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IN-DEPTH FEATURES The Best Buy in Lulavim "Chaim'keh, don't pick up any lulavim. Don't touch the
tops or walk near them. You might make them posul."
"Moshei, don't worry. I'll buy you a Pepsi in a few minutes.
I know you're hot. Who isn't underneath this scorching Bnei
Brak sun? You want to go home? I'm restless too, but I must
find a lulav, a good lulav. In fact not only do
I need one for myself, but I need six!"
After endless hours in the various arba minim markets
and checking overflowing stands filling the city's sidewalks,
I saw an ad pasted on a telephone pole announcing a Deri
lulavim sale. I had almost forgotten about the Deri
lulavim. Well, I had heard a great deal about them and
now was the time to try my luck with them too.
I walked over to that "store," approached the dealer and
asked him whether he had a good lulav for me. He took
out a lulav hidden somewhere in the back (for such a
small place he had a remarkable number of "backs"). What a
lulav! It was straight as an arrow, green as grass,
long as the golus, and the best thing was that the
tiyomes (middle leaf) was closed as if with cement.
Wow!
"Okay," I inquired innocently, "what's the price for this
lulav?"
He looked me straight in the face (it seems that after all
those hours in the arba minim market I looked like a
lulav), thought a while, took a quick look at the
lulav I was holding, and then quoted the astronomical
price of 200 NIS (almost $50 -- most lulavim are NIS
20-50). Although shocked at the price, at least I now knew
why he had looked at me so discerningly.
I was in a real dilemma. Here was a perfect lulav,
just what I had searched for all day. But since I study in
kollel, I have a limited amount of money to spend for
the yom tov. Was it justified to spend so much merely
for a lulav? I still had to find an esrog,
haddasim, and arovos, and another five sets of
arba minim -- apart from, of course, all the other
yom tov necessities. But then there is a saying that
"Time is money." I couldn't roam around the markets the whole
day and not study a word of Torah.
The end of my internal debate is unimportant -- at least to
the reader (if anyone really wants to know, I did succumb to
temptation and I bought the overpriced lulav). The
question is, though, what exactly is a Deri lulav and
why are they so expensive?
What Do People Look For in a Lulav and
Why?
Although the Ramo rules (Orach Chaim 645:3) that
lechatchilo there is a mitzvah min hamuvchar
for the tiyomes not to be open even slightly, people
always found it hard to comply with that psak. There
were few lulavim in Europe and it was almost
impossible to find such a mehudar lulav. People paid
attention to the lulav being straight and not open
enough to make it posul and that is about all.
After the Brisker Rov came to Yerushalayim he decided to be
machmir like the Ramo. That is the reason people call
a closed, green, not-burnt-on-top lulav, a Brisker
lulav. Actually it is a Ramo lulav, but it was
the Brisker Rov who decided to start being machmir
like the Ramo.
The Brisker Rov opened up the kora (brown protective
material -- incidentally, "bark" in Polish is "kora")
around the lulav to insure that it is really closed
and not held together by the kora.
Afterwards a real turmoil started in Eretz Yisroel as people
tried to meet the high standard set by the Brisker Rov.
People began looking for closed green lulavim, not
burnt on top and not covered by any brown kora.
This is not an easy task at all since the kora is not
there by accident. HaKodosh Boruch Hu put it there for
a purpose. The function of kora is to sustain the
lulav so that water can flow up and down the leaves.
It protects the lulav so that the leaves do not dry
out, and keeps it alive.
Background
Before discussing the Deri lulav species let us
examine the date palm (tamar), and what part of it is
the lulav.
