Looks like several Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi) chapters landed themselves on Hanukkah Harry’s naughty list this year. In the past month, the chapters at the University of Vermont, George Washington University, and the University of Michigan have all been reprimanded for hazing, drinking, and general debauchery.

Most recently, on December 4, an AEPi spokesman announced that the GW chapter would undergo an investigation after a hazing complaint. The spokesman kind of admitted that that allegation involved alcohol (he told The GW Hatchet that he wouldn’t say if there was alcohol, but that “the two often go hand in hand”), but wouldn’t give more detail. “He also declined to say what sanctions the chapter could face, but said the chapter’s charter likely would not be revoked,” the Hatchet reported. Poor GW. Where are all the sorority girls going to find NJBs (nice Jewish boys, duh) in the nation’s capital now?! But at least the chapter is in good company.

On November 7, AEPi at the University of Vermont got into trouble— three of the chapter’s members ended up hospitalized for over-intoxication. The chapter was placed on suspension, but the president didn’t seem too worried about the situation. He told the Vermont Cynic that, “While the suspension is indefinite, we’ve been on probation for two years, so it’s not really changing much.”

Also on November 7, the Michigan Daily reported that its AEPi chapter would be investigated by the national organization on the heels of hazing allegations. In the UMich case, the higher ups were called in after a complaint in an anonymous email. “Sometimes reports like that are credible, and they are trying to protect themselves or trying to maintain some anonymity for fear of repercussions,” The AEPi spokesman told the Daily. He continued, “in other cases, they’re competitive fraternities who are trying to get our fraternity in trouble.” The chapter president has since been removed from his reigning throne, and the University’s Office of Greek Life’s Hazing Task Force has also gotten involved. The result of investigation has not yet been published, but there are certainly a lot of cooks in the chapter house’s kitchen.

Previous: Alpha Epsilon Pi Turns 100 Years Old

(Photo by Mshaolian/Wikimedia)

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When a fraternity turns 100 years old, it’s only right to throw it a three day long party. Alpha Epsilon Pi began its birthday celebration with a pregame at NYU, Newsday reports.

The historic series of events opened on Thursday, August 8, at New York University, the site of the Fraternity’s founding in 1913. Dr. John Sexton, president of NYU, and Ambassador Ido Aharoni, Consul General of Israel in New York and honorary AEPi brother, addressed a capacity audience at the campus’ Skirball Auditorium. The evening ended with a dinner cruise around lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty.

They then made moves to the USS Intrepid Aircraft carrier, where they honored brothers who’d served in the U.S. Armed Forces and the IDF.

During the moving Shabbat dinner program on the ship’s deck and pier the Fraternity honored its Brothers who have served in the US Armed Forces and the IDF. State of Ohio Treasurer and past AEPi chapter president Josh Mandel, who twice deployed to Iraq as a US Marine, was the evening’s keynote speaker.

And finally, they postgamed at the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan. Former brothers were all in attendance, like Wolf Blitzer, who served as the night’s Master of Ceremonies, but did not, unfortunately, live tweet the occasion.

The men celebrated their history, their philanthropy, and their future. In fact, a very successful past chapter president made a speech staking AEPi as “the best insurance policy for the survival of the Jewish people.” Well, well, big words for a big weekend.

The 200th party is going to be sick.

(Photo by Mshaolian/Wikimedia)

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Actress Elizabeth Banks, most recently seen in The Hunger Games and Pitch Perfect (which she produced with her husband), sat down with Marc Maron this week for his WTF Podcast, and their conversation was pretty interesting. Banks is sharp and funny and calls the Olsen twins elves. She also opens up about her working-class Catholic upbringing in Pittsfield, MA, and eventual conversion to Judaism.

“So you met a Jew at Penn,” Maron offers a little after the 30 minute (!) mark.

“Yeah, it’s real hard,” she quips. “It’s like, throw a dart.”

There were a few Jewish kids at her high school, she explains, but most of them lived on the other side of town and went to a different middle school, so she didn’t meet them until they got to high school—which meant no bar mitzvahs for her, sadly.

“So how’d you make the ship from Jesus to Jew?” Maron asks at minute 35.

The story is sweet. Banks met Max Handelman, her future husband, her first day at college. They kept running into each other, and one night she ended up at one of his AEPi frat parties. (She says the ZBT guys were douches from Long Island who all work on Wall Street now. Also I love her.) They went on a date to a jazz club in Philly—it was one of her first rides in a taxi—where they drank bourbon and didn’t get carded. She made the first move, “and then it just went from there.”

“Now was there pressure on you to be a Jew?” Maron asks, before calling Banks a “shiksa goddess Jew.” (“People love that when the shiksas come over,” she fires back.)

“No religion meant as much to me as Judaism meant to my husband,” Banks explains. There were also the in-laws. “We got married after 10 and a half years, and for the first five years I’m positive that his father did not learn my last name,” she says. “I’m positive that his dad was like, ‘This is Portnoy’s Complaint…my son will marry a Jewish girl.” (Of course, what they really cared about was the grandkids. “My kids are Jewish, so they’re happy,” she explains.)

