How to Choose a Kosher Lulav and Esrog: A Family-Friendly Guide
In the days before Sukkos, a folding table appears under a tarp in every Jewish neighborhood. On it sit rows of boxed esrogim, and in front of it stands a parent, holding a fruit up to the light with practiced scrutiny, aware that the man across the table can tell at a glance that this customer has no idea what he is looking at. Torah Live's own film on the subject opens in an esrog orchard with a line made for that table: how to prevent buying a real lemon.
Choosing an esrog is not a test of piety and not a competition. It is a learnable skill, and it feels unlearnable only because most of what people repeat about esrogim is folklore. The Torah's own words are the place to begin, because they contain a puzzle that ends up saving families money this year.
וּלְקַחְתֶּם לָכֶם בַּיּוֹם הָרִאשׁוֹן פְּרִי עֵץ הָדָר כַּפֹּת תְּמָרִים וַעֲנַף עֵץ עָבֹת וְעַרְבֵי נָחַל
U'lkachtem lachem bayom harishon pri eitz hadar, kappos temarim, va'anaf eitz avos, v'arvei nachal.
"You shall take for yourselves on the first day the fruit of a beautiful tree, branches of palms, a bough of a leafy tree, and willows of the brook." (Vayikra 23:40)
Two oddities sit in one pasuk. First, the Torah never names the esrog. Chazal identify the four species for us, but the Torah itself chose to describe its fruit, pri eitz hadar, by beauty rather than by name. Why describe rather than name? Evidently the beauty is not a bonus feature of the mitzvah. It is written into its definition. Second, the pasuk says "on the first day," and yet we take the four species all seven days. The explanation preserved in halacha is that by Torah law the seven-day taking belonged to the Beis Hamikdash; outside it, the Torah's own obligation is the first day. In 5787 the two oddities combine into practical advice.
Why this year may cost less
The first day of Sukkos this year is Shabbos, September 26, and the four species are not taken on Shabbos at all. No lulav is picked up, no bracha is said. The first shaking of 5787 is Sunday, September 27.
The five parts, and the two that decide
Halachic beauty is specific, and far narrower than the market's version. The first thing to sort out has nothing to do with looks at all: the hechsher. There are two kinds. One certifies the orchard: the species is a true esrog and not grafted with a lemon, the tithes were separated, the fruit did not grow in the tree's first three years. The other certifies the specific fruit in your hand, because a rabbi examined it. Knowing which one the dealer is showing you is half the missing confidence.
From the top down, an esrog has five parts, and a child can learn them in a minute: the shoshanta, the little crown at the very tip; the pitom, the woody stem it sits on; the chotem, the shoulder where the body begins to slant inward; the guf, the main body; and the ukatz, the stem at the bottom.
Why learn anatomy? Because location decides almost everything. A dark spot on the wood of the ukatz or up on the shoshanta is nothing, because wood may be dark. The same spot on the chotem, where the eye lands first, disqualifies. Color matters too: black or white spots are the problem, and a spot that rubs off with a dry finger was never a spot at all. Rub gently, though; rubbing too hard can tear the thin top layer and create the very hole that invalidates.
A pitom that fell off while the fruit was still growing leaves a small groove, and the esrog is kosher. One that broke off after picking does not leave that groove, and it invalidates. The groove is checkable by an ordinary parent, which is why it makes a perfect job for a child. A missing piece of the fruit itself, choser, is stricter: a hole that reaches the seed chamber invalidates even if nothing is missing, and missing flesh invalidates even if the hole is shallow. And the thorn scratch that healed on the tree is kosher, but recognizing healed skin requires experience and a trained eye, which is exactly why people bring their esrogim to a Rav. The films on all four species live in the Sukkos course on Torah Live, and an evening with them is the cheapest confidence available before the shopping weekend.
The lulav's middle leaf
The lulav has its own single point of drama. Every leaf on a lulav is really two leaves joined at the front, and at the very top of the spine sits one leaf with no partner: the tiyomes, the middle leaf. Ashkenazic custom holds that if most of the middle leaf is split, the lulav is invalid, and "most" is measured from the tip down to the spine. Some authorities hold that even a small split is a problem, since shaking can open it further. A lulav completely closed at the top is the ideal, and, as the film says frankly, such lulavim are expensive and not easy to find: precisely the upsell a buyer will meet. It is a genuine dispute with a price tag attached, so do not guess. Ask your Rav which standard your family follows, then buy to that standard and no further.
