California – From a certain vantage point on Arthur Futterman’s date farm, Shulem Ekstein can see palm trees in every direction. Mr. Ekstein has been to many of these farms, waiting at the gate in his black three-piece suit, his prayer shawl poking out from underneath his vest.
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For each of the last seven years, Mr. Ekstein has traveled from Kiryas Joel, a tightly knit Orthodox enclave northwest of New York City, to ask the farmers in the California desert if he could please buy the inner palm fronds of their trees. Thousands of Jews, he will explain, will soon be looking to use those sort of fronds as a religious ritual object to celebrate the holiday of Sukkot.
“I explain to them it doesn’t hurt the trees, it helps them,” said Mr. Ekstein, 27, his voice thick with a Yiddish accent, as he reached through a tree to clip one out. “It just takes a minute or less to cut them, not complicated.”
The palms are most abundant in the Middle East – the vast majority of the roughly 500,000 used in the United States are imported from Israel and Egypt. But this year, Egypt has apparently held back from exporting the fronds, sending a wave of panic about a potential lulav shortage through the small circle of businessmen who distribute and sell them in the United States.
The Lulavs should be grown in the USA; let us stop depending upon foreign sources of supply, not only for Lulavs, but for our supply of oil, also.
Wouldnt it be nice, if there is no shortage, and our american brothers can make the money off them???? That would show these yimach shimomnicks!
A member of the ultra-Orthodox Satmar Hasidic sect, which believes the state of Israel should be created only by God, Mr. Ekstein does not buy religious items from Israel.
maybe all Jews should stop buying anything associated with satmar
why should we support them when they cannot support isreal, even to go so far as not to buy a luluv from Is real
The obcession with the arba minim is getting out of control. There was an article about a group of yidden who travel to Italy each year before the yom tovim and buy Italian esrogim for $10 to $30 each and export them for resale to EY for hundreds of dollars each. These same ehrliche yidden will walk to shul and pass poor yidden sitting on the street begging for money to put food on the table for yom tov and may be drop a few NIS if they are lucky. Its not my business to tell anyone how to waste their money but this arba minim stuff has gotten out of control. If KY can afford to import lulavim from California, why does the town have the highest welfare dependency rates in New York?? Somthing doesn’t make sense. Stop wasting money on California lulavim and use that money to take care of your own people..