Rabbi Gabriel Kanter-Webber
Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue
Saturday 26 September 2026¹

• There are a range of delightful etrog-based recipes that one can make once we’re done with our arba’ah minim. Etrog jam, etrog gin, candied etrog peel…
• But here’s a question: when can we make them? At what point relative to Sukkot does the etrog become surplus and available for consumption?
• We might say that the answer is: immediately after today’s service. The etrog’s been lifted and waved along with the lulav; we’ve carried out the commandment;² it’s now functus officio; let’s set up the distillery and get ginning.
• But of course that isn’t quite right: we’re meant to wave the lulav every day of Sukkot,³ so that would mean we need to keep our etrog un-fermented until its final outing on Friday morning.
• So in that case, after I’ve popped into shul on Friday morning and given it a quick waggle, then I can take it straight home and get out my jam thermometer, right?
• Still no. Because it turns out that the etrog isn’t just for waving. It’s for having. The actual biblical commandment simply says that we should “take” an etrog – for seven days.⁴ Even if we finish waving it at 11:30 on Friday morning, we haven’t finished having it until the entire seven-day period has elapsed. So we can’t eat it until Sukkot goes out on Friday evening.⁵
• Maimonides had to specify all of these details in his code of Jewish law because otherwise people might imagine, not entirely unreasonably, that once we’ve finished the religious bit of Sukkot – the ceremonial bit, the bit that has a b’rachah attached, the waving – we’re done and can switch back to being our normal selves and eating any citrus fruit we damn well feel like.
• In fact, though, what Maimonides taught was: an etrog is for life, not just for Christmas.
• There’s a much wider lesson here, and it’s about how we treat our Judaism. Is it something we compartmentalise into ‘the religious bit’ of our lives? Is it something we put on, like a tallit, when we enter this building and then take off again before leaving (being sure, of course, not to congregate on the doorstep for security reasons)? Once the ritual is finished, is the etrog of our Judaism ready to chuck in a saucepan and eat? Or should it be kept, because Judaism is for having and not just for waving in shul?
• You can probably tell where I’m going with this. Of course I want us all to make Judaism central to our lives, both inside and outside 6 Lansdowne Road. But I recognise that, as Progressive Jews, it is in some ways more challenging for us. We don’t feel bound, quite rightly don’t feel bound, by traditional standards of kashrut. For our Orthodox relatives who won’t eat in mainstream restaurants because the previous customer to use the plate might have ordered bacon, their Jewish practice is an ever-present part of daily life. But for us, it’s actually quite easy for Judaism to become something we do at 7pm on Fridays and 11am on Saturdays.
• This isn’t a big plea for you all to wear black hats and avoid mixed dancing. Those might be the most obvious ways to ‘do Jewish’ between Sunday and Thursday, but aside from anything else, they lack subtlety. As God said to the prophet Hosea:⁶ “I desire lovingkindness, not sacrifices.” And, I suspect, ethical behaviour, not shtreimels.
• In reality, I suspect that a lot of us ‘do Jewish’ between Sunday and Thursday without even thinking about it. Organising a collection for a food bank, or joining in a Pride march, or asking an employer to adopt family-friendly working hours: these are all Jewish things to do.
• When Rabbi Jill Jacobs was at seminary in Harlem, New York, she spent her spare time volunteering with a charity that supported poor tenants to find and keep secure housing. In her book There Shall Be No Needy, she writes about how this evening work complemented her daytime rabbinical studies:⁷

• Any issue, and I do mean any issue, facing the modern world, can be explored through a Jewish lens. And most of us, in confronting challenges and dilemmas in our own lives, instinctively turn to Jewish values without even thinking about it. If I were to ask each of you why it is that you don’t shoplift, you probably wouldn’t cite the Theft Act 1968. In reality, we don’t steal because we were brought up not to steal – and where did our parents and families and teachers get that idea? From their own, and so on and so on, back through time until we reach the eighth commandment in Exodus chapter 20.⁸
• Judaism is something that flows, and should flow, through every moment of our experience. Just as we need an etrog for all seven days of Sukkot, we need a Judaism for all the years of our lives. Just as the etrog doesn’t become an unnecessary, rather knobbly encumbrance to be turned into alcohol as soon as we’re done with it in shul, our Judaism needs to be with us the whole time – and it’s the role of a community such as BHPS to support each other to make it so.

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Shavua tov!

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Notes

1. Numbers 24:1-9 ↩︎
2. h.Shofar, Sukkah v’Lulav 7:9 ↩︎
3. m.Sukkah 3:12 ↩︎
4. Leviticus 23:40 ↩︎
5. h.Shofar, Sukkah v’Lulav 7:27 ↩︎
6. Hosea 6:6 ↩︎
7. Jill Jacobs, There Shall Be No Needy: pursuing social justice through Jewish law and tradition (Nashville: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2009) @2. ↩︎
8. Exodus 20:13 ↩︎