Journey from China to Israel

Abstract

Moster traces the etrog’s 4000-mile (6500-km) journey from its evolutionary home in Yunnan, China, to the land of Israel. He demarcates the etrog’s botanical “center of origin” in Yunnan and catalogs the fruit’s first appearance in ancient Chinese texts. Next, Moster explains how the etrog spread naturally to India, where it was used as a medicine and became a symbol of fertility in the iconography of Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. The next stage in the etrog’s journey involved the Persians, who came in contact with the fruit when they conquered western India in 518 BCE. The Persians had a special interest in exotic fruits and brought the etrog back with them to the many provinces of their empire. This is how the etrog found its way to a “paradise garden” next to a Persian outpost at Ramat Raḥel, Israel, and from there it spread quickly. Within a matter of centuries, the fruit became identified as the biblical “choice tree-fruit” (peri ‘eṣ hadar/פרי עץ הדר) of Leviticus 23:40, which made it integral to the holiday of Sukkot (Tabernacles).