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America’s only major etrog grower is in survival mode amid global competition
(JTA) — (J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) On a small ranch in California’s Central Valley, below the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, an orchard grows an ancient and sacred fruit: the etrog, or citron.
At just 7 acres, the etrog grove at Lindcove Ranch in Exeter is a speck in Tulare County, where about 40% of California’s citrus crops are grown. But by another measure, the grove is giant: Lindcove Ranch is the only major commercial grower of kosher etrogs in the United States.
“This is my life — I really feel a calling to do this,” said Greg Kirkpatrick, 65, whose family has owned and operated Lindcove Ranch for more than 60 years.
The fruit looks like a strange lemon, with a knobby exterior, thick rind and oblong shape. It exudes a sweet, fresh, lemony fragrance. It’s not a fruit that shows up in grocery stores. But for Jews, the etrog is crucial for fulfilling the commandments of Sukkot. During the holiday ritual, which includes a blessing, an etrog is held in the left hand while a bundle of palm, myrtle and willow, called a lulav, is held in the right. Brought together, they are shaken in the four directions as well as upward and downward.
The Kirkpatrick family, who are not Jewish, began growing etrogs 46 years ago, when an Orthodox distributor from the East Coast reached out looking for a domestic grower. He wanted to avoid the costly import process of bringing in etrogs from any of the three major growing regions around the world: Israel, Italy and Morocco.
Greg’s father, John, who was already a successful citrus farmer, decided to give the specialty crop a chance, and soon citrons became an important part of the ranch’s annual income. Its citron orchard is part of a larger specialty-citrus operation, which includes yuzu, finger limes, makrut limes and sour oranges on about 30 acres. The citron, however, has been the ranch’s top-earning crop.
The citron business is a difficult one that Kirkpatrick likens to the diamond industry, with single pieces of fruit selling for hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars.
“It’s not so much how many we can grow. It’s the quality of the fruit,” he said.
An etrog must meet stringent requirements to be considered kosher for ritual use. It must be largely unblemished, retain its natural stem, called a pitom, and come from a documented lineage of trees that have never been grafted or crossed with another variety.
The requirements make growing them different from growing ordinary citrus, according to David Karp, a pomologist, citron expert and citrus researcher at UC Riverside.
“Many people have tried to grow citron in California,” Karp said, noting the financial allure of an etrog’s price tag. “But just because you can grow a lemon well doesn’t mean you can grow an etrog that’s right for Jewish ritual use. You can grow them, but you’ll end up selling them for $5 each, or feeding them to the cows.”
Karp said little in horticulture can compare to the scrutiny that etrogs undergo for physical appearance, all for the sake of religious ritual.
“There’s nothing remotely like this,” Karp said. “In Japan and perhaps other countries in Asia … there’s a cultural predilection for perfect, extremely expensive fruit that would be given as a gift. But there’s nothing quite like the citron for Jewish ritual use.”
A typical crop may begin with 10,000 to 15,000 pieces of fruit, but perhaps only half will be suitable to bring to market, according to Kirkpatrick. His harvesters are trained to pick citrons carefully after inspecting them on the tree.
“Being able to judge on the tree if the fruit’s good enough to bring into the packing house or not is important, so we don’t have to spend hours wading through and washing and dealing with fruit that’s not going to make it to the market,” Kirkpatrick said.
Once picked, each fruit is placed in its own spot in a foam tray. The citrons do not touch one another through the picking or packing process because even minor bruising or scratches can reduce their value.
There are multiple grades of etrog, ranging from cheaper, wholesale stock sold in mail-order sets to exceptionally large and blemish-free fruit sought by elite buyers.
For decades, Kirkpatrick mostly sold his etrogs through a specialized marketing network to Orthodox Jewish customers on the East Coast, who seek citrons that are not only kosher but exceptional in size, shape and color.
“My partner sells to a very select group of Orthodox Jews in Lakewood, New Jersey, by appointment only,” Kirkpatrick said. “And if you don’t have appointment-grade fruit, they won’t come to buy your fruit.”
In 2023, the ranch received about 22 inches of rain and failed to get much of a crop. That same year, John died, leaving the grieving Kirkpatrick family to navigate the business without him. Then, in 2025, the ranch produced what Kirkpatrick thought was a successful crop, but his marketing partner was unable to sell enough of the fruit to recoup the $250,000 it cost to produce. Those years were the two worst for etrogs in the ranch’s history.
Distributors simply want more top-grade etrogs than the Kirkpatrick operation is able to supply.
Rabbi Menachem Sirota, a longtime etrog distributor based in Lakewood, New Jersey, who has purchased Lindcove Ranch citrons in the past, said he has opted to buy from larger growers who can supply more of the highest grade of the fruit.
