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The Four Species ארבעת המינים

The citron, palm branch, myrtle and willow taken up on Sukkot—and waved to the six directions of the world.

"And you shall take for yourselves on the first day the fruit of a splendid tree, branches of palms, a bough of a leafy tree and willows of the brook"—the Torah does not name the species; the oral tradition identified them: the etrog, the lulav, the myrtle and the willow. They are bound together, and on each day of Sukkot taken up with a blessing—and waved to the four winds, upward and downward: to Him to whom all directions belong (Sukkah 37b).

The Midrash reads the four species as four kinds of people—with taste and fragrance and without—bound into one bundle: the people is whole only when all are in it. Fortunes have been paid for a beautiful etrog in every age. The laws—what renders each unfit—are in tractate Sukkah.

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Sources

Tanakh

  • Leviticus 23:40 — the commandment of the four species
  • Vayikra Rabbah 30:12 — the four species as four kinds of people

Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar

  • Sukkah 37b — the manner of waving

Basis: stated in the Tanakh.

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