Every year on Sukkot we pick up four plants and hold them together: a citron, a palm frond, three myrtle branches, two willow branches. We say a blessing. We shake them in six directions. Then we put them down and do it again the next morning.
To anyone watching from outside, it looks like one of the stranger things we do. And it is — until you know what the four are standing in for.
The four species
Etrog — the citron. A thick-skinned yellow fruit with a scent that stays on your hands for hours.
Lulav — the closed frond of a date palm, its leaflets pressed tight along the spine.
Hadass — myrtle, three short branches with small dark leaves.
Arava — willow, two branches with long narrow leaves and no scent at all.
The lulav, hadass and arava are bound together. The etrog is held beside them, in the other hand. Together they are called the arba minim, the four kinds.
Taste and scent
The oldest reading of the four is also the simplest. It asks two questions of each plant: does it have taste, and does it have scent?
Taste stands for learning. Scent stands for good deeds — the thing other people notice about you before you say a word.
- The etrog has both taste and scent. Learning and kindness.
- The lulav comes from a date palm: taste, but no scent. Learning without the deeds.
- The hadass has scent, but no taste. Kindness without the learning.
- The arava has neither. Still looking.
Four plants, four kinds of people. Anyone who has ever sat at a long table on a holiday knows all four of them. Most of us have been more than one of them, depending on the year.
Why they are bound
Here is the part that matters.
The blessing is not said over the etrog alone, or over the lulav alone. It is said when all four are held together. Leave out the willow — the one with neither taste nor scent, the one that seems to contribute the least — and you have not fulfilled the mitzvah. You have four plants in your hand and nothing else.
Not one of them counts alone.
It would have been easy to build a holiday around the etrog. It is the beautiful one, the fragrant one, the one people photograph. Instead we are told to hold it next to a willow branch that will be dry by the end of the week, and to say the blessing only when both are in our hands.
That is not a gentle reminder to be inclusive. It is a structural requirement.
A roof you can see through
The same idea runs through the rest of the holiday.
A sukkah has to have a roof you can see the stars through, walls that move in the wind, and it has to be temporary. It is a building designed to remind you that buildings do not keep you safe — people do. For seven nights we eat under it, and the door stays open.
In a city that means a balcony, a fire escape, a rooftop, a parking space. Sometimes something stranger. The structure matters less than the fact that there is room at the table.
Holding all four
If you are reading this in the week of Sukkot: you will be handed a bundle at some point, and you will shake it, and it will feel slightly absurd.
It is worth remembering what is in your hand. Four kinds, bound together, and the blessing only works when none of them has been left out.
That is not a bad thing to carry into the rest of the year.
Chag Sukkot Sameach.
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