“Personally, as a wholesaler, I need a very large quantity of nice ones,” Sirota said. “For a while I was getting them from California, but in recent years I was not so satisfied with the quality.”
As a result of the huge financial loss from this shift, one of the family’s homes on the ranch ended up in foreclosure earlier this year, Kirkpatrick said. With labor being one of the ranch’s biggest expenses, Kirkpatrick has had to cut back from eight full-time employees to five part-time workers.
The family is even thinking of selling the ranch.
But for now, Kirkpatrick is trying to save his business by becoming more of his own wholesaler.
“We’re reinventing ourselves,” he said.
The ranch is focused on selling bulk orders directly to congregations. Just before Sukkot began on Sept. 25, for example, Kirkpatrick delivered a shipment to Congregation Beth Emek in Pleasanton and Chochmat HaLev in Berkeley, California.
Kirkpatrick is also courting a new customer base with a pitch built on a genuine difference between his etrogs and those grown abroad. His etrogs are grown without pesticides or other chemical treatments, so after Sukkot they can be eaten or made into jam, candied peel or liqueur.
That sets them apart from etrogs grown overseas, according to Karp.
“Because a citron is of little worth unless it’s cosmetically perfect, they spray the heck out of these trees and fruit,” he said, adding that he wouldn’t advise eating etrogs grown outside the United States. “It wouldn’t be my first choice for a marmalade, let’s put it that way.”
Whatever Kirkpatrick’s hopes, the fate of Lindcove Ranch, and of California-grown etrogs, will depend on several factors, including the weather and how the next growing season plays out.
“I’m a farmer, I’m always optimistic,” he said. “You have to be in the farming business.”
This story was first reported by J. The Jewish News of Northern California and is reprinted with permission.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post America’s only major etrog grower is in survival mode amid global competition appeared first on The Forward.
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Four Seats or No Seats? Why Israel’s Final Polls Disagree Over Amcha Yisrael
Conflicting projections for Ofer Winter’s party illustrate the uncertainty of measuring public support near an electoral threshold.
A Channel 12 poll gives Ofer Winter’s Amcha Yisrael four parliamentary seats.
An i24NEWS survey reaches the same seat total.
Other final polls find that the party does not qualify for representation.
How can surveys conducted close to the same election produce such different results?
The answer lies partly in the difference between measuring a vote share and converting it into parliamentary seats.
A Statistical Boundary
Israel’s electoral threshold is 3.25 percent.
For a party receiving substantially more than that percentage, modest sampling fluctuations may change its expected number of seats without calling its parliamentary presence into question.
For a party whose support lies near 3.25 percent, the same type of fluctuation may change its projected representation from several seats to zero.
This does not necessarily mean the polls are measuring completely different political realities.
They may be producing estimates close to the same threshold but on opposite sides of it.
Sample Size Is Only One Factor
The i24NEWS survey conducted on October 22 included 5,124 adult respondents and reported a sampling error of plus or minus 1.4 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level.
That is a substantial sample by conventional political polling standards.
But a larger sample does not eliminate every source of uncertainty.
Different pollsters may employ different recruitment methods, weighting systems and procedures for estimating turnout.
They may also differ in how they handle respondents who are undecided or reluctant to state their preferences.
These choices can matter particularly for smaller parties.
The Problem of Turnout
Opinion polls generally estimate voting preferences before actual voting takes place.
Election results reflect the ballots cast by people who participate.
Differences between intended and actual turnout can affect parties in different ways.
Analysts must therefore consider not only how many respondents express support for a party, but also whether the poll’s turnout model accurately reflects the eventual electorate.
Without transparent, comparable information about the methods used by each polling organization, it is difficult to identify which methodological difference is responsible for a particular disagreement.
Reading the Final Surveys
The appropriate interpretation of Amcha Yisrael’s polling is neither that its parliamentary representation is guaranteed nor that exclusion is certain.
The available surveys demonstrate uncertainty around a legally decisive boundary.
The four-seat projections reported by Channel 12 and i24NEWS are meaningful observations.
So are the below-threshold findings published by Channel 13, Maariv and Zman Yisrael.
Each survey is a measurement of electoral intentions under a particular methodology, not a count of actual votes.
For readers following Israel’s election, this makes Amcha Yisrael an instructive case study in how polling uncertainty interacts with electoral law.
The final result will provide the definitive seat allocation. The polls explain why the outcome was difficult to measure in advance.
