Rush In A Jewish Fraternity

KnowTheCreed8 years ago

The hardest decision any rush chairman of a Jewish fraternity has to make is whether to go to Hillel or Chabad during the first weeks of school. While most other chapters can meet freshmen by holding parties and going to the local freshman bar, it’s in the best interest of our Nationals-imposed quota to stick to recruiting kids with last names that end in “-stein” or “-man.” I wish I were kidding, but welcome to rush for a Jewish fraternity.

Rush officially began this Thursday, but of course, we have been dirty rushing kids since school started. It’s what every chapter does. Except while most chapters are inviting kids to come to the house to play pong or watch the game, my house is getting kids to come to services for Yom Kippur and pray with them. I guess it’s different, I’m not sure. Both options seem pretty fun.

On Thursday we had our first rush event. We did our classic Burgers and Brews night with the first round of freshmen rushing our house. It’s nice. The whole chapter came to the backyard to grill and throw the football around. Except Goldberg. And Stein. And Cohen. The burgers weren’t kosher. Great way to keep the super-Jewish kids away from the event so they don’t scare away the non-Jews. And Stein kinda sucks. Only got a bid because of his area code.

The conversation with the freshmen are always the same.

“Hey, Mark, I’m Aaron. Nice to meet you. Where are you from?”

“I’m from Long Island.”

“Oh cool, I know a ton of people from Long Island. Which town?”

“I’m from Jericho.”

“Oh no way, have you met Levitt? He’s from Jericho too. Let me get him.”

That’s when I went to get Levitt from the forever-unclean vomit sofa to make him talk to this freshman. The two talked about their high schools, their mutual camp friends, the usual. That’s when Levitt got the kid’s number, 516 area code and all, and texted his friends at Syracuse and Emory to ask if the kid was cool. Apparently, Mark was a weird guy back on the Island. Instant ball. This is called Jewish geography.

Our event on Friday was a mixer. We invited a smaller pool of freshman to the house for our annual Risky Business themed party with SDT (naturally). We told them to get to the house around 10:00 to hang out before the girls show up. That’s when I got worried. I noticed a few of my favorite freshmen didn’t show up. I texted around to see where they could be. Turns out they went to Sammy’s Jungle-themed party that night. At least it wasn’t ZBT.

That’s when the girls started to arrive. The mixer went fine. It’s easy to ensure a solid turnout when your brothers are dating girls exclusively in SDT. The only problem was Chris. Chris is who we introduce the non-Jewish freshmen to in order to show them that our chapter isn’t that Jewish. Chris is what we call “a good look.” Except at this time, Chris was fighting with Stein because Stein would not turn on his phone flashlight to help Chris find his wallet after it had fallen beneath the vomit sofa. It was Friday night, which is Shabbat. Stein isn’t allowed to use electricity on Shabbat. This still does not change the fact that Stein kinda sucks.

Finally, it was Saturday: voting night. We put all the kids on a slide show and vote on them one-by-one. As rush chairman, I had to ensure that at least 75% of the bids we gave out went to Jewish kids. This is one of the many reasons why my Nationals sucks more than your Nationals. Voting was typical. A lot of kids from North Jersey, New York, and “right outside” Philly. We gave a bid to this kid Jaime, an Asian Jew from LA. Kid is hype. And in the end, Stein only spoke once the whole night. Great success.

That, readers, is the typical rush process of a Jewish fraternity. When your friends tell you that Jewish Greek life is different than Greek life, please, believe them..

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