In October, Jews celebrate one of their major holidays, Sukkot. It is a festival of harvest, autumnal fertility, joy and fun. Another name for Sukkot is the Feast of Booths, because it is customary to eat and sleep in tents to commemorate the 40 years of wandering in the desert after the Exodus from Egypt. This is what it says in one of the commandments:

One of the main commandments of Sukkot is the raising of a lulav, a bundle of four kinds of plants: etrog, date palm, myrtle and willow. “Etrog” is the Hebrew name for the citron, a fruit that resembles a lemon. It is the main one of the four Sukkot plants because, unlike the others, it has both a pleasant taste and aroma. The etrog is also used for many other Jewish rituals. The Torah says,

The process of selecting and buying the perfect etrog was an important ceremony for a devout person. Today, the citron grows in many countries, but in ancient times it was imported from India and Western Asia, so the fruit was very expensive and it was not easy to find an etrog in perfect condition. The fruit had to be preserved throughout the whole of Sukkot, which is seven days.

Special vessels and carriers were used to store the precious fruit. Wealthy Jews had them made from silver, and ordinary people — from wood. The silver carriers could be in the shape of a jewelry box or a fruit, and jewelers decorated them as works of Jewish decorative art.

After the feast, the Jews could continue to keep the etrog in a box to use it also for the ritual of Havdalah — saying goodbye to the Sabbath with prayer and spices. In this way the fruit progressed from one commandment to the next. The Jews pierced the citron with an awl and placed dried cloves in the hole. In a closed container its fragrance would become spicy and rich.