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As Trump betrays Ukraine, it’s beginning to feel a lot like Munich
In Munich on Sept. 30, 1938, the leaders of Britain and France signed an agreement with Adolf Hitler that caved to the Nazi leader’s demand that Germany be given a chunk of Czechoslovakia. Five months later, Hitler ordered the German military to forcibly take the remainder of the neighboring country.
On Oct. 9, 2026, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin struck a deal allowing Russia to sell diesel fuel to global markets, most importantly to the US. Then Trump waived a package of sanctions on Russia that had been passed by Congress. By replenishing Russia’s war coffers, it is likely more Ukrainians will die because of these twin gifts from America’s president to the warmongering Russian autocrat.
Why is Trump doing this? He seems to be hoping the diesel deal will help him avert disaster in the upcoming midterms. Or maybe there’s more to it than that. Perhaps Trump seriously thinks that this will get him the Nobel Peace Prize by ending the war in Ukraine through helping Putin win it. Perhaps it’s one more scheme to further enrich himself and his family. Or maybe Putin really does have something on Trump.
In any event, it feels like Munich all over again.
There are some remarkable parallels between Czechoslovakia’s predicament in 1938 and Ukraine’s nine decades later: separatists in two vulnerable Central European democracies were encouraged and supported by a neighboring authoritarian regime that sought to seize adjacent territory under the pretext of protecting a minority from oppression.
And at the center of both narratives is betrayal: of Czechoslovakia by Britain and France, and Ukraine by Trump.
In the spring and summer of 1938, Konrad Henlein, leader of the Nazi-allied Sudeten German Party in Czechoslovakia, held secret meetings with Hitler and other Nazi officials. They concocted a plan: Cause so much disorder in the Sudetenland that the Czech government would declare martial law, thus creating an excuse for German troops to march in to protect the ethnic German minority.
Tensions that had long existed along the Czech frontier erupted into gunfire and death in the Sudeten town of Habersbirk on the morning of Sept. 13, 1938. A mob of German separatists hung a swastika banner from a church tower, stormed the police station, kidnapped the wife of a cop, and engaged in gunfights with police officers that lasted hours. Four Czech police officers and four insurgents died. Outbreaks of violence, terror and torture raged along the border for days, backed by Freikorps paramilitary troops who crossed from Germany and by SA and SS men who took part in cross-border sabotage and armed attacks.
The uprising had the desired impact. Just 17 days later — on Sept. 30, 1938 — Britain, France, Italy and Nazi Germany signed the Munich Agreement, yielding to Hitler’s demand that the Sudetenland be ceded to him. After landing at an airport outside London, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain waved a document in his hand and jubilantly proclaimed:
“The settlement of the Czechoslovak problem which has now been achieved is, in my view, only the prelude to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find peace.”
“I believe it is peace for our time,” Chamberlain said later that day.
But it didn’t take long for Hitler to show he could not be trusted. Hitler’s army marched into Czechoslovakia on March 15, 1939. Germany’s invasion of Poland followed less than six months later, and by 1942 German forces controlled territory spanning from the Atlantic Ocean to deep inside the Soviet Union.
Ethnic Germans’ uprising in Czechoslovakia in 1938 found an echo nine decades later in Ukraine’s Donbas region, where unrest that began with pro-Russia protests in 2014 evolved into the war Russia has been waging on its neighbor for nearly five years.
In the spring of 2014, paramilitary units led by Russian intelligence officers stormed government office buildings in several towns and cities in Donbas, seizing weapons and clashing with police. In a scene reminiscent of the Habersbirk siege of 1938, on April 14, 2014, pro-Russian militants seized the police station in Horlivka, beat up the police chief, and murdered a member of the city council, whose body was found in a river. Similar clashes occurred throughout Donbas.
Two Kremlin-backed pseudo-states soon emerged: the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic. Russia funneled tanks, artillery, air defense systems and fighters into Donbas, fueling a war between separatists and Ukrainian forces that dragged on for years.
Like Hitler in the Sudetenland, Russia’s de facto occupation of Donbas was not enough for Vladimir Putin. His eyes were on all of Ukraine, and he spent years manufacturing pretexts for the full-scale invasion that began on Feb. 24, 2022.
Trump has been buttering up Putin for more than a decade, starting with his 2015 campaign for president, when he effusively praised the ruthless Russian autocrat’s leadership style. Putin is a “strong leader,” is “far more respected than our president,” meaning the immensely popular Barack Obama, and was someone he “would get along with very well,” Trump said back then.
Trump’s admiration for Putin took on ominous tones after becoming president. During a press conference after the two leaders’ 2018 Helsinki summit, Trump questioned intelligence findings on Russian election interference and said he believed Putin’s denial. “I don’t see any reason it would be Russia,” Trump told reporters, with the Russian strongman standing at his side.