"The common date palm, scientifically classified as the
phoneix doctylifera, grows about 23 meters (75 feet)
tall, and terminates in a crown of graceful, shining, pinnate
leaves about 5 m (16 feet) long. Male and female flowers grow
on separate plants. From earliest times, fertilization has
been aided by cutting off the male flower cluster just before
the stamens ripen and suspending it among the flowers of the
female tree. More than 1000 dates may appear on a single
bunch weighing 8 kg (18 pounds) or more. Palms begin to bear
fruit in 4 to 5 years and reach full bearing at 10-15 years,
yielding 40 to 80 kg (90 to 180 pounds) or more each. Palms
are known to live as long as 150 years, but their fruit
production declines, and in commercial culture they are
replaced at an earlier age. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, and
Iraq are the leading date-producing and exporting countries,
although fruit from Algeria and Tunisia also is well known in
Europe. California is the major American producer. Spanish
missionaries carried the tree to the New World in the 18th
and early 19th centuries." ("Palm trees." BCD98- S,
Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc).
Every five weeks, three or four lulavim grow together
as a bunch. The dekel (date palm) has a lev (a
core or heart) at the top. Each lulav shoots out from
the center of the lev and feeds from the lev.
Afterwards the lulavim move to the side, the leaves
open up, the tiyomes flattens out, it bears dates, and
a new generation starts.
The Midrash (Vayikro Rabba 30:15) applauds the wisdom
of Chazal who explain to us what the four minim are
since, "The Torah (Vayikro 23:40) only tells us to
take kapos temorim and praise [Hashem] with them, but
a person [after Chazal's guidance] takes a lulav, the
lev of the date palm." Incidentally the Maharil writes
that someone who takes an esrog and lulav will
be zoche to Olom Hazeh and Olom Haboh
and will have children who are tzaddikim and have a
lev in Torah.
The top of the date palm is called its lev even by
secular Israeli agricultural scientists. It is called the
lev since if someone saws straight down the top of the
tree at its core, the palm would die. One does not need to
chop it off from the bottom to kill it.
There are nine types of dates in Eretz Yisroel: Chiyani,
Barhi, Chadro'i, Chalou'i, Deri, Zehidi, Dekel Nur, Majul,
and Imri. There are only about 4000 Deri date palms in all of
Eretz Yisroel and since each tree yields about 3-4
lulavim that makes about 12-16,000 lulavim.
Certainly not enough for the needs of all of the Torah-
observant community.
The Deri Discovery
Rav Shabsai Cobin, originally from the USA, is an amiable,
energetic kollel man. Now in his forties, a true
talmid chochom and yirei Shomayim, he has been
living in Tzfas for twenty-one years. He studied in HaRav
Shmuel Avigdor Feivelson's kollel for twenty years and
now studies in the Tzanz kollel of Tzfas.
Fifteen years ago R' Shabsai started searching for a Brisker
lulav. He said: "It is inconceivable that HaKodosh
Boruch Hu commanded us to take the four minim and
did not create a mehudar lulav that satisfies all
opinions and shittos and is completely closed."
R' Shabsai searched for the perfect lulav among all
the different kibbutzim in the north and eventually
arrived at the kibbutz dati of Tirat Tzvi in Beit
Shean, northern Eretz Yisroel, the closest kibbutz to
the Jordan border. It is only 500 meters from the Jordanian
border.
In Tirat Tzvi he met Moshe Zachai who had set up a hut with a
stand on which he proudly displayed his wares: hundreds of
lulavim laid out organized according to the different
species so that people could buy them. Moshe Zachai, who is
currently one of the people in charge of date production in
Tirat Tzvi, originally came to his kibbutz in 1965 when, in
the course of his service in the IDF's Nachal unit
(Pioneering Fighting Youth), he guarded Kibbutz Tirat Tzvi.
He fell in love with the fertile area and, after being
discharged from the army, he remained there and became
involved with date production. At that time Zachai planted
more Deri date palms, since there were only a few and he
liked its dark fruit.
The keen eyes of Rav Shabsai Cobin quickly saw that no other
species comes close to the Deri lulav in
hiddur. It was a real beauty and very strong. Other
types whose tiyomes were closed ended in a pinpoint
and were in danger of breaking off and becoming a nifsak
rosho.
