Why Karaites Eat Delicious Fruit on Sukkot

Humorous stories are the ones that are most hard
to write, declared Mark Twain, yet the consumer is
quite often put off by the popular canard
that no skill is required to be humorous.

The fact is this requires far more skill than being
as people who are serious often wish, as serious
as they, which I am only rarely, vis-a-vising
serious people in this way, with deleterious
effects quite often, which in fact does not disturb
me in the least, because If they don’t share my sense
of humor they are to me just like a bitter herb,
and with their presence I’m as happy to dispense
as I am to dispense on Passover to friends
haroset after maror, sweetness after what
is bitter, like the message being funny sends
to those who need to laugh a little and do not.

It also echoes sweetness of four species eaten
by some Karaites on Tabernacles to
forget the bitterness of Yom Kippur, and sweeten
the year, in the delicious way that fruit can do.

Haroset is the sweet food that Jews eat at the seder after eating the bitter herb called maror.

In  “Sukkot’s Unshaken Four Species: Building materials or trail mix? How Karaite Jews read Leviticus 23:40, which describes the mitzvah of taking (ולקחתם) the four species, in light of Nehemiah 8:15,” thetorah.com, Shawn Joe Lichaa writes:

Picking up on the reference to fruit, these Karaite scholars—admittedly a minority—understand the mitzvah as a requirement to eat delicious fruit throughout the holiday.

This Karaite opinion links the edibility of the deliciousfour fruit composing the four species associated with the Sukkot festival to edibility of delicious fruit and vegetables that are the traditional ingredients of haroset.