Moses in Calabria: A story of Sukkot

Calabria is the southernmost region of mainland Italy and the toe of Italy’s boot-like shape. Here it is on a map.
Within North West Calabria, by the shores of the Tyrrhenian secon of the Mediterranean Sea, there is a small area famous for one thing: Etrogs.
They call it the “Riviera dei Cedri”. That means “The Etrog Riviera” in English. The nearest big town is called Diamante, which means Diamond on English.
Etrogs (aka Citrons) are extremely difficult fruits to grow. Their trees are fragile and need a special soil and micro-climate of extreme heat and sea breezes, which is only found in a few areas of the world. They are strange trees for a number of reasons including that the Etrogs fruit at various different mes of the year and do not mature nor fall off the tree at the same me. Thus the same tree will have year-old mature Etrogs and baby Etrogs hanging on it at the same me.
My wife Corinna’s family comes from this Diamante/Riviera dei Cedri area of Calabria and we visited it this summer with our children Moses, Grace and Hector.
While we were in Calabria we came across some Hasidic Jews wandering around. Most of them had black hats, pesot, beards, glasses and black coats
and looked just like the “frummers” one sees in Stamford Hill.
They invited me to a shul they had made in the garage of the apartment block where they were staying. I went there, did my incompetent best to follow their Shacharit service as the sun came up and heard them leyn the Torah with strange pronunciation. They wore a special tallit that had sparkling solid silver atarah sewn into it.

It was a weird, exotic, powerful experience.

I got to know one of the Lubavitch rabbis, Yossi from Canada. Here he is picking the Etrogs. He told me that Jews have been coming to Calabria for hundreds of years to pick the Etrogs, which are thought to be the best quality, and the most beauful in the world. Although Etrogs grow in other places, mainly Israel and Morocco, the variees there are different there, and considered far less precious.

There is a legendary reason for that. The Chasidim believe that Moses, or angels sent on his behalf, came to Calabria to pick the Etrogs during Israel’s 40 years of wandering in the desert. Moses needed an Etrog to celebrate Sukkot. However, Etrogs cannot grow in the desert. They grow in Eretz Yisrael, but Moses was forbidden by God from entering Eretz Yisrael for his sin at Meriva, when he forgot to give God’s message to Israel before producing water from a rock. God therefore allowed Moses to obtain an Etrog from Calabria. Since then, according to the Hasidim, it has been a great mitzvah to celebrate Sukkot with a Calabrian Etrog. Indeed, it seems Hasidim will use nothing else. The rabbis apparently know each tree intimately. They look for Etrogs of a particular shape. Each Hasidic group has a particular preference for a certain rare shape and colour of Etrog, which increases the beauty and power of the mitzvah of shaking the lulav.

The lulav is made of four species each of which symbolises a different part of the body.
Here they are:
The four species also symbolise four different types of Jews. The Etrog, because it looks, smells and tastes good, is also the symbol of the best type of Jew- one whose life is full of Torah and good deeds. The palm produces dates but has no scent and represents Jews who study Torah but do not do good deeds. The myrtle has a strong scent but no taste. It is the symbol of Jews who perform good deeds but have little knowledge of Torah. The willow, which has neither taste nor scent, represents Jews who have little knowledge of Judaism and also do not perform good deeds. The lulav cannot work without all four species. Just as, in some mystical way, the Jewish people cannot continue without all four types of Jews.
At the end of our surprisingly Etroggy holiday, we got married, in a lovely garden overlooking the sea: The local mayor, seen in the photo, gave a little speech in which he said that this area of Calabria was, for hundreds of years, hundreds of years ago, the home of several substantial Jewish communities.