He took some 300 lulavim and traveled in his friend's
battered car to the famed Lederman shul in Bnei Brak.
He first started selling his merchandise for the bargain
price of some 20-30 shekels ($5-$7) apiece. People could not
believe their eyes.
Word got around quickly. The son of HaRav Chaim Greineman
came over to R' Shabsai and requested that he immediately
accompany him to his father. R' Shabsai showed him 22
lulavim and HaRav Greineman bought 20 from him, one
after the other. R' Shabsai told him that he can take the
kora off to get a better look at the lulav.
"No," said HaRav Greineman, "I don't need to. I already know
its good by looking at it. It's not mine yet. After I buy it
I'll take the kora off." HaRav Greineman was
enthusiastic about the lulavim and asked him where he
bought them. He later advised him to sell the lulavim
in Yerushalayim where people are willing to pay even more for
a lulav.
For the last ten years R' Shabsai and a partner have rented a
store in Meah Shearim to sell Deri lulavim. Soon, the
Deri species acquired a name as the premier lulav
type, even though it cost a premier price.
Meanwhile other chareidi dealers have been combing the
kibbutzim in the Beit Shean area. Whereas R' Shabsai
used to pay ten shekels to the kibbutzim, these
dealers overbid him and offered fifteen shekels. Needless to
say R' Shabsai lost a lot of business.
The Special Qualities of Deri
"One can take a Deri lulav and throw it at the wall,"
says an impassioned Moshe Zachai. "With other lulavim
the tiyomes opens immediately but in the Deri
lulav it remains closed. The tiyomes in other
species can become ruined even on the way to shul.
Deri is strong, resists blows, and remains intact for the
whole yom tov."
HaRav Refoel Reichman, a renowned medakdeik in
mitzvos, sits hours and hours in R' Shabsai's store to find a
lulav. "The Deri lulavim are mehudar and
of exemplary appearance," comments HaRav Reichman. "Besides
their doubtless kashrus they have the plus of having a
good tzurah. But it depends from where they are
purchased. Some are better than others. In general, they have
a good tzurah and many of them are mehudar with
a closed tiyomes. There is, however, no klal
that a Deri lulav is automatically good. You must be
bodeik it. It's not a Canary lulav -- the
Canary lulav came from the Canary Islands over 100
years ago. Deri has definite simonim quite different
from the Canary."
What are Canary lulavim? R' Shabsai explained: "The
dekolim around the Kosel, for example, are not
temorim, date palms; they are Canary palms. They do
not produce dates but berries, and the Torah tells us, `The
branches of date palms' -- dates, and not berries. It is easy
to differentiate between the two types of lulavim. On
opening a date palm a white powder can be found on the
leaves. To the best of my knowledge there aren't too many
Canary lulavim in the market."
HaRav Moshe Feinstein zt'l rules that a Canary
lulav is posul even bedi'eved, but HaRav
Shlomo Zalman Auerbach zt'l rules that it is kosher
(see Kashrus Arbaas Haminim, pg. 170).
"The lulavim sold by HaRav Cobin have the
ma'aloh of not being cut on Shabbos," HaRav Yechiel
Michel Stern, the rav and moreh tzedek of the Ezras
Torah neighborhood in Yerushalayim and author of Kashrus
Arbaas Haminim, tells us. "One can find many more
unopened Deri lulavim than others, but one must check
them. There is no doubt about their being lulavim. The
Rekanti (parshas Beshalach) writes, `There are seventy
types of date palms . . . not similar in appearance . . . or
taste.' The scientists who have another number categorize
them differently."
Even Moshe Zachai told us some Deri lulavim have
problems of hemnik (looking like two leaves, like a
fork, Orach Chaim 645:7). The younger trees are better
for lulavim since there are more problems with mature
trees. However, in general they are a much better
lulav.
