The convoluted history of esrog commerce

Title: The Esrog Libel

Location: New York

Document: Warheit

Time: September 1915

A September 1915 editorial in the Yiddish press condemned the inflated prices for so-called “Korfu esrogim” set by what the authors referred to as the “esrog trust”

Gentlemen of the jury,

I suppose most of you would naturally say, “Well, what difference does it make whether a man brings over Corfu citrons or Palestine citrons? There ought to be no such difference made, and I don’t see that a man is being charged with anything wrong in bringing over Corfu citrons instead of Palestine citrons, when I don’t see there is any difference between them.”

Again, I call your attention to the fact that the question is how would this article strike the people who are reading it — would it impute moral wrong to the people who it was intended should read it? If it does, what you think about it would not make any difference; it is, how would these people [religious Jews] reasonably feel? Would it hurt this man’s reputation in the very trade where he is working, in the very community where he is living? It might not be any wrong for me to say of the businessmen on this jury that I don’t believe they can figure out the size of an iron girder to hold up a large wall, but if I publish that concerning an architect in an architectural journal, it would constitute a libel on the architect.

You have to consider all the time the way in which the article would naturally and reasonably appeal to the people to whom it was addressed.

—Hon. Judge Irving Lehman issuing instructions to the jury before they rendered their final verdict in Sundel Saland vs. Hebrew Publishing Company, Appellate Division, New York Supreme Court.

One can learn a lot about the social, economic, and religious trends affecting the Jewish community over time by studying the convoluted history of esrog commerce.

Many parts of Europe where large numbers of Jews lived were not hospitable to cultivation of citrus fruits, which meant esrogim always had to be imported for use on Succos. This created opportunities for entrepreneurship, and sparked an ongoing quest for the perfect source of esrogim in the Mediterranean basin.

By the 18th century, most European communities were importing their esrogim from various Italian markets. The ports of Genoa and Trieste served as the worldwide esrog shuk, with hechsherim attesting to the product’s kosher status provided by local rabbis. This was made necessary by a stricture dating to the 16th century that forbade esrogim originating from grafted trees.

Sephardic Jews across the Ottoman Empire, meanwhile, had long availed themselves of vast esrog orchards on the Greek island of Corfu and on the nearby Albanian coast. By the last decades of the 18th century, Ashkenazic communities in Europe had also discovered the Corfu esrogim, and they began importing them.

IN the early decades of the 19th century, the first questions were raised about the kashrus of the Corfu esrogim. Torah leaders across the entire gamut in Europe weighed in on the issue, including the Aruch Laner, the Chasam Sofer, the Beis Efraim, and Rav Shlomo Kluger. By 1846, a somewhat begrudging consensus had recognized the halachic permissibility of Corfu esrogim, which had become best-sellers across Europe.

Though Italy, Morocco, and other locations around the Mediterranean continued to export esrogim, Corfu (which included several other Greek esrog sources along the Albanian coast) dominated the market in the ensuing three relatively stable decades. In the mid-1870s, the Corfu esrog controversy raged again, and it wasn’t finally settled until 1891. Whereas the earlier dispute had centered on halachic considerations of whether or not Corfu esrogim were grafted, the second round of argument focused on price gouging, promoting esrogim from Eretz Yisrael, and eventually anti-Semitism.

A cartel of Greek esrog growers collectively raised the prices on their exports in 1875. The editor of the Orthodox periodical Halevanon, Yechiel Brill, fired the first salvo against the Corfu esrogim, arguing that price gouging was sufficient cause to abstain from and even prohibit their purchase, while also resurrecting the old claims about Corfu esrogim’s questionable kashrus with the suspicions of grafting.

This led to a significant dispute within the Lithuanian rabbinate over the ensuing years. Opponents of Corfu esrogim raised three issues — price gouging, the old question regarding grafting, and the preference for purchasing esrogim from Eretz Yisrael, while others permitted the continued use of Corfu esrogim as before.

