I spent days wondering why this year my etrog arrived without a pitom. I searched for meaning in the missing piece, as if wholeness depended on a crown, as if the essence could be diminished by its absence. Then, this morning, a dear friend joked: “Perhaps you need to learn that the pitom does not make the etrog.” I smiled at the joke, but my soul lingered on the lesson.

While at one time in my life I subscribed to a separation of worlds theory, today I seek to be just one person; unfragmented in all places and at all times.
I seek to make my appearance, speech, and actions consistent so that no matter who sees me they will know that this is the real me and not just a role that I choose to play to fit the circumstance or occasion.

Perhaps that is the lesson of the pitomless etrog: that what makes us whole is not always what is seen first, and that authenticity, not adornment, is what gives us our true form.