The perspective of many experts in kibbutzim fifteen
years ago was that you should not pick lulavim from
the date palm's core since doing so ruins the tree. After R'
Shabsai cut them from their core and the dates still grew as
before, their experts' opinion changed. "If Hashem told us to
take the lulav," says R' Shabsai, "it can't harm the
tree. Chazal control nature. The Torah is teva.
There's no difference."
Origin
Deri branches are certainly lulavim -- a date palm --
since you can see its dates. So the lulavim are surely
"the branches of date palms" (Vayikro 23:40).
The modern Deri species originates in Iraq -- from Bovel.
When the Jews from Bovel immigrated to Eretz Yisroel in the
beginning of the fifties they brought Deri saplings with them
and planted them in the kibbutzim. Thus, the Deri
species is in Israel for about 40 years.
In Iraq there are many Deri palms but their branches cannot
be brought to Israel. R' Shabsai tried. He sent Israeli Arabs
to ask Jordanian Arabs to bring Deri lulavim from Iraq
to Jordan and afterwards to send them to Israel. It would be
a lucrative business for all involved. However, the
Jordanians told his agents that there is no way to export
Jordanian lulavim to Israel because Israeli
authorities will not allow it. They are afraid that the
foreign branches may be infected with a certain pest that
attacks date palms. Israel must, naturally, protect its own
agriculture from ruin.
The authorities do not allow the import of lulavim
from anywhere in chutz la'aretz to Eretz Yisroel
except from El Arish in northern Sinai, not far from the Gaza
Strip. R' Shabsai investigated this very thoroughly. Pakistan
also cultivates palms and sends their dates to Australia, but
Israel will not allow any imports from there. He could buy
cheap Pakistan or South African lulavim but would be
unable to import them to Eretz Yisroel. America gets its
lulavim from El Arish, as well as from Arizona and
California. In the U.S.A. no Deri lulavim are sold
commercially.
R' Shabsai tells us that the Vilna Gaon writes that
yishuv Eretz Yisroel is a sign of ikveseh
demeshichah. "The abundant possibilities in Eretz Yisroel
to be mehadeir in mitzvos are stunning. Each child can
have arba minim more beautiful than even the
geonim had. European boys studying here in the
yeshivos bring home Deri lulavim. Jews in America in
general, because of their lack of experience, do not really
know what a beautiful lulav is. In America the general
minhag is to buy sets: an esrog, a
lulav, and haddasim. There is no tremendous
lulav market as in Eretz Yisroel and therefore few
people in America have ever seen such a lulav. The son
of HaRav Moshe Eisemann zt"l of Vineland, HaRav Meir
Eisemann, who gives shiurim in Lakewood, lived here
about thirteen years ago, and he still annually sends a
shaliach to me for a lulav. People in Eretz
Yisroel take for granted the many ways there are to fulfill
mitzvos behiddur. The lulavim, haddasim, and
esrogim here are beautiful."
Why the High Price of Deri Lulavim?
Moshe Zachai explains why the Deri lulav is sold at
such a high price. "Its fruit is sold at regular prices, but
the female trees have problems in pollination, of absorbing
the powder from the male trees. The Deri also gives much less
fruit than other trees do. No one today would plant a Deri
palm only for its fruit. Farmers try to earn a profit from
the Deri tree that is comparable to what they can earn from
other species. Other species give 100 kilograms (220 pounds)
of fruit per tree but Deri yields only 40-50 kilograms, just
about half. It is therefore much less profitable on the basis
of its fruit alone. Selling the lulav helps it be
about as profitable as a regular date palm."
(Parenthetically, it is a machlokes whether the
lulavim from male date palms are kosher or not since
those particular trees do not yield dates. The Chasam Sofer
[Chidushei Chasam Sofer, Succah 34b] is
machshir since it is from a species that has dates but
the Tzofnas Paneiach rules that they are
posul).