Among those who opposed the Corfu esrogim during this round were Rav Yitzchok Elchonon Spektor of Kovno, Rav Mordechai Gimpel Yaffa, and Rav Alexander Moshe Lapidos. Rav Yitzchok Elchonon cited the steep prices as the primary concern. Others promoted the development of the Eretz Yisrael esrog market, among them famed Yishuv activist Rav Yechiel Michel Pines, who laid out his vision in the pages of Halevanon. He passionately believed esrogim exports would provide a better economic future for the struggling Yishuv.

He was joined in these efforts by a fascinating figure named Rav Chaim Elazar Vaks, the rabbi of Kalish, later Piotrkow, and president of Kollel Warsaw in Poland. By pointing out the problems with the Corfu esrogim that dominated the market, they hoped to promote the cultivation and export of Eretz Yisrael esrogim, which, it was assumed, would have widespread benefits for the Yishuv at large.

Esrog merchants in Eretz Yisrael began exporting as early as the 1850s. The orchards themselves were mostly owned by Arabs, though some were Jewish owned. Among the early Old Yishuv pioneers in the esrog business were members of the Salant family, who ultimately came to dominate the worldwide trade in Eretz Yisrael esrogim.

Rav Yosef Zundel of Salant — rebbi of Rav Yisrael Salanter and the inspiration for the establishment of the Mussar movement — immigrated to Eretz Yisrael in 1837, and served at the helm of the Ashkenazic community of Yerushalayim. In 1840, his young son-in-law Rav Shmuel Salant was appointed to a rabbinical position, and he served in that capacity until his passing in 1909. Rav Yosef Zundel’s son Rav Yehuda Aryeh Leib, along with his nephew, the son of Rav Shmuel Salant, Rav Binyamin Beinush, were leading members of the Perushim community of Jerusalem. Uncle and nephew were pioneers in building some of the early neighborhoods outside the Old City walls, including Nachalat Shivah in 1869.

Rav Yehuda Aryeh Leib and Binyamin Beinush Salant, along with Rav Yaakov Sapir, Shmuel Mani Zilberman, and several others, invested heavily in the development of the Eretz Yisrael esrog trade. To compete with the centuries-old established markets of Morocco, Italy, and especially Corfu, these activists found it necessary to promote the ideology that purchasing an esrog from the Holy Land was a greater hiddur and provided much-needed financial support to the Old Yishuv. By 1887, Eretz Yisrael was exporting 42,000 esrogim to Europe, while Corfu accounted for about 100,000, with the rest coming from Italy, Morocco and other countries.

In the 1880s, the Corfu-versus-Eretz-Yisrael esrog wars shifted from the Lithuanian and Polish rabbinate and Orthodox press to the general Hebrew press in Russia and became a clarion call of the emerging Chovevei Zion movement. All of the prominent Hebrew papers in Russia — Hameilitz, Hamagid, Hatzefira, Hashachar — had a proclivity for the new nationalism, establishing agricultural colonies in Eretz Yisrael and supporting the settlement there. In that context, the editors and reporters relentlessly promoted the exclusive purchase of esrogim from Eretz Yisrael, and discouraged readers from purchasing Corfu esrogim, which were said to benefit the anti-Semitic and greedy Greek orchard owners.

The century-long dispute was suddenly resolved in 1891 by a tragic episode. A body of a child in Corfu was found on Easter of that year, and the Greek authorities accused the local Jewish community of ritual murder, reviving the infamous, age-old blood libel. This completely fabricated story was used to stir up anti-Jewish sentiment, against the backdrop of upcoming elections, which the local government wanted to prevent the Jews from participating in. Despite the glaringly false accusations, and mountains of evidence proving the Jews’ innocence, the Jewish quarter was placed under siege, and nearly half of the 7,000 Jews of Corfu escaped penniless from the island.

Jewish communities worldwide were in an uproar. One of the outcomes of this incident was a universal ban on Corfu esrogim. What halachah, high prices, and promoting Eretz Yisrael esrogim couldn’t accomplish in decades was realized instantly due to anti-Semitism. A united front of rabbis from Eastern and Western Europe, secular nationalists, newspapers of all stripes, unaffiliated Jewish leaders, and members of Chovevei Zion all united in a concerted effort to place a cherem on the purchase of Corfu esrogim.

