Sukkot Pilgrims Head to Italy for Perfect Etrog

Image by haaretz
At dawn, before the summer heat starts baking the countryside, groups of bearded men with black kippas descend upon the citrus groves that dot the coast of Calabria, in southern Italy.
The sight of Hasidim wandering the fields and villages in this relatively isolated Italian region could seem incongruous, since practically no Jews have lived in the area for half a millennium. But local farmers have gotten used to the groups of Orthodox Jews who visit every summer to supervise the harvest of the etrog, one of the four species essential to the rituals of Sukkot.
Ahead of the holiday, a growing number of Jews from various Orthodox groups travel to the part of Calabria known as the “Riviera dei Cedri” –- the “Etrogim Riviera” -– to pick, box and ship only the best, unblemished citrons to faithful around the world.
The delegations of rabbis, mashgichim (kashrut supervisors) and yeshiva students belong mainly to the Chabad Lubavitch and Satmar movements, whose members traditionally favor Calabrian etrogim to celebrate Sukkot.
“It used to be just a couple of people picking a few hundred etrogim,” says Rabbi Menachem Lazar, Chabad’s envoy in Rome. “Now dozens of people come every year and collect tens of thousands of fruits.”
The Calabrian etrogim are sought after not only for their quality and conformity to strict halakha requirements, but also for their connection to the once-thriving Jewish communities of southern Italy, which were expelled when the area became a Spanish domain in the early 16th century.
For more go to Haaretz
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Culture Cardinals are Catholic, not Jewish — so why do they all wear yarmulkes?
- 2
Fast Forward Ye debuts ‘Heil Hitler’ music video that includes a sample of a Hitler speech
- 3
News School Israel trip turns ‘terrifying’ for LA students attacked by Israeli teens
- 4
Fast Forward Student suspended for ‘F— the Jews’ video defends himself on antisemitic podcast
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion This week proved it: Trump’s approach to antisemitism at Columbia is horribly ineffective
-
Yiddish קאָנצערט לכּבֿוד דעם ייִדישן שרײַבער און רעדאַקטאָר באָריס סאַנדלערConcert honoring Yiddish writer and editor Boris Sandler
דער בעל־שׂימחה האָט יאָרן לאַנג געדינט ווי דער רעדאַקטאָר פֿונעם ייִדישן פֿאָרווערטס.
-
Fast Forward Trump’s new pick for surgeon general blames the Nazis for pesticides on our food
-
Fast Forward Jewish feud over Trump escalates with open letter in The New York Times
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.