"Financially," tells us R' Shabsai, "it doesn't pay to raise
Deri. You get $120-150 for a bunch of dates and the Deri
gives much less fruit. The money the kibbutzim get
from the sale of the lulavim, is a matonoh for
them, a pure gain with no extra costs. They work for the
dates and the lulavim are extra profit.
"In general a date palm needs much care. Apart from watering,
there is the tiresome pollination process. Female trees
produce fruit and male trees produce seeds. You take the
seeds, cut them, dry them, cook them, and make powder from
them. This is all done on the kibbutz. The workers go
to each flower -- three to four months before the dates are
to grow -- and pollinate each one by hand with the powder. It
must be done by hand or else little fruit is produced. They
open the flower of each tree and pollinate it individually.
There are far fewer male trees since they are not needed for
their dates, but only for their pollen. It is the most
fascinating thing in the world."
The dealers also have a good reason to demand a high price.
HaRav Reichman tells us: "The dealer pays a certain amount
for each lulav although he does not sell every one
since not all are perfect. In the long run he has to
compensate himself for all his time and effort and the number
of unsold lulavim. He needs some profit and since he
initially pays a relatively high price for each Deri piece he
must ask for an especially high price. If someone is prepared
to search for hours he can find a nice lulav that is
not a Deri. But there are those for whom time is worth more
than money. The Deri lulavim are more or less all good
ones."
HaRav W. M., a serious full-time kollel student who
sells lulavim before Succos to help his
parnosso, told us, "This all started when dealers came
and offered double for the lulavim and that jacked up
the prices. I once made a deal with a certain kibbutz for 4
shekel a lulav. A short while before I was supposed to
pick up the lulavim I called up the kibbutz to
finalize the arrangements. The kibbutz head told me
that someone had offered him 8 shekel a lulav and
asked me if I could please back down from the deal. I knew
that this kibbutz was in a difficult financial
position so I agreed.
"Before Succos I saw the lulavim of this
kibbutz, with which I was well-acquainted, being sold
in Bnei Brak. I went to the dealer and accused him of
halachically unfair business practice. He went away and tried
selling his merchandise elsewhere, but I later heard that he
was not successful in selling his lulavim.
"The kibbutzim do not gain much from the fruit of the
Deri date palms since their small fruit is used only by
industry. The Majul date palm gives much more fruit. Another
reason for their high price is that for every 100
lulavim, only twenty are well closed and can be sold.
There is a tremendous amount of wastage. If a dealer buys a
hundred lulavim he pays 5000 shekel and if he sells
only 200 he must cover his expenses and make a profit. All
that makes the prices higher."
What is R' Shabsai's explanation for the high prices:
"Whoever wants a Deri, wants a beautiful tiyomes. Even
by Deri if you buy 1000 lulavim you have to throw away about
400 lulavim because they aren't Brisker
lulavim. That's not because they aren't good
lulavim but because they aren't good enough for a
Brisker lulav. A baal habayis doesn't want to
pay such a price for a lulav -- even for a Deri.
"It is actually a dangerous market. People can and have lost
a lot of money. The dealers have jacked up prices by their
offers of higher prices to the wholesale producers. The
dealers saw that people want to buy Deri so they offered more
money to obtain the merchandise."
Refrigerated Lulavim
There is a rumor that some lulavim are refrigerated.
Should that bother us? I asked R' Shabsai and Mr. Mike
Ehrlich, the Distribution Manager of Tirat Tzvi, an American
oleh, whether that should bother us. (Mr. Ehrlich's
response is recorded in a special side box).
First let us ask R' Shabsai. "A full lulav grows in a
month and a week. If a kibbutz cuts 100 trees they
only get 300 to 400 lulavim. To be able to sell more,
they cut some a month or two beforehand, so that another crop
will grow in before the season. Of course, the lulav
must be refrigerated to last.