After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, during Biden’s presidency, Trump called it “a pretty smart move,” praised Putin as a “genius,” and also said it wouldn’t have happened if Trump was still president, remarks that were amplified by Russian state media.
During Trump’s second term, his buddy-buddy relationship with Putin has turned into a virtual strategic alliance, as the American president repeatedly makes moves and statements that seem designed to please the Russian autocrat. There are Trump’s threats to abandon NATO, his humiliation of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky during a February 2025 meeting inside the Oval Office, and most recently Trump’s demand that Ukraine cease its drone attacks on Russian oil refineries, his call for Zelensky’s ouster, and envoy Steve Witkoff thanking Putin for being a “humanitarian.”
Putin has proposed a summit between himself, Trump, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping to discuss ending the war in Ukraine. It’s notable that Ukraine has not been invited. This is also what happened in Munich nine decades ago, when Czech delegates were excluded from the room, and others decided Czechoslovakia’s fate.
Last October, aboard Air Force One, Trump told reporters the Donbas region should be “cut up,” leaving most of it in Russian hands.
“Let it be cut the way it is,” he said. “They can negotiate something later on down the line.”
It seems the fate Trump envisions for Ukraine is similar to the one Hitler envisioned for Czechoslovakia. It would be naïve to think that Putin’s expansionist ambitions would stop there.
The post As Trump betrays Ukraine, it’s beginning to feel a lot like Munich appeared first on The Forward.
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A Chabad Jew was stabbed in NYC. He returned the next day to continue wrapping tefillin.
(JTA) — Less than 24 hours after he was stabbed in midtown Manhattan, Yosef, a Chabad-Lubavitch man from Crown Heights, was back on the same street where he’d been assaulted, popping into Diamond District businesses as usual to help employees wrap tefillin.
Yosef, 26, who did not share his last name to maintain his privacy, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he was back on 47th Street on Thursday afternoon, the day after the stabbing, without missing a beat in his Monday-through-Thursday rounds even as police investigate the incident as a possible hate crime.
A number of the people he visited pieced together that the widely circulated footage of a man being stabbed the previous night was of him.
“They were in shock. They were obviously scared for me,” said Yosef, who has been wrapping tefillin and distributing Shabbat candles to Jewish Diamond District employees for about three years. He started that routine when his father, a Chabad Jew who works in the jewelry business, realized he needed his son’s help to handle the demand for those acts. Yosef told Chabad.org that he was “still shaken” by the attack a day later.
Still, he told JTA, “We can’t allow some hate to stop us.”
Yosef said he felt it was important to communicate that message because “we need more mitzvahs in the world, we need more light in the world.”
Yosef was taken to Bellevue Hospital on Wednesday evening around 6 p.m., where medical staff assessed that he had no internal bleeding and would not need stitches. No arrests have been made, but the assailant has been described as a woman in her 40s.
The attack has renewed concerns about security that have faced Chabad adherents and institutions, which often host public events and maintain a visible street presence. But the threat didn’t diminish their presence in midtown Manhattan on Friday.
Multiple Chabad men stood under a bright yellow tent on the sidewalk wrapping tefillin for a steady stream of workers in the heavily Jewish Diamond District.
“The Rebbe says that the way to defeat darkness is only through the addition of light,” said Shmuel Cohen, who was handing out small photographs of the movement’s late leader, the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson.
Cohen told JTA that he had not heard about the attack that took place just down the block two days earlier, though his partner under the sidewalk tent had. Cohen said that the best way to respond is through “the observance of Torah and mitzvot without being ashamed of our Judaism but presenting it to everyone.”
Also on Friday, Chabad officials met with New York Police Department representatives for their annual meeting about security ahead of Chabad’s international conference in Crown Heights, the Brooklyn neighborhood where the movement is headquartered. The conference begins on Nov. 5.
Chabad has been targeted in multiple high-profile attacks in the past year, including the deadly Bondi Beach shooting in Australia in December. The following month, a man rammed a car into the doors of the Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters in Brooklyn, raising further questions over how the movement should balance its commitment to making its events accessible with security.
Meanwhile, Jews have been targeted in more than half of hate crimes committed in New York City in 2026, despite making up about 12% of the city’s population.
“Security is our top priority. Our goal is to provide an environment where every participant feels safe and can fully experience the purpose and spirit of the gathering,” said Rabbi Mendy Kotlarsky, a top organizer of the upcoming conference.
In the wake of the attack, Yosef said he is not concerned about going out in public as a visibly Jewish person and doesn’t plan to change how he approaches the world.
“I was wearing the same clothes on Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday,” he said. “I didn’t change my routine.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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