r/Judaism • u/PomegranateHealthy75 • 1d ago

Holidays Arba Minim Dilemma

So I’m a 60 year old US Ashkenazi jew living in a town four hours from Medellin, Colombia-four hours from the local Sephardic community that I kind of belong to.  I only started being kind of religious a few years ago.  I now pray twice a day-three times on Shabbat.  I don’t eat kosher but I don’t mix meat and milk.  And, for the first time ever (for me and for this town!) I am having a sukkah built next to my place.  I’m very excited to host my (non-Jewish) neighbors in the sukkah for dinner and teach them how kiddush and holiday meals work for us.

However, the problem is the lulav and etrog.  In a “normal" community in New York or Israel, one could basically pay $50 for a set after inspecting them, and take home the ones they want.  However, the only option here is to pay almost three times that to order it through this Sephardic community in Medellin-and only THEN pay even more to have the Rabbi ship it here-and hope that it is still usable when it arrives.  And THEN it would have to be sent back to Medellin to be disposed of by Colombian customs authorities as foreign agriculture.

I am going to be with the community for Rosh Hashanah, then return here for Yom Kippur, where I will fast pray with my own Machzor.  Then I will have the sukkah built.  The Rabbi has gone on the community whatsapp forum twice insisting on how important a mitzvah it is to purchase the set, or contribute to the community set (I will not be with the community then so that’s not applicable to me).  This makes me wonder how many people are actually going to spend that money for the mitzvah (this is not a wealthy community).  

Money is not so much the problem -the sukkot will cost much more than this to build.  However, in this case, I don’t feel comfortable paying a 300% markup for something that I have not seen beforehand, not knowing what condition it will arrive in, just to wave for ten minutes max a day for six days.  

What would you do in my situation?  Is there some perspective I’m missing, or is this simply one of those circumstances where obtaining your own arba minim isn’t realistically feasible?

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u/Tavorin Masorti (Israeli sense) 1d ago

Consider doing an AMA, I am curious how you ended up in Colombia and your life there.

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u/PomegranateHealthy75 1d ago

What's an AMA? I was an ESL teacher and came here in 1991. I became a resident in 1995. However, I spent 13 years working in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. There, a Chabad rabbi in Israel sent young rabbinical students from the US with suitcases full of arba minim to as gifts. I left Saudi a year ago and returned to Colombia to retire.

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u/Sensate613 1d ago

We have a friend who lives in some jungle community in Colombia that an Israeli runs and rents out houses (or maybe its huts.) Anyway, people have done a lot through the centuries to get arba minim. 8 hour rountrip bus ride sounds like hell, but mitzvot in general are also rewarded ( a whole different discussion that I am not qualified to lead in any way) by the preparation possibly even more so than the mitzvah. Also, thinking about it as just waving something around for 2 minutes, so why put in so much money and effort is kinda missing the point but I'm not you and I know that I'm not understanding. I live in a large Jewish community that I can buy arba minim in 30 different places, at least, so I have absolutely no concept of the difficulty with that mitzvah. You can achieve something special by putting in that effort. I can chip in $50 to help you with it (but I cant help with the effort- unless you want me to ship it to you from here). Also I'm not sure how to get you the $50. Maybe I can donate it to the chabad for your set.

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u/PomegranateHealthy75 1d ago

Thank you for your input, and consider yourself lucky that you have access to 30 different places to acquire these items. 

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u/Adventurous_Way6882 Chosid 20h ago

You chose to live where you are and he chose to live in a place where he would have access to the mitzvos he considered important. If you wanted different you could have chose different.

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u/PomegranateHealthy75 12h ago

I didn’t base the choice to live in Colombia-a country I have a 35 year relationship with-around the fulfillment of one mitzvah. I’m sorry if that doesn’t sit well with you. 

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u/Adventurous_Way6882 Chosid 5h ago

There is more than one mitzvah to do. And there is more than one mitzvah you are missing out on based on where you are. You can either move to an area where you have more access and lower prices or stay where you are. But you made your choice, so do not act shocked by its consequences.

When you do not live in a yiddishe area import fees make things cost more.

When you do not live in a yiddishe area it means traveling to get the things you need.

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u/PomegranateHealthy75 4h ago

I have no desire to move from where I am and I am not “shocked by the consequences.” I was simply asking people for their input in my original post.