'Here's to Our Fraternity': One Hundred Years of Zeta Beta Tau, 1898-1998

An American Jewish fraternity whose evolution has mirrored larger social, historical, and cultural contexts. In the late 1800s an increasingly dominant fixture of student life on both US and European college campuses was the fraternity, groups of like-minded individuals who banded together based on "Greek" intellectual and social ideals. One such society was Zeta Beta Tau, founded by Dr. Richard James Horatio Gottheil and fourteen charter members at Columbia University in 1898 as a forum where young Jewish men could discuss their faith, enhance pride in their heritage, and embrace the ideals of the Zionist movement. In this study, Marianne Sanua follows the evolution of the fraternity from its rabbinical roots to its increased secularization and shows how ZBT's social opportunities, hitherto denied its members in the non-Jewish world, were a means of proving "first on the college campus and later to all the world that young Jewish men could be the equal of their best Gentile counterparts in achievement, breeding, appearance, behavior, and gentlemanly bearing." In chronicling ZBT, however, Sanua also examines broader issues like anti-Semitism, Zionism, assimilation, the presence of Jews in academe, and the changing goals and expectations of generations of the fraternity's members. From debating society to social, professional, and even matchmaking network, ZBT's history reflects its charter's ideals both to "encourage, strengthen, and continue friendships gained at college" and "to inculcate in the lives of its members a love and respect for all things Jewish."