellenbogen, known as Maharam Padua] that it occurred once in Padua that the community had only one etrog, and when it was in transit from the Ashkenazi congregation to the Sefardi congregation, a [Gentile] student stole the etrog from the messenger, and they redeemed it for a large sum, for they did not want to fulfill the mitzvah with hybrids, which existed in abundance in all the noble households.” He further notes that recently there had come from the province of Pulia etrogim whose permissibility was not clear. Rabbi Katzenellenbogen then proceeds to list a number of identifying traits that were accepted in his area as distinguishing between pure-bred etrogim and hybrids.

Of these earliest mentions of the issue, only Rabbi Moshe Isserles himself (Responsa Rema #117, pp. 475-476 in the edition of Asher Siev) was willing to allow the use of hybrid etrogim in an emergency. He too starts from the position that hybrids are no longer considered etrogim, and are not the “fruit of the beautiful tree” required by the Torah. Rabbi Isserles notes that he has heard that oranges and lemons too remain on the tree from year to year, and they possess the other signs mentioned in the Talmud, yet no one would ever think to use these fruits instead of the etrog. Similarly, the hybrid, as something separate, is invalid for use on Sukkot. The external signs are not enough, since it is clear that the hybrid is not an etrog. At the end of the responsum, however, he adds one caveat: “I will not cast aspersions on earlier generations who had the custom to pronounce the blessing on such an etrog at a time of need. Nevertheless, we should not leave the realm of permissibly to pronounce the blessing on such etrogim except in a case of extreme need.”

These attitudes characterize the subsequent halakhic debate. Though there are hints that some communities did in the past use such etrogim, the emerging consensus was that hybrid etrogim are invalid for ritual use. Only with the greatest reluctance would some authorities permit their use in a time of pressing need (presumably when no other etrogim could be obtained that year). Thus Rabbi Yoel Sirkis (Responsa Bayit Hadash #135) says that it is not proper to use hybrid etrogim in the first instance when others are available, but when there are no others, we should not protest against those who do pronounce the blessing over them, and “this is the custom everywhere according to what I have heard.” We find a similar ruling in Responsa Panim Meirot part 2 #173, which differs with the Levush (cited above), who forbade the hybrid etrog as a forbidden mixture of species (kilayim). Actually, these hybrids have the smell and taste of a real etrog with no perceptible difference, so that those who rely on earlier generations and pronounce the blessing over them have fulfilled their obligation after the fact.

Despite these occasional grudging permissive views (for further opinions, see the list given in Weisfish, Sefer Arba’at Ha-Minim Ha-Shalem, p. 292, par. 103), the vast majority of authorities forbid completely the use of hybrid etrogim, though the reasoning adduced for the prohibition may differ from case to case. Thus, in his standard commentary on the Shulhan Arukh, Rabbi Avraham Gombiner (Magen Avraham, Orah Hayyim 648:23) determines that an etrog that is a hybrid of lemon and etrog is invalid. He rejects, however, the reasoning of the Levush to invalidate the hybrid, namely because a transgression had been committed to it, placing it in the same category as a hybrid animal, which is invalid for sacrifice. He argues, rather, that it is invalid because it is not called an etrog at all. Rabbi Ya’akov Reischer [ca.1670-1733] (Responsa Shevut Ya’akov, Orah Hayyim, part I #36) relates an incident that had taken place some years before in Prague. For some reason, in that year only hybrid etrogim came to Prague, and the local rabbi forbade saying the blessing over them. Some local belligerent types wanted to disobey his ruling, and through smooth talk convinced the noted authority Rabbi Shabbetai Ha-Kohen, known as the Shakh (who was visiting Prague at that time), to issue a ruling that one could pronounce the blessing in a time of emergency. They even forced the cantor of the famous Altneuschul of Prague to pronounce the blessing over the etrog out loud, but “when he was about to do this, he was prevented from Heaven, for the etrog fell from his hand, and its stem was broken…” Later on, letters arrived in Prague from rabbis in Germany, Poland, and Moravia, all of whom had that year forbidden people to pronounce the blessing over the hybrid etrogim. Before his death, Rabbi Shabbetai Ha-Kohen regretted his decision, and sent a letter to the Prague rabbi asking for his forgiveness. Rabbi Reischer concludes by saying that the consensus of earlier and later authorities was to forbid pronouncing the blessing over such etrogim, as is confirmed by their writings and reported actual incidents.

Following in chronological order, a number of authorities from the eighteenth  through the twentieth centuries take a similar negative stance: Rabbi Hayyim Yosef David Azulai (Birkei Yosef, Orah Hayyim 648:5); Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liady (Shulhan Arukh Ha-Rav, Orah Hayyim 648:31, 649:23—if people used these etrogim in times of emergency, they might mistakenly use them in other years, even though proper etrogim are available); Rabbi Avraham Danzig (Hayyei Adam 152:2); Rabbi Yehi’el Mikhel Epstein (Arukh Ha-Shulhan, Orah Hayyim 648:27); Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan (Mishnah Berurah, Orah Hayyim 648:65), who adds that according to many rabbis, not only should one not pronounce the blessing over the hybrid etrog, but one should not take it even without saying the blessing. In a responsum from 1833, Rabbi Moshe Sofer (Responsa Hatam Sofer, Orah Hayyim #207) was asked about using etrogim originating from islands where they had not been imported previously. He rejects the possibility of relying on the identifying signs related by Rabbi Katzenellenbogen in his responsum (mentioned above). He maintains that all these signs are not from the Torah, nor are they mentioned anywhere in the Talmud. Rabbi Sofer suggests that by law the etrog is comparable to the case of the various species of birds that are permitted to be eaten. It is a matter of tradition as to which birds are kosher. In the same way, there was a long-standing tradition going back to the medieval sages of France and Germany that etrogim from Genoa are kosher for use. When Rabbi Katzenellenbogen listed the signs, he wanted to be able to tell that the etrogim are from that place, but for etrogim from another place, even if they have these signs, this list of criteria does not prove that they are pure-breds. Rabbi Sofer’s conclusion was that all etrogim not from recognized locations must have a certificate of kashrut attesting that they are not hybrids; we cannot rely on external signs alone. In the wake of the controversy over the Corfu etrogim, both the Arukh Ha-Shulhan (Orah Hayyim 648:28- 29) and the Mishnah Berurah (Orah Hayyim 648:65) adopted the view of the Hatam Sofer, adding their own directives regarding the types of supervision and certificates that they considered reliable.

