Israel Imports Moroccan Etrogs for Sukkot Due to Religious Restrictions

The etrog is one of the four species that make up the bouquet used by Jews during the week of Sukkot, which continues until next Sunday. Normally, the fruit is produced locally in Israel, but this year access is difficult due to Jewish law, local sources report.

This text indeed prohibits working the soil in the land of Israel after the shmita year. The last Jewish year that ended with Rosh Hashanah was a shmita year, which means that no etrog was grown in Israel for this year’s Sukkot holiday.

As a result, the Jews of Israel have turned to the etrog grown in villages located in the Atlas Mountains around the seaside town of Agadir in Morocco. This exchange was made possible thanks to the normalization of relations two years ago between the two countries, the same sources point out.

Expressing his joy, Hervey Levy, a Jewish farmer in Agadir, said: "before the agreement, we always had to sell through a third country," specifying that "it could be Turkey, it could be Spain, it could be Italy - it had to transit somewhere."