The controversy over etrogim from Corfu and Palestine, 1875-1891

The halakhic controversy concerning grafted etrogim (citrons) is centuries old, appearing in the responsa literature since the 16th-century writings of R. Meir of Padua in Italy and R. Moshe Alscheich in Palestine. The halakhic question is whether grafted etrogim are acceptable («kosher») and whether, accordingly, the relevant benediction may be recited over them, given the fact that they grew on trees whose roots are of lemon trees and only their boughs are those of etrogim. Which then is the determining factor - the root or the bough - i.e., is such fruit an etrog or something else? Rabbis from the sixteenth century forbade the recitation of the benediction for this or that reason. Some simply held that it is not an etrog, while others disqualified it as being less than complete or considered it to be 'disgusting in the eyes of Heaven' since it was based on mixing species. Some rabbis allowed blessing such an etrog when there was none other available, and others at least allowed its use (although without the benediction) in such circumstances. Still others forbade its use altogether fearing that it might turn an exception into a habit. With the first marketing of Corfu etrogim in the eighteenth century, in the markets of Italy, Eastern and Central Europe, most of the Ashkenazic and Sephardic halakhists tended to deem them grafted and, therefore, forbad their use. But when the question was put to R. Ephraim Zalman Margaliot, the author of'Bet Efrayyim' and one of the foremost halakhists of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, he ruled that Corfu etrogim are permitted and the benediction may be said upon them without hesitation (lehatkhila) and not only if no others are available. This broad decision was generally not acccepted until the controvery of 1845-1846. From then on, however, the Bet Efrayyim's opinion was accepted and contributed to a more permissive decision. Most Ashkenazic and Sephardic authorities now decided that Corfu etrogim are not grafted