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For years, many preferred etrogim from Corfu for the celebration of Sukkot because of the fear that the Erez Israel variety was from grafted trees and therefore invalid. The Erez Israel producers countered that the poor workers of Erez Israel are worthier and therefore their product superior to the Corfu antisemites who were responsible for pogroms and blood libels. Some countered that the Corfu etrogim were grafted, etc. R. Leiner in this broadside sides with the Corfu etrogim.
R. Mordechai Joseph Eleazar Leiner (1867-1929) son of R. Gershon Hanokh b. Jacob Leiner (1839–1891), talmudic scholar and hasidic rabbi. Leiner, popularly known as the "Radzyner Rebbe," was a prolific writer in several areas, his works including novellae on the Babylonian Talmud, Binyan Yerushalayim, on the Jerusalem Talmud, and commentaries on the Pentateuch, Maimonides'Guide of the Perplexed and the Zohar. By gathering together scattered references from the vast talmudic literature, he compiled Sidrei Tohorot, a gemara to the order Tohorot (for most of which no original gemara exists), even adding commentaries on the pattern of Rashi and Tosafot. He completed this enormous achievement before his 30th year. The work followed the pattern of the standard tractates of the Talmud so closely that it aroused some opposition, on the grounds that future generations might regard the work as actually belonging to the talmudic period. Much of his later work on Sidre Tohorot has remained in manuscript. Another of his innovations also encountered considerable opposition. He claimed that the cattle fish was the biblical hillazon, from which the blue dye of tekhelet referred to in Num. 15:38 was obtained, and he revived the practice, which had fallen into disuse for centuries, of having a double thread of the zizit of that blue dye. The innovation was adopted mainly by his Hasidim.
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