"I tried refrigeration but saw that about five days after
taking it out of the cold storage it dehydrated quite rapidly
-- much faster than a fresh-cut lulav. A regular
person buying a lulav would not be able to tell
whether or not it had been refrigerated. I open it up and
smell it inside and then I can tell if it has been
refrigerated. At Tzemach, the Kibbutz Artzi lab, the
scientists give advice on how to preserve lulavim.
They claim that refrigeration preserves the lulav. In
my opinion it is not good for the lulav and I stay
away from it. Refrigeration does not insure the length of
life of a lulav and should be avoided.
"There are a lot of potential problems with refrigeration. If
there is any dampness during the refrigeration, black spots
appear all around the lulav. Also, in refrigeration the
kora falls off and it is better to keep the
kora around the lulav as long as possible. The
hechsher I am getting will state explicitly that the
lulav has not been refrigerated."
It seems that you have to know from whom to buy your Deri
lulav.
The Future
This year R' Shabsai Cobin is trying to lower the price of
Deri lulavim. He needs much siyata diShmaya. He
bought a great deal of lulavim and is the biggest Deri
seller in the world today. He has no idea at this point if he
will come out with a profit or not. His personal goal is to
make the Deri lulav accessible to more people and he
wants to drop the lowest prices for a good lulav to
NIS 100 in a box for the first quality. Open
lulavim should cost NIS 150-180.
In addition he is planning to sell lulovim closed with
the kora for NIS 70. The tiyomes under the
kora in the packages will not be open; he says he has
never seen an open Deri lulav unless it suffered a
strong knock. He has seen Deri lulavim with pinpoints,
or looking like a hemnik, or with one tip higher than
the other. But, of course, the percentage of choice Deri
lulavim is significantly higher than with other
species. There is, of course, no way to know of these
problems without taking off the kora unless you are a
novi, but many people take lulovim.
R' Shabsai is also thinking of going to the Weitzman
Institute in Rechovot to ask them to genetically change the
shape of the lulav and take out the kora from
the middle leaf. Let the middle leaf grow like the one next
to it -- green. If someone does that he will be a
millionaire!
Actually R' Shabsai is taking a great risk in trying to lower
the price. Other dealers do not want him to lower the price.
He is not buying out the market but is just buying a
tremendous amount of lulavim. Another plan of his is
to put lulavim inside boxes after taking a little
kora off the top, and receive a hechsher from a
reliable rav for them.
His goal is to calm down the lulav market. To show the
other dealers that there is much advertisement against the
high prices so that they will lower them.
Gedolei Yisroel Love Deri
For the last ten years before the petirah of HaRav
Shlomo Zalman Auerbach zt'l, his nephew HaRav Yitzchok
Schwadron, the son of HaRav Sholom Schwadron zt'l,
bought lulavim from R' Shabsai for his uncle. The
Mishnah Berurah is machshir two tiyomes,
but since the shittas hageonim rules that the double
tiyomes must not be separated (see Yom Shel Shlomo,
Bovo Kama 96), although the Shulchan Orach does
not rule that way, R' Shlomo Zalman wanted a Deri
lulav that has only a very small percentage of double
tiyomes.
HaRav Chaim Kanievsky and the Erloi Rebbe take a long Deri
lulav. There is a Mogen Avrohom (672:3) in Hilchos
Chanukah who rules that it is a hiddur to have a
long lulav. He differentiates between using enough
olive oil in a menora for it to burn longer than a
half an hour and using a long lulav. Adding olive oil,
he says, is a hiddur outside of the mitzvah itself --
it just adds to the mitzvah but does not change the basic
mitzva performance in any way. That, he says, is not
considered a hiddur at all. A long lulav, on
the other hand, is a hiddur since it affects the
essence of the mitzvah and the way it is performed, since the
extra length adds to its beauty.
