Timeline for Why doesn't the fig have a tikkun?
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33 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Nov 12 at 17:29 | comment | added | Shababnik | I suggest moving this discussion to a new question as to the historical use of the citron or fig being the true eitz hadar | |
| Nov 12 at 17:24 | comment | added | Meir | Furthermore, you're claiming that even though esrogim were available from Persian times onward, they weren't established as the definitive pri etz hadar until the end of the Second Temple era. Well, that's long after the Sadducees came to be, and yet once again there is not the slightest indication that they disagreed. Please try to not contradict yourself and pass that off as "scholarship." | |
| Nov 12 at 17:21 | comment | added | Meir | @YDJ That it's found in Persian gardens doesn't mean that the fruits weren't there before. I don't know why that's such a hard concept for you to grasp. Now, you do know, don't you, that the Torah repeatedly describes E.Y. as a "land flowing with milk and honey" where "you will not eat bread in desperation"? Lehavdil, we have ancient Egyptian documents such as the Tale of Sinuhe that also tell of the bounty of the land. So it simply isn't true that "people had [a] hard time producing enough food to feed themselves," and it certainly wouldn't have prevented the well-off from doing so. | |
| Nov 12 at 16:56 | comment | added | Y DJ | @Meir before Persians nobody grew esrogim in Eretz Israel. Please learn history about why Persians planted the gardens. People had hard time producing enough food to feed themselves. | |
| Nov 12 at 16:45 | comment | added | Y DJ | @Meir the strict halachic opinions developed during Persian exile, the pollen of esrog is found in one of the "paradise gardens" planted by Persians in Eretz Israel. Division into Saducees and Pharicees happened afterwards. The midrashim and Gemara were also written long after those glorious days. If Garden of Eden was in the Middle East it could not be growing esrogim. It's a midrash not p'shat, by going this way you have to explain why so many different plant species compete for being one single Etz haDaas. Did Hashem split it into so many different species? Shalom. | |
| Nov 12 at 16:39 | comment | added | Meir | Worth noting, too, that there is not a single opinion - not among the rabbis, not even among the Sadduccees or whoever - that "pri etz hadar" is anything other than the esrog. If as you claim it was established as such only at a later date, we would expect there to be some controversy on the subject. | |
| Nov 12 at 16:39 | comment | added | Meir | @YDJ That, of course, doesn't necessarily follow; you didn't have any incentive to keep the fruit from drying out or spoiling, while they did, and could have taken steps to mitigate that. Anyway, though, fine: sooner or later someone would have gotten the idea to plant them in Eretz Yisrael so they wouldn't have to import them every year. Still no evidence whatsoever that this wasn't done in ~1300 BCE. | |
| Nov 12 at 15:36 | comment | added | Y DJ | @Meir it only says that the fruit of esrog fruit dries out, and does not rot. Based on the esrogim I kept after Succos, in about 3 months it gets dry and small as a nut, and we are not talking about travelling through vast dry desert areas and Tibetan mountains where the air is extremely dry to turn any esrog into a nut much faster. It may preserve the seeds, but not the fruit necessary for the Chag. Also the Shmita esrog I had from Israel did actually rot and I buried it, so esrog fruit may also rot on the way. | |
| Nov 12 at 15:20 | comment | added | Meir | @YDJ Wait, what? First of all, esrogim - as mentioned in the very article you cited - can last for quite a while in transit, unlike other citrus fruits. (After all, even according to you and your article, they eventually did so in the late centuries BCE, when travel wasn't any easier than it had been a millennium earlier.) As for "the fleet of King Shlomo was lost" - I have no idea where you're getting that from; no such loss is recorded. | |
| Nov 12 at 14:19 | comment | added | Y DJ | @Meir Ketores was a unique sacrifice in Beis haMikdash. They could obtain dry spices that do not rot in one shiment for an entire year. But your insistence on importing esrogim from Far East is impossible: it takes too many days to either travel by land on a camel or horse or by foot to deliver a few esrogim from China. Have you ever done such a travel? The esrogim would get dry and pasul on the way. Travel by sea to far east has not been documented and the fleet of king Shlomo was lost. | |
