1. Cedars and Jewish in
Calabria
Cedar is perhaps the oldest and
constant bond that unites Jews to
Calabria and Calabria to Jews.

2. • Cedar is one of the most important typical Italian products.
Almost all production comes from the Italian tiny stretch of
the Calabrian coast between Tortora and Cetraro, that has
taken its name from this citrus fruit.
• It was the Jews who spread the cultivation, first in Palestine
and then in all other regions where they were forced to
emigrate to escape deportation
• God said to Moses, "You will take the fruits of the most
beautiful tree, some branches of the palm tree , some
willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice in front of the
Lord your God." For Jews, the fruits of the most beautiful
tree are cedars. Without these they could not do the
festival of booths and so they brought back the secrets of
cultivation wherever they went.

3. In Italy Cedar has made ​​its appearance two or three hundred
years before Christ by those Hellenized Jews that surely had
followed the Achaeans founders of agricultural colonies of
Metapontum, Sybaris and Croton on the Ionian Sea and of
Posidonia and Laos on the Tyrrhenian Sea
In the centuries , this link between cedar and the Jewish
religion did not end and, even today, every summer, the
rabbis are in Calabria to choose and pick up with their hands
the most beautiful fruits, which are indispensable to the party.
The cedars collected are shipped around the world from
Argentina to Russia, from Australia to Canada.

4. Whatever is the tree from which it
comes, the fruit must have certain
characteristics that make the citrus sacred
kosher o kosher that is good, suitable to
the ceremony. “The reason why the
Jewish priests reach Calabria from many
parts of the world, in particular from the
United States and Eastern Europe, is
obviously a religious motive: the search
for the perfect cedar to be used in
September and October for the Sukkot
("Feast of Tabernacles" or "Feast of
Tabernacles"), one of the three major
Jewish holidays of the year, with the
Passover (Pesach) and Pentecost
(Shavuot). Nearly all Italian production of
cedar is concentrated in Calabria.

5. The rabbins come to the Riviera of the Cedars to
view personally, one by one, the trees and pick
individual fruits. The work of selection begins in
the early morning, with the rabbi and the farmer
who advance slowly between the rows of
cedars. The rabbi usually precedes the farmer
who follows him with a wooden box and a pair of
scissors in his hands.
The cedars to be used in the celebrations must
have precise characteristics: they must come
from trees grown from cuttings and grafted at
least in the fourth year of life and have a stalk
accentuated, a perfect conical shape with no
roughness and no stains on the skin.
The cedars of Calabria are among the few in the
world to present the required characteristics and
to have them the rabbis are willing to pay a lot of
money .

6. Sukkòt, the "Feast of Tabernacles"
Sukkot, the "Feast of Tabernacles" or "Feast of Tabernacles" is
celebrated on the 15th of Tishri - which means principle - and it is
the month that begins the Jewish calendar, between September and
October. • The Feast of Tabernacles commemorates the 'exodus
from Egypt and the forty-year period in which the Israelites lived in
the desert before entering the Promised Land.The season coincides
with the period of the last harvest before winter, and it is for this
reason that the recurrence is identified as the "Harvest Festival".
During Sukkot, they eat and spend most of the day in a hut of
branches, adorned with flowers, fruit and drawings and with the roof
covered of sparse branches in such a way as to allow its
occupants, in the evening and during the night, to observe the stars.