Diogenes Laertius loved telling fancy anecdotes
concerning diets of great Greek philosophers. Green figs
were Zeno’s favorite food, Diogenes Laertius notes,
not asking whether he was Jewish, and avoided pigs.
Such avoidance would have been a major paradox.
Its prevalence in members of the Jewish race is
quite inexplicable, unlike the presence of cream cheese and lox
that with great logic every kosher Jew on bagels places.

Some philosophers died strangely. Empedocles leaped
to death by jumping into Etna’s fiery crater.
At jumping like Jehosophat, great Jews were not adept,
but helping a one-legged gentile once proved Hillel greater
than Shammai, when they both were challenged by a non-Jew who
asked for a quick conversion. Only Hillel appeared willing,
while the gentile stood on one leg, to change him to Jew,
his wish to be a model monopedal Jew fulfilling.

The leap of faith of Empedocles is literally connected
not just to fiery deaths of Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu,
martyred in the tabernacle,
but to the legend that the Torah by the Israelites was not rejected
by all Jews’ ancestors, whom God threatened to be buried
beneath Mount Sinai if they rejected Torah’s legal shackle.

This would have meant they’d not be forty-niners, celebrating Shavuot,
the Jews’ Pentecost,
and the mysterious rationale for eating cheesecake on this festival
have been therefore lost,
like longing for the joy of Torah on Simchat Torah or
forty-niners for Clementine
after celebrating Sukkot, for their favorite of four species,
an etrog, not a lemon lime.

B88a Sabbath states:

״וַיִּתְיַצְּבוּ בְּתַחְתִּית הָהָר״, אָמַר רַב אַבְדִּימִי בַּר חָמָא בַּר חַסָּא: מְלַמֵּד שֶׁכָּפָה הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא עֲלֵיהֶם אֶת הָהָר כְּגִיגִית, וְאָמַר לָהֶם: אִם אַתֶּם מְקַבְּלִים הַתּוֹרָה מוּטָב, וְאִם לָאו — שָׁם תְּהֵא קְבוּרַתְכֶם. אָמַר רַב אַחָא בַּר יַעֲקֹב: מִכָּאן מוֹדָעָא רַבָּה לְאוֹרָיְיתָא. אָמַר רָבָא: אַף עַל פִּי כֵן הֲדוּר קַבְּלוּהָ בִּימֵי אֲחַשְׁוֵרוֹשׁ, דִּכְתִיב: ״קִיְּמוּ וְקִבְּלוּ הַיְּהוּדִים״ — קִיְּימוּ מַה שֶּׁקִּיבְּלוּ כְּבָר.

The Gemara cites additional homiletic interpretations on the topic of the revelation at Sinai. The Torah says, “And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet God; and they stood at the lowermost part of the mount” (Exodus 19:17). Rabbi Avdimi bar Ḥama bar Ḥasa said: the Jewish people actually stood beneath the mountain, and the verse teaches that the Holy One, Blessed be He, overturned the mountain above the Jews like a tub, and said to them: If you accept the Torah, excellent, and if not, there will be your burial. Rav Aḥa bar Ya’akov said: From here there is a substantial caveat to the obligation to fulfill the Torah. The Jewish people can claim that they were coerced into accepting the Torah, and it is therefore not binding. Rava said: Even so, they again accepted it willingly in the time of Ahasuerus, as it is written: “The Jews ordained, and took upon them, and upon their seed, and upon all such as joined themselves unto them” (Esther 9:27), and he taught: The Jews ordained what they had already taken upon themselves through coercion at Sinai.

An etrog (Hebrew: אֶתְרוֹג) is a yellow, fragrant citrus fruit—a type of citron (Citrus medica)—used during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. It is one of the “Four Species” (along with a palm branch, willow, and myrtle) that are held and waved during prayers. Often described as looking like a bumpy, thick-rinded lemon, it represents the “fruit of a goodly tree” in Lev. 23:40, identified as a citron by the rabbis.