| Nov 12 at 4:00 | comment | added | Meir | @YDJ Consider the ingredients of the Ketores. Few of them grow natively in Eretz Yisrael either; some of them also had to be imported from the Far East. Yet they're right there in the Written Torah as necessary components, and obviously they found a way to get them. The same thing would have been true with the esrog. | |
| Nov 11 at 23:57 | comment | added | Y DJ | @Yø-cRo the details are in the book by David Moster "Etrog: How a Chinese fruit became a Jewish symbol" will all the evidence and research. Halacha developed over many years, and many things were absorbed as established minhagim. link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-73736-2 | |
| Nov 11 at 23:45 | comment | added | Yø-c Ro | @YDJ I’m asking how this can be justified from a halachic standpoint, especially given the fact that there is no evidence that the Esrog didn’t exist in Israel at that point. | |
| Nov 11 at 23:43 | comment | added | Y DJ | @Yø-cRo there are many species related to arava native to the middle east. Many species related to hadas. The citrus species are native to the Far East. | |
| Nov 11 at 23:35 | comment | added | Yø-c Ro | @YDJ According to the Rambam I referenced, each of the four species is specific and one cannot bring something similar to replace any of them. Does it seem logical to you that a Aravah that has ridges on its leaves is pasul but a fig instead of an Esrog is kosher? | |
| Nov 11 at 23:25 | comment | added | Meir | @YDJ Who says "originally"? They may have originated elsewhere, and only one species was brought to Eretz Yisrael. | |
| Nov 11 at 23:01 | comment | added | Y DJ | @Meir if esrog was present in Eretz Israel originally, there would be many different species of citrus trees present there as well. Just like we have 5 types of grains - all related. But those citrus species are found in the Far East only, many miles away. | |
| Nov 11 at 22:57 | comment | added | Meir | @YDJ That they didn't find such pollen in pre-Babylonian Exile layers doesn't mean that esrogim weren't present in the country. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. | |
| Nov 11 at 22:56 | comment | added | Y DJ | @Yø-cRo of course not. The Torah does not specify the fruit. The minhag was adopted later due to various reasons to use esrog. Therefore, when it comes to observance in earlier times people could use other types of fruit as the minhag had not yet been not fixed. | |
| Nov 11 at 21:14 | comment | added | Yø-c Ro | @YDJ Do you mean to say we never performed the mitzvah of dalet minim (as per Rambam Hilchos Lulav 7:5)? | |
| Nov 11 at 19:14 | comment | added | Y DJ | @Meir and before "post babylonian" times? | |
| Nov 11 at 19:13 | comment | added | Y DJ | @Qwertrl that would support only a king for a mitzvah. | |
| Nov 11 at 18:55 | comment | added | Meir | @YDJ Look up the difference beween terminus a quo and ad quem. That they found such pollen in a post-Babylonian Exile era layer means that that's the latest time that esrogim could have been introduced into the Land of Israel, not the earliest. | |
| Nov 11 at 18:41 | comment | added | Qwertrl | @YDJ what, did trade not exist yet? Even if we accept the premise that there was no large-scale farming of the etrog in the Middle East, there’s no reason to assume they didn’t use Etrogim for Sukkot. And they wouldn’t even need to get a lot. Remember, in the second Temple era, they only had one Lulav for everyone. | |
| Nov 11 at 17:36 | comment | added | Y DJ | Fine, but not earlier. David haMelekh did not use the esrog fruit. It is very likely the custom adopted from Persian exile. There were no esrog trees in the Middle East before that time. | |
| Nov 11 at 17:29 | comment | added | Meir | @YDJ That article states that archeologists have found fossilized esrog pollen from the post-Babylonian Exile era (i.e., before the Second Temple or in its early years). So already your "became available in Eretz Israel only at the end of the 2nd Temple era" is refuted. | |
| Nov 11 at 5:31 | comment | added | Y DJ | jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/3467/…. | |
| Nov 11 at 4:51 | comment | added | Shababnik | @YDJ That's quite some claim | |
| Nov 11 at 4:38 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Nov 11 at 4:09 | comment | added | Y DJ | The plant of esrog originates in China and Far East like all citrus plants, and became available in Eretz Israel only at the end of 2nd Temple era. It is likely that esrog replaced the fig as a beautiful fruit in the lulav bundle. | |
| Nov 10 at 21:22 | answer | added | Shababnik | timeline score: 3 | |
| Nov 10 at 20:50 | history | edited | Shababnik | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Nov 10 at 20:33 | history | asked | Shababnik | CC BY-SA 4.0 |