The Gemara, describing an invalid split, reaches for a household object: a lulav split open like a himnick, a utensil with two ends jutting out in a V, something like a pair of tongs. Every household in Chazal's day owned one; nobody has seen one since. We see that the standards were never vague, they are just old, and the work of every generation is to translate them back into objects we can hold, which is what a good film and a good Rav do.
One test is worth pocketing: lay the lulav flat, and if the V at the top closes on its own, the split is not a split. Dryness, too, is narrower than the market implies: a lulav that has lost its green and turned white is invalid, while brown tips from the sun on a lush green lulav are commonly permitted.
Measurements, myths, and the folding table
Some numbers from the OU's practical guide belong on a paper in your wallet. The lulav's spine, not counting the leaves, should be at least sixteen inches, with at least four inches of spine rising above the hadassim and aravos when bound. Each hadas and arava should be at least twelve inches. Leaves disqualify for dryness only when they are so dry they crack when bent, and mold, contrary to a durable market myth, does not disqualify. Hadassim and aravos beyond this are their own subject; a questionable branch goes to a Rav.
And the magnifying glass on the dealer's table? Halacha already answered it. A spot counts only if it can be seen from arm's length. The glass has a legitimate use, deciding the shade of something already visible, but it is not a search tool. It is possible to look too closely. In a market that prices the appearance of scrupulousness, arm's length is a mercy, not a leniency.
This is also why the market trip belongs to the children. In a survey of the parents of 653 Japanese ten and eleven year olds, children whose families marked more of the year's annual events were rated as more helpful and cooperative with others. The study was taken at a single point in time, so it cannot show the celebrating caused the behavior, and the families were Japanese rather than Jewish. What it does suggest is that children are watching which days their parents treat as worth preparing for. So give each child one real check. Consider, as an illustration rather than a report, a father who hands his eight year old the job of finding the groove at the top of each esrog. By the third table she is the one holding the fruit up while he waits, and they buy the third-cheapest esrog in the tent, and she tells everyone at the Yom Tov table that she chose it. We see that a child who has been given one real check to perform stops being a passenger in the mitzvah. For the youngest, the Lessons for Little Ones Sukkos film introduces the four species and the shaking, with the refrain that Hashem is here, Hashem is everywhere.
On Sunday morning
- Remember the year: nothing is taken until Sunday, September 27. Buy kosher and usable, and ask your Rav before stretching for more.
- Assemble before Yom Tov: three hadassim bound on the right of the lulav's spine, two aravos on the left, spine facing you.
- The widespread practice: the esrog is held upside down for the bracha, then turned right side up, and the set is waved three times in each of the four directions, then up and down, in your shul's order.
- Keep the set alive through Chol Hamoed: aravos in a damp towel or water per your custom, the esrog back in its box, away from small siblings.
- Afterward, no bin. The set may be burned, buried, or respectfully wrapped before disposal, and it should not be left where it will be stepped on.
The Mishnah behind the four species
The standards in this guide, the ones that leave a father and a child bent over a folding table with a magnifying glass, are the Mishnah’s standards. Maseches Sukkah is where the four species are defined, where the disqualifications are argued out, and where hadar stops being a description and becomes something you can check.
That tractate is where Torah Live’s new animated Mishnah series begins. Rabbi Gavriel Friedman narrates, Mishnah Man takes children through the words themselves, and the reasoning behind each measurement arrives before the ruling does. A child who has watched the Mishnayos understands why the seller keeps turning the esrog toward the light, and can ask a sharper question than whether this one is kosher.
Watch the first Mishnah of Maseches Sukkah before you go, or work through the whole series at The Mishnah, animated.
The Sukkos course then shows the same laws applied to a set on the table:
Questions parents ask
Does a missing pitom make an esrog invalid? Not necessarily. If it fell during growth, leaving a groove, the esrog is kosher; if it broke off later, it is not. The groove is the check.
Is a split middle leaf a problem? It is the main thing to check, and there is a genuine dispute over how much split matters. Ask your Rav which standard to buy to.
Back at the folding table, the practiced expression can be replaced by an actual practice: two hechsher questions, five parts, one groove, one middle leaf, a tape measure at home, and everything examined from arm's length, no closer. We came to the market afraid of what we could not see, and Chazal had already told us how far away to stand. Watch the four species films with the family before the shopping weekend, included with a Torah Live subscription at torahlive.com/signup, and send a child to the table knowing what she is looking for.
