| Funny, You Don't Look Jewish |
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| Written by Megan Brown | |||||
| Tuesday, 26 April 2005 | |||||
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Northwestern University freshman David Bouchard did not rush Zeta Beta Tau fraternity for its Zionist roots. He wasn’t looking for a welcome place to celebrate Chanukah. Nope – Bouchard, a Protestant from Cincinnati, said he joined ZBT because of the brothers. It was “the quality of the guys,” that attracted Bouchard, who hadn’t planned on joining a fraternity before arriving at Northwestern. “It was solely as a result of meeting people who were welcoming that made me join a frat,” Bouchard said. Historically Jewish, ZBT officially became non-sectarian in 1954, according to the fraternity’s national website. Yet many chapters, such as Northwestern’s, remain predominantly Jewish. Bouchard, it would seem, did not fit the mold. Neither did Tom Williams, a Vanderbilt freshman who considered joining Alpha Epsilon Pi, a frat whose national website describes it as “the Jewish Fraternity.” Williams, who is African-American and Christian, “was interested in AEPi because my friends were really interested in it,” he said. As a prospective student, Williams said, his host was an AEPi pledge, so he already knew some of the active brothers when he got to Vanderbilt. Williams, a New York City native, describes Vanderbilt’s chapter of AEPi as “unique,” explaining that, “only one or two of the executive board members are Jewish. The president is Christian. One prominent member is Palestinian. I would say Judaism, while it is a defining character of the house, isn’t a huge deal in our chapter.” Even so, Williams has spent enough of his life in a Jewish environment – his Bronx high school, Fieldston, enrolls many Jewish students, and he describes his dorm hallway as “predominantly Jewish and New York, out of coincidence” – that he eventually elected to drop his bid – meaning accept an offer – at Kappa Sigma, a non-Jewish frat. At the time, he says, he wanted “to try something different than the New York, Jewish thing.” But since his decision, Williams has reconsidered his decision to join Kappa Sig – and is once again thinking of joining the Jewish frat. Erik Osmond, a Northwestern University freshman, did not even realize he had signed up for a traditionally Jewish activity when he auditioned for the campus klezmer band. He was just seeking an outlet for playing the drums. “I got a random e-mail – I don’t know how I was on this listserv – and they were like, ‘Come try out for the WildKatz.’ K-A-T-Z,” said Osmond, a Protestant and a native of Jackson, Michichigan. “And they were like, ‘We’re a klezmer band, and if you don’t know what klezmer is, it’s a bunch of different styles.’ I didn’t even pick up that it’s a Jewish thing until after my audition when I walked out of the building, turned around, and saw it was Hillel.” Now one of the drummers for the band, Osmond notes that he “obviously wasn’t really keen on what klezmer was.” Most other band members are Jewish, according to Osmond, including the other drummer, but “I definitely don’t feel like I don’t belong or anything,” he said. “I get to kind of experience the culture first-hand. They throw some Yiddish around.” Osmond is proficient in German, so the language crossover is particularly interesting to him. “It’s just interesting and fun,” he said. “Different.” Do these non-Jews view their Jewish activities as opportunities to learn about other religions? Often, they don’t: Bouchard explains that to him, the most important part of his frat is the boys he met at the house. But occasionally, the difference of background does come up. At a date party where the fraternity brothers and their dates milled around with hors d’oeuvres, Bouchard’s friends were reminded of their bar mitzvahs. “They started exchanging stories,” he said, “and I had no such stories to exchange.”
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