Jewish frat AEPi has Israel’s back on campus

Wild booze-filled nights, toga parties, and hazing are the popular images that come to mind when thinking of fraternities and sororities, especially for those not personally exposed to Greek life on American campuses.

But the Jewish college fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi) wants to dispel those images about its organization. By joining the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations umbrella group in January, the fraternity is cementing its reputation as a major Jewish organization and Israel advocacy force on college campuses.

As a national organization with affiliates on campuses across the country, and 10,000 members plus many alumni “who are very active,” AEPi “brings an important constituency into the Conference and emphasizes our desire to get more young Jews involved,” said Conference of Presidents Executive Vice President Malcolm Hoenlein.

According to AEPi’s international president, Elan Carr, AEPi has roots similar to those of other Jewish fraternities. It was founded in 1913 at New York University because, at the time, Jews were not accepted into other fraternities.

“Like many traditional American social constructs, [fraternities] were restricted to white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. So Jews were not welcomed,” Carr told JNS.org.

In the 1920s, there were dozens of Jewish fraternities, but eventually the limitations on Jewish acceptance to other fraternities waned, forcing Jewish Greek organizations to re-evaluate themselves.

In the 1950s some major Jewish fraternities redefined themselves as non-Jewish. Most Jewish fraternities from then are gone.

AEPi was “not immune from that very same debate,” Carr said. Some brothers argued that, just as in other Jewish fraternities, removing the “Jewish” label was needed for AEPi’s survival. But others wanted to maintain the fraternity’s Jewish identity, values, and pride. The latter faction won the debate.

Today, as a result of that debate, AEPi is “the only fraternity that defines itself as a Jewish organization, that fights assimilation, that produces the Jewish leaders of tomorrow, and that fights for Israel,” Carr added.

According to University of California, Berkeley junior Avi Levine, the Jewish Identity Chair and Alumni Relations Chair at the university’s AEPi chapter, joining the Conference of Presidents was a “fantastic and brilliant move.”

Nowhere is AEPi’s growing role in Israel advocacy more clear than at UC Berkeley, a campus now widely known for larger-than-average Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement activism and anti-Israel protests.

“When [UC Berkeley student government’s] divestment [vote] happened last year, and in 2010, the AEPi brothers went out and gave speeches and played an integral role in helping the rest of the Jewish community. AEPi served as a space in which people were able to organize and help other students write speeches they wanted to give during [the time for] public comment,” Levine said.

Levine is also the president of Tikvah: Students for Israel, founded “by a bunch of AEPi guys who were sick and tired of the [anti-Israel] situation on campus.”

“We definitely have sessions with our new members to talk about Judaism and how that’s an essential part of our fraternity, and as such, so is Zionism and being pro-Israel,” Levine said.

But Levine is not optimistic that the downturn in anti-Israel activism on his campus will last very long.

Carr said AEPi has branched out into an international organization with 180 campuses in Canada, the United Kingdom, France, and Israel, in addition to the U.S.

“The genius of AEPi is that we’ve taken this traditional American concept…and we’ve redefined it in a Jewish way,” Carr said.

“We’ve created a product with international appeal” and “we represent a central principle of what it means to be Jewish.” Carr explained that brotherhood “is a Jewish concept,” citing the verse, “Hine matov umanaim shevet achim (brothers) gam yahad.”

In Europe, Car said, Jewish college students feel safe at AEPi from the rise in anti-Semitism on that continent. But installing AEPi in Israel was a bigger challenge.

While fraternities offer “growth, maturity, identity,” Carr said, AEPi’s question was, “How can we compete with the IDF?... We’re going to teach responsibility to a kid who carried an M-16 in Lebanon?”

“What we’re seeing is that Israelis who are post-army love this concept of brotherhood and unity,” because they experienced it in their army units and “they miss it,” Carr said.

In terms of social activism, UC Berkeley’s AEPi is currently raising $20,000 for Save a Child’s Heart, an Israeli charity providing heart surgery to children in need around the world.

At the Brandeis University chapter, AEPi brothers are fundraising for Keshet, a charity working with children with disabilities. Previously, the chapter raised $4,000 for Sharsheret, a Jewish organization helping women with breast cancer. Brothers have also offered their services to local soup kitchens and homeless shelters.

Jordan Schwartz, one of the brothers who refounded the Brandeis chapter in 2012, is now the fundraising and philanthropy chair.“We’re trying to become a player on campus in the pro-Israel sphere, and I think we definitely have a lot going for us.”

Next month, the Brandeis AEPi chapter is sending two students to Washington, DC, to learn how to be pro-Israel activists with AIPAC.

AEPi’s philosophy is that Judaism and Israel advocacy go hand in hand.

“We all recognize the importance of Israel,” Schwartz said. “We may differ in opinion on how to secure its future, but I don’t think any of us disagree on the importance of the Jewish state.”