In this ongoing debate on the Corfu etrogim, one major dissenting voice was that of Rabbi Ephraim Zalman Margaliot of Brody (d. 1828). In a lengthy and fascinating responsum (Responsa Bet Ephraim #56, summarized in Sha’arei Teshuvah, Orah Hayyim 648:7), he cites the various sources that had invalidated hybrid etrogim, and analyzes their reasons, making a convincing case that the etrogim of Corfu do not belong to the category of hybrids at all. He maintained that the precedent cited from Sotah 43b, of the younger plant being annulled to the older plant to which it has been grafted, referred only to grafts of the same species. Grafts from another species, however, were different, as the grafted branch still made its own fruit, and was not changed in essence. Thus in the case of the etrog branch grafted onto a lemon tree, the fact that it received nourishment from the ground via the lemon tree does not annul its being an etrog. How much more so, argued Rabbi Margaliot, when the Corfu etrogim are based on temporary grafts, where at some point long ago the etrog branches were grafted onto lemon trees, but later on were removed and planted separately in an area far from the lemon trees, and the trees that grew subsequently were etrog trees alone. For the Bet Ephraim, temporary grafting and partial nourishment via another tree does not invalidate the etrogim. He noted that in his region it was a widespread custom to use such etrogim and pronounce the blessing over them, for “they are exceedingly beautiful.” Of all the precedents and cases cited so far, this case most resembles the present case under discussion.

As convincing as his argument may be, however, the view of the Bet Ephraim remains a minority one. The vast majority of rabbinic authorities rejected etrogim for which there was even the slightest suspicion of being hybrids. As Rabbi Yosef Efrati, perhaps the leading authority today on matters of Halakhah and agriculture, wrote to me in a private communication: “…after consultation with Dr. M. Zaks [his scientific consultant], it appears to me that this case involves grafting onto a tree, apparently another citrus tree, and if this is so, then according to the view of the Hazon Ish, if the first graft is invalid, then all subsequent growths are invalid. This appears to be his view in [Hazon Ish] chapter 2—‘the helper shall trip and the helped one shall fall’ (Is. 31:3). It is clear that according to Bet Ephraim there would be room to be lenient. But he who wants an etrog with no hybridization whatsoever cannot rely on this.” Rabbi Efrati also says that he discussed the case under consideration here with Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, a leading halakhic authority, and the same conclusion emerged. Rabbi Efrati referred to the view of Rabbi Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz, the leading halakhic authority of the previous generation in Israel, who, in a general discussion of the subject of grafting fruit trees to vegetable plants and the halakhic implications thereof (Hazon Ish, Kilayim ch. 2, par. 15 [end]) makes a short cryptic comment that “there is some room to doubt whether we can allow an etrog grafted to a lemon tree when the fruits are entirely etrog in taste, smell and appearance, but the truth is that due to the grafting it changes in its internal and external structure in several details, and it already enters the realm of the prohibited. We cannot learn about the etrog from the case of kilayim, for in the case of kilayim the appearance is the main thing, while for the etrog the species is the main thing.”

The main point is that although the view of the Bet Ephraim is a legitimate alternative, the whole trend of the discussion of hybrid etrogim has been to disallow them, permitting their use at best after the fact and only in a case of extreme need. Thankfully today, with the plentiful supply of etrogim, this is not the situation. Thus, we could make a theoretical case to allow the etrogim resulting from shoots replanted after the “cleaning” process described in the question, but in practice the tendency of halakhic decision-making on this subject has been to seek the finest etrogim. In our days, the mitzvah of taking the “fruit of the beautiful tree” is a prime example of the principle of hiddur mitzvah (performing a mitzvah in the most beautiful and esthetic way possible). Finally, we would venture the opinion that, all things being equal, for the fulfillment of the mitzvah of taking the etrog, one should give first precedence to the products of the land of Israel. As Rabbi Yehi’el Mikhel Epstein noted almost a century ago (Arukh Ha-Shulhan Orah Hayyim 648:29): “Therefore every Jew whose heart is touched by the fear of God will take only the etrogim of the land of Israel. How could we not be ashamed, when we can fulfill the mitzvah with the fruits of our Holy Land?…Woe to us for that shame, woe for that disgrace. Regarding this was said the verse (Psalms 106:24): ‘they have rejected the desirable land…’ Therefore one should be very careful about this.”

May the observance of the festival of Sukkot, in all its beauty and joy, bring us the blessing promised in the Torah (Deut. 16:15): “…for the Lord your God will bless all your crops and all your undertakings, and you shall have nothing but joy.”