That seemed to settle the issue once and for all. Although growers in Italy, Morocco, and other locales continued to produce, Eretz Yisrael esrogim finally rose to dominate the international market, a situation that continues until today.

Among the primary beneficiaries of this shift were the members of the Salant family who had cornered the market on the export of Eretz Yisrael esrogim. While initially the primary markets were the Austro-Hungarian and czarist Russian markets, where the majority of world Jewry resided, the massive immigration to the United States in the closing decades of the 19th century and early 20th opened new vistas, with millions of potential customers on the other side of the Atlantic.

Rav Yehuda Aryeh Leib’s son, Yosef Zundel, named for his illustrious grandfather, opened the Salant branch of the esrog empire in New York around the turn of the century. Following the passing of his first wife, he married Rachel, the daughter of Rav Gavriel Zev Margolis, one of the prominent and outspoken rabbis in the United States in the early decades of the 20th century. Yosef Zundel Salant (who Americanized his name to Saland) quickly emerged as the largest esrog importer in the US, and his Eretz Yisrael esrogim sold well among the immigrant communities.

With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the esrog market was thrown into total collapse. The Austro-Hungarian and Russian markets were completely cut off on the demand side, and Eretz Yisrael, then under Ottoman rule, was cut off on the supply side.

In the early years of the war, both the US and Greece were still neutral, and it was therefore still possible to import the problematic Corfu esrogim to the US market. But due to the black cloud of the cherem, no one dared do so.

It was against this backdrop that Sundel Saland (Zundel Salant) was accused in the Yiddish press by the Hebrew Publishing Company (a major seller of esrogim) of importing esrogim from Corfu and conspiring with the only other major esrogim distributor in the country to monopolize their sale at above market prices.

Incensed, Salant then sued them for libel, and it went to court. This New York court case, and the Hebrew Publishing Company’s subsequent appeal — which was mainly argued in 1917 — saw some of New York’s leading rabbis called to the stand.

Rabbis Dr. Phillip Hillel Klein and Bernard Drachman, as well as the plaintiff’s father-in-law, Rav Gavriel Zev Margolis, were asked to explain the current status of the “Corfu ban” in the Jewish world and whether Greek esrogim grown in places other than Corfu were part of this ban. They were also asked to translate some of the claims made in Yiddish to the court and jury — most of whom were secular Jews.

IN a rather humorous exchange, another expert witness, Rabbi Samuel Buchler, a graduate of the Pressburg Yeshivah and later the rabbi of the Beth Yehuda Synagogue in Brooklyn, was asked to refute the charge that Rav Yitzchok Elchonon Spektor was the world’s premier rabbinic authority.

Given that there has never been a system for legally deciding who the posek hador is, the plaintiff’s attorney argued that perhaps the fact that the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological College (RIETS), America’s premier yeshivah at the time, was named for him was sufficient proof.

Rabbi Buchler, who was Hungarian, may have thought otherwise, and countered this by saying that perhaps it had been the Rav HaKollel (chief rabbi) of New York, Rabbi Jacob Joseph — because there was a school in New York named for him as well, RJJ on the Lower East Side.

The argument then pivoted toward whether the rabbis intended the ban to be a permanent or a temporary measure, and whether rabbis had the right to ban certain esrogim to begin with.

When the rabbis could not agree whether the dual-use Hebrew word (cited in the libelous editorials) “neveilah” referred to the esrogim being ugly or essentially unkosher for use, the well-known lexicographer and linguist Alexander Harkavy was called upon for his opinion as well.

Ultimately, after several days of arguments, Zundel Salant, who had undergone severe hardship to obtain the esrogim during the war — and ultimately had to discard 8,000 esrogim due to the “boycott” — was issued a $6,000 verdict for his losses, and his integrity was established as the premier dealer of Eretz Yisrael esrogim in the United States.

This case would be the final act of the Corfu esrogim drama, which had rocked the Jewish world for well over a century. With its roots in Greece, Italy, and central Europe, it had continued to Eastern Europe and Eretz Yisrael, and saw its closing chapter play out in a New York courthouse.

Thank you to Mrs. Chaya Sarah Herman who brought this fascinating story to our attention and whose research was utilized in the preparation of this article

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1033)