Citrons

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Scientists believe that the four original citrus fruits were the citron, the pomelo, the mandarin, and the papeda. Through cross-breeding human beings have developed the forms that are more familiar today. Unsliced citrons look like lemons, but their rind is leathery, the pith is very thick, and the relatively small amount of flesh inside is not tart. Not much is done with the juicy flesh, but the white pith is cooked with sugar to make jams, preserves, relishes, pickles, and fruitcakes. The outer rind, called the flavedo, is intensely fragrant, as Bloom recalls happily: "Nice to hold, cool waxen fruit, hold in the hand, lift it to the nostrils and smell the perfume. Like that, heavy, sweet, wild perfume."

Jews use the citron ritually during Sukkot, the week-long Feast of Ingathering. This autumn holiday celebrates both the agricultural harvest and the exodus from Egypt, when the Hebrews lived in tents for 40 years. On each day of the week, a citron fruit (called the etrog in Israel) is brought into the synagogue and waved about with three species of greenery––a closed date palm frond and leafy branches of willow and myrtle trees. Various kinds of symbolism attach to these Four Species.

After their dispersal in the Roman era Jews spread the citron around the Mediterranean, and since returning to Palestine they have cultivated citron trees there, as Bloom notes in the ad he reads: "Orangegroves and immense melonfields north of Jaffa. You pay eighty marks and they plant a dunam of land for you with olives, oranges, almonds or citrons." The fruits vary in size and appearace, and specimens used for Sukkot must be "without a flaw." Bloom recalls that "They fetched high prices too, Moisel told me." Considerable sums can be spent obtaining the perfect etrog.