Maran HaRav E.M. Shach shlita has made a brocho
on R' Shabsai's Deri lulav a few times. HaRav Zelig
Braverman, a relative of HaRav Shach, was asked eight years
ago by the Rosh Yeshiva to call up R' Shabsai after Succos
and thank him for such a beautiful lulav. HaRav Moshe
Arye Freund zt'l, the late Ravad of the Eida
HaChareidis, used R' Shabsai's lulavim for many years.
He sent his gabai to call R' Cobin to his office and
thanked him personally for such a mehudar lulav. HaRav
Freund asked the names of his children and gave them all
brochos.
The Sephardi world follows the halachic ruling of the Beis
Yosef and not of the Ramo. R' Shabsai once asked HaRav Yehuda
Tzadkah zt'l if there is an inyan for Sephardim
to be machmir according to the Ramo and choose a
lulav that is entirely closed. He answered that there
is no inyan at all.
!!!!!!! !!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BOX BOX
Refrigeration and High Prices
The following is an interview with Mr. Mike Ehrlich, the
Market Director of the Kibbutz Tirat Tzvi in the Beit Shean
area.
Question: I would like to ask you about two important
points. First of all, there are persistent rumors that some
lulavim are refrigerated before Succos and later sold
in the lulav market together with the fresh
lulavim. Is this true? Second, is there any
justification for the high price of Deri lulavim and
is it the kibbutzim who are jacking up the prices?
Answer: No one can pick all the lulavim of any
species just two days before Succos. They are always picked
some time in the middle of Av and the lulavim are
fine. In the last few years some dealers have bought
lulavim very early. "Very early" means even during
Sivan. They refrigerate them and later sell them. We
ourselves tried this last year together with one of our
dealers but were unsuccessful and the lulavim rotted.
We didn't sell those lulavim and didn't try it again
this year.
Question: But aren't there people who do refrigerate
theirs?
Answer: There are people who do refrigerate. I was
told that in the U.S. there is a process that works but I
don't know what it is. The consumer should buy from a
reliable supplier. Asking when the lulav was cut -- in
Sivan or Av -- is certainly a legitimate question. A
lulav picked during Av and Elul is perfectly good and
does not have to be picked two days before Succos. There are
dealers who successfully refrigerate the lulavim for
many months and supply good lulavim to the market. I
know we tried but weren't successful.
Question: Are there other kibbutzim who do refrigerate
lulavim?
Answer: Again, it is not the kibbutzim who refrigerate
the lulavim; it is the dealers.
Question: How long does it take a lulav to
grow?
Answer: It depends what size of a lulav you
want to wait for. In the month and a half to two months of
the picking season we can pick more or less twice. They are
then [towards the end] usually smaller but are still
kosher.
Question: If a dealer would come to you in the middle
of Sivan would you sell him lulavim?
Answer: Yes I would. We tried to refrigerate them
ourselves but weren't successful so we didn't do it again.
Someone who wants to try does so on his own
responsibility.
All lulavim are refrigerated. OK, maybe you are lucky
and you got the lulav picked two days before, but
nobody can get all the lulavim down so quickly. All of
them are refrigerated but the question is for how long. If
you pick in Sivan and know how to refrigerate them, there are
no problems. I don't know how. There is someone from the
States who wants to come next year and refrigerate them. He
says he has a method. OK, kol hakovod, let him try.
High prices
I have my permanent dealers who come each year and I raise
the price according to the annual inflation rate. I have not
raised the price in the past two years and I have been in
charge for the last three years.
I feel I must say something to justify the dealers. They
suffer from much devaluation of their merchandise. Not all of
the lulavim are saleable. Some of them are ruined when
they are checked. I don't know how many of them are not sold.
Of course, they all cry to me that they didn't make any
money. Whether or not that is true, I can't know. There is
certainly a loss because of the merchandise becoming ruined
or not fit for sale and it is no small amount. What the
dealers do in the market is their business. I don't follow up
on what they do. If I wanted I could jack up the price even
more, but I feel it is a fair price that we are asking and we
don't ask for more.
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