This Sukkot 5785/2024 we did an international food theme to keep variety for the many festive meals of the holiday. Our first night in the Sukkah was Italian night. We served garlic-bread, meatballs and spaghetti, minestrone soup, biscotti and more. In the past we’ve learned accompanying lessons from meatballs & spaghetti (and sauce, too) and we once did a history review of Jewish history and scholarship in Italy.
This time we focused on the Italian fascination with vowels.
You don’t have to know a lot about Italian to know that one of its most distinctive features is ending so many names and words in a vowel. Almost every Italian name ends off with a vowel. Italian seems to have more vowels than most other languages. And no matter how grammatically challenged you are (like I am,) everyone knows what a vowel is.
But here’s something interesting I read online, its one of the first things that comes up in a Google search about about vowels vs. consonants that made me and my daughters sound out a whole bunch of letters to see how it works:
For vowels the vocal tract is open, for consonants the vocal tract is constricted.
We had people trying to sound out vowel vs. consonant letter and contrast them, wondering about some of the trickier ones. We had linguists minors in the Sukkah explain how vowels are not the specified letters but the phonetic sounds – and there are more of them than we think. Either way, this definitions for vowel vs. consonant comes up one of the first in a simple Google search.
Seen this way, it feels most appropriate for our first night in the Sukkah to be Italian-themed. With its heavy emphasis and increased use of vowels, Italian in the Sukkah symbolizes more open flow, our rooftop open to heaven, and the openness to one another that a Sukkah facilitates.
In the Sukkahleh Song, which is our longstanding tradition to sing in Rabbi Rubin’s translated version from the Yiddish – you might say the daughter is the consonant, as she is anxious and fearful, constricted like a consonant; while her father is the vowel, open and receptive, brimming with faith and trust. (Of course, the roles can flip outside the context of the song, sometimes it is our children who are more optimistic, open and hopeful).
Of course, almost all words (with few small exceptions) are made up of BOTH vowels and consonants, and life is the same, it is a healthy balance of open and closed, of flow and constriction, or in the language of Chassidus: Chessed AND Gevurah, or Revelation AND Concealment. Yes, we do need both.
But there’s something to be learned from starting off our Sukkot with an Italian night in the Sukkah, especially in 5785/2004: In difficult times of adversity it can be especially challenging but all the more important to be more vowel-esque. It’s easy to slip into constrictive and closing consonant-mode. But this is the time to be a bolder vowel! Here’s where Italian-emphasis on vowels ought to shine, and most importantly, despite whatever constricting consonants, to often end off on a vowel-note!