Going Greek: Jewish College Fraternities in the United States, 1895-1945 (review)

Going Greek is Marianne R. Sanua's prodigiously researched study of Jewish Greek life at American colleges. Sanua explores the way American Jews used campus fraternities (and a few sororities) to negotiate their position in the socioeconomic hierarchy and political landscape. She offers a close reading of decades of organizational files, especially those of Zeta Beta Tau, about which she has published a previous book. She has also assembled photographs, chapter rolls, college directories of fraternities and sororities, and even songs of those organizations.

Sanua's readings of the pledge parties, courtships, and other youth-affirming rituals of Jewish fraternity life comprise a serious, often tragic, examination of several generations of American Jewish Greeks and their "ceaseless struggle" for "success": their "desperate efforts to remake themselves and their fellows into the image of what they believed society was telling them a good American ought to be" (30 ). In their strivings, Jewish Greeks articulated American Jews' fears and hopes. Though Sanua's sources offer a precious opportunity to hear them, ultimately she does not provide sufficient analysis to assess the significance of those strivings—to map them onto the landscape of Americanisms at the turn of the last century.

Sanua discusses two main forces acting on these organizations. First, she examines the extent of antisemitism from without, the exclusions and intolerance Jews faced from the mainstream white population. Second, she carefully lays out the vitriolic debates (inextricably tied to widespread antisemitism) within the Jewish organizations and broader Jewish community over what sort of Jewishness was appropriate to America.

Within the "pervasive system of social discrimination" operating in the U.S., Jewish college students responded to their exclusion from white Protestant fraternities by founding their own (45 ). In defiance of anti-Jewish quotas, hostile college administrations, and widespread xenophobia, they formed these social and support organizations, all the while feeling keenly the pressure of representing American Jews. They predicted (often correctly) that they would be easy targets of antisemitism. Their purpose, as one fraternity stated in 1920 , was to "adjust the Jew to his collegiate environment" (60 ). This adjustment took the form of "social training along the lines of mainstream, Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture" (275 ). Jewish Greeks had to represent the "best" of American Jewry, and to accomplish this, they reasoned, "we need not accentuate our Jewishness" (61 ).

As they internalized mainstream ideas of proper Americanism, members created their own patterns of exclusion and elitism. In their internal reports, elite leaders denigrated prospective members out of fear of "conspicuous" behavior: those who kept kosher, looked "too Semitic," or did not meet the requirements for "charm and attractiveness" deemed necessary were not invited to join (255 ). Exclusion was based on predictable categories: class markers (occupation of the father, where the family lived), physical appearance, how long the family had been in the U.S., what language was spoken at home (Yiddish speakers were not welcome), and, eventually, if s/he espoused radical politics. Members assiduously avoided the "loud, cheap, Jewish type," the "greasy" Jews, the "typical ghetto personality" (213 -15 ).

Sanua describes the women and men in the Greek subsystem (subordinate to the Gentile system) as operating with "bitter dignity and self-respect" in striving for the "highest standards" of membership (160 , 159 ). They had internalized the messages of the dominant culture and sought acceptance by the Anglo white majority. By the 1930 s, though acceptance was not forthcoming, Jewish Greeks could "still do their best to enjoy their lives as truly American college students"—for all the positive and negative encapsulated in that label (93 ).

The impact of Hitler's rise to power on Jewish Greek life can hardly be understated, and Sanua chronicles this moment with keen sensitivity. Some, like Abram Sachar, an honorary fraternity brother and later the first president of Brandeis University, hoped to increase the Jewish content...