You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops…It breaks my heart because it was meant to, because it was meant to foster in me again the illusion that there was something abiding, some pattern and some impulse that could come together to make a reality that would resist the corrosion; and because, after it had fostered again that most hungered-for illusion, the game was meant to stop, and betray precisely what it promised.

Although these words by the late A. Bartlett Giamatti, former Major League Baseball commissioner and poet describe perfectly how I feel this week as a disgusted Mets fan, they could also, like the scroll of Kohelet, describe the bittersweet reality of Sukkot. We celebrate the harvest, even as the falling leaves remind us that soon winter will be here. Of course, the sukkah is the most obvious symbol of impermanence connected with this fall holiday. But the etrog offers its own lessons as well.

My most vivid Jewish memory as a child was kiddush in our synagogue sukkah. Our elderly rabbi would show us his etrog, and implore us to marvel at its luxuriant, citrusy ripeness. Then he took a dry, brown oval out of his pocket, which he revealed was last year’s model. Then he produced a third etrog - this one from five years earlier - a dark caramel brown sphere. Finally, he displayed an etrog from twenty years ago - a pitch-black, shriveled hunk. As he dexterously held all four between his fingers, it was like catching a glimpse of eternity: Each etrog would soon become the next one, and so on down the line - and there between his wrinkled fingers lie our fate as well. Pretty heady stuff for a nine year old to fathom.

The etrog seems to perfectly mirror the contradictions of this holiday. During this week devoted to the celebration of our connection with the earth, the etrog, like the extravagant Sukkot sacrificial offerings mentioned in Leviticus, is extremely resource-intensive. Not only does it require copious amounts of water to thrive (the rabbis even speculated that its name, pri etz hadar, was connected to hydra, the Greek word for water) but it is also very susceptible to pest infestation. Having once made a glorious etrog meringue pie (and looking forward to using them in this recipe), I was shocked to learn from Leah at Hazon that the etrog is often classified as non-edible produce, and is therefore sprayed with obscene amounts of pesticide (see these articles for more on the halachic implications of using a non-edible etrog during Sukkot).

Note the irony of a ritual item (including the lulav) that borders almost on the Native-American in terms of its visceral evocation of the natural world, and its clever repurposing for other occasions (the lulav can be used to light the matzah-baking oven or search for chametz on Pesach, and the etrog itself can be turned into a clove-punctured spicebox for havdalah, or etrog preserves for Tu Bishvat - the other Jewish Earth Day, when we read from the other Pri Etz Hadar!), and yet it is grown using the most damaging agricultural methods and shipped half way around the world in order to “celebrate” God’s (and our) bounty in the natural world.

All of this leaves me feeling very melancholy, as I experience Jewish ritual’s potential to invoke our best impulses towards harmony with the world, while simultaneously bemoaning the hypocrisy behind those objects designated for such a noble purpose. Oh well. I guess I should listen to the noble Bart’s concluding words:

Of course, there are those who learn after the first few times. They grow out of sports. And there are others who were born with the wisdom to know that nothing lasts. These are the truly tough among us, the ones who can live without illusion, or without even the hope of illusion. I am not that grown-up or up-to-date. I am a simpler creature, tied to more primitive patterns and cycles. I need to think something lasts forever, and it might as well be that state of being that is a game; it might as well be that, in a green field, in the sun.

What’s this? Sustainbly grown etrogim? I guess Sukkot ain’t over till it’s over…