ZETA BETA TAU

Zeta Beta Tau is an amalgamation of what were once five separate fraternities: Kappa Nu, Phi Alpha, Phi Epsilon Pi, Phi Sigma Delta and Zeta Beta Tau. While each of these antecedent fraternities enjoys a unique history rich in specific traditions, they all grew out of similar circumstances immediately before and just after the tum of the 20th century.
 

Zeta Beta Tau was the first of the five. It was inspired by Richard J. H. Gottheil, a professor of Semitic languages at Columbia University and an early American Zionist. On December 29, 1898, Professor Gottheil gathered together a group of Jewish students from several New York City universities to form a Zionist youth society patterned after a similar group in Vienna.

 

The society was named Z.B.T., which in English represented the first letters of the prophecy on which the organization was founded. It prospered for a few years, but with the establishment of the Zionist Organization of America and other Zionist bodies throughout the United States, its original Zionist objective was largely eliminated.

During this brief period, the society came to serve as a kind of fraternal body for college students who, as Jews, were largely prevented from joining existing fraternities because of the then-prevalent sectarian practices of college fraternal life. The continuing need for a Greek letter fraternity open to Jewish students prompted Z.B.T. to change its raison d'etre, structure and emphasis and to become Zeta Beta Tau. By 1903, Zeta Beta Tau had adopted its first constitution and established chapters at a number of New York-area universities, thereby beginning tog ain recognition among the existing Greek-letter fraternities.