Rosh Hashanah

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May the coming year be filled
with health, happiness and prosperity
for all our family and friends.

Madelon & Lou Seligman
Melissa Seligman
Adrianne, Jeff, Matthew
and Evan Katz

11!1`x.

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Etrog sales expected to be down
by half.

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May the coming year be filled
with health, happiness and prosperity
for all our family and friends.

Dr. Jeffrey and Laurie Fischgrund
Michelle, Marcy, Mark
Andrew and Melanie

May the coming year be filled with
health and happiness for all our family and friends.
L'Shanah Tovah!

Arlene and Chuck Beerman

64 September 10 • 2015

R4

Israeli Four Species
Farmers Face
Sizable Downturn

n advance of the upcoming Sukkot
holiday season, Israeli distributors
of the four species are predicting
that the shmitah year will take a very
heavy toll on their sales. This is despite
well-known and commonly accepted
halachic adjudications that allow for the
purchase of Israeli-
grown produce.
Despite the religious
mandate that requires
farming be curbed
during this year, lead-
ing religious authori-
ties approve specific
measures to allow for
the purchase of four
species grown in the
Holy Land and, in
so doing, ensure that
consumers help limit
the economic damage
to the growers and distributors and the
Israeli economy as a whole.
Like all produce grown in the shmitah,
the sale of four species is supervised by a
rabbinic court that ensures the sale takes
place outside of the restrictions of the
shmitah year — a process known as Otzar

Belt Din.

The Eretz Chemda Institute in
Jerusalem issued a specific ruling detail-
ing the halachot permitting and even
encouraging the purchase of Israeli-grown
produce in the shmitah year.
According to statistics from Israel's
Ministry of Agriculture, in recent years,
some 350,000 sets of the lulav, etrog,
hadas (myrtle) and arava (willow) branch
sets were shipped internationally. The
largest consumer outside of Israel is the
U.S. market with some 290,000 sets sold
and an additional 60,000 in other parts of
the world.
With limitations placed on agricultural
growth during the shmitah year — the
seventh year of the Jewish agrarian cycle
that calls for the land to lie fallow— many
consumers choose not to buy Israeli-
grown products leading to what ministry
analysts described as a more than 50 per-
cent drop in the four species market.
The greatest beneficiary of this
decrease in Israeli sales are etrog growers
in Morocco, who capitalize substantially
on the shmitah year with some 2,500
etrog trees planted in recent years in
preparation for this year's sale.
Steve Berger, who lives in Los Angeles

and is president of MylsraelConnection.
com, a company known for a diverse suite
of services designed to promote a con-
nection with Israel, has become a lead-
ing distributor of the four species and is
encouraging clients not to forego Israel in
this shmitah year.
"Shmitah is a beautiful
and ancient ideal, which is
at the heart of Jewish tradi-
tion:' Berger says. "But it
is not designed to create
a situation where Jewish
consumers are hurting the
Israeli economy and favor-
ing the coffers of Morrocon
farmers. Rather, we need to
ensure that people continue
to buy from Israeli farmers
and distributors:'
Berger's partner Mickey
Katzburg, who supervises
the Israeli distribution of the four species
for MylsraelConnection.com , warns that
the damage to the Israeli four species
market will extend far past this year if
too many consumers turn their backs on
Israel.
"If too much of the sales of etrogs go to
Morocco, the farmers there will be able
to develop a farming infrastructure at a
faster and more competitive rate than
their Israeli competitors and slowly take
bigger and bigger pieces of the market in
the coming years:' Katzburg says.
It should be noted that the major
issue in relation to shmitah comes from
the growth of the etrog. The lulav (palm
frond) can be harvested from Israeli trees
even during shmitah, and a sizable por-
tion of the lulav market has already been
irreversibly lost to palm growers in north-
ern Egypt Many halachic authorities also
allow the myrtle branches to be harvested
during shmitah while the willows for
foreign customers are almost always pro-
duced locally because they are too delicate
to survive overseas shipping.
"Our objective is to remind our cus-
tomers that they have the ability to limit
the economic damage this holiday season
could present to the Israeli growers for
whom the sale of etrogim is their very
livelihood:' Berger says. "This can be
fully accomplished within the spirit of the
shmitah year, and there is no disputing
that there will be a reduction in the crop
this year in recognition of this ancient
and blessed law:'

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