She went through the conversion process, studying with different rabbis. “I did not have my mikveh, so technically I’m not converted,” she admits, but it’s only because she was never in L.A. long enough at one time to have done what she calls the 11-week “You’re a Jew now class.” And she’s been practicing Judaism for so long at this point, she explains, that finalizing the institutional process seems more like a needless formality than anything else.

“I’ve been essentially a Jew for like 15 years,” she says. “I haven’t had a Christmas tree in 15 years.”

“But are you like, officially a Jew?” Maron prods.

“I’m not officially stamped, but by all accounts yes,” she explains. “My kids go to Jewish pre-school, we only celebrate Jewish holidays, I love seder.”

“Frankly, because I’m already doing everything, I feel like I’m as Jewish as I’m ever going to be.”

It’s a very Jewish way of thinking, actually. Consider yourself at home, Banks.

Here are some other gems from the interview, which is really, really long, but totally worth it:

• She took Latin for six years: “I was a real nerdball,” she explains.

• She’s a TriDelt.

• She graduated Penn magna cum laude.

• She played Pontius Pilate in a high school performance of Jesus Christ Superstar.

• Her dream rom-com co-star? Channing Tatum: “I would work that.”

Listen to the full podcast here.

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For many Americans, Christmas Eve can be a time to go to church, sing carols, and be with loved ones. But, Dec. 24 also marks a lesser known, but just as memorable time of year for the Jewish singles of New York: The Ball, a time to squeeze into cleavage-baring cocktail dresses, do shots of flavored vodka, and hook up with other members of the Tribe.

Organized by LetMyPeopleGo (yup, that’s the real name), The Ball is billed as “the nation’s largest Jewish singles event.” Not to be confused with the Matzo Ball or the myriad others singles events for Jews that are held on Christmas and Christmas Eve, The Ball is its own unique set of debauchery for the youngest People of the Book, as well as the largest in the New York area. When I bought my first ticket to it, my mother beamed at the thought of me mingling with clean-cut, eligible Jewish bachelors. Little did she—or, at that time, I—know that The Ball is arguably the sloppiest gathering of Jewish singles looking to get some outside of an AEPi formal.
  


That first encounter was in 2010, one month after my 21st birthday. I was halfway through my senior year of college, and I was very ready for my first taste of the future post-college world of dating. Of course, that’s because I assumed it would be just like Sex and the City—complete with handsome older (Jewish) men, witty banter, and fabulously delicious cocktails that I’d never have to pay for.  



Yes, my expectations were fantastically, unrealistically high for a Jewish singles event, but it wasn’t as if I had expected to find my beshert, my destined Jewish soulmate, there. Okay, maybe a small part of me was hoping I’d find him. Like most of my Jewish friends, we prioritized dating a member of the tribe over anyone else, and a club on Christmas Eve seemed like it offered the best odds.



However, as we piled into the cab to Marquee, I quickly realized that nobody was expecting to find her beloved that evening—or do much talking. One friend announced that the girl who made out with someone first earned free drinks from the rest of us. Her co-worker added the same went for whoever hooked up with the most guys. There was a bounty on heads; apparently, we were going to be the New Orleans Saints of the Jewish singles scene.



Everyone had wised up to the fact that a giant Jewish singles event is the last place on Earth where you’d actually experience love at first sight. It was too loud and too crowded to even find the dear friends you came with. In this environment, you wouldn’t recognize your beshert if he fell from the sky and landed right in front of you stomping on a wine glass.



Within minutes of entering the club, I was standing alone as my fellow Jewesses had dispersed to flirt. I felt like I lost my voice and could only squeak against the blare of “Bottoms Up.” At that moment, I realized this was survival of the fittest; I was scared, lonely, and vulnerable. Switching my focus from romance to competition seemed like the best strategy for surviving the evening.



Minutes later, I was kissing the first guy who wrapped his arm around my waist. You could offer me a million dollars and a date with Andy Samberg to tell you his name or a single fact about him, and I still couldn’t. The same goes for the second guy I hooked up with that night. I can recall more identifiable features of the guard yelling at me for making out on the leather couches than my fleeting partner in crime.



And I didn’t, and still don’t, have, any regrets about my random make-outs. It was fun; I felt grown-up, sexy (yes, to my goody-two-shoes self, that was sexy), and most importantly, I felt emotionally unscathed. 



By my second year of The Ball, I was happy that hookups rather than romance were the only thing in store for in the evening. I was a few months into New York’s Jewish dating scene, and it left me with the desire to shield myself from failed expectations. I hadn’t ventured into JDate, but only because I couldn’t imagine paying a fee to engage in intra-Tribe dating when it already disappointed me so much. Unreturned texts, promising first dates that never led to seconds, and overwhelmingly crowded Shabbat onegs had only frustrated me. The right Jewish guy seemed too precious and, therefore, impossible to find in any of the five boroughs, let alone at The Ball.



So, to dampen any hopes for love, I treated the night as a game. I cooled my desires with competition, as I had learned the safest skill in romantic survival was to expect nothing great and nothing permanent. My second year proceeded much as the first, with the biggest difference being Artichoke Basille’s replacing McDonald’s as our post-Ball meal.



Yet over the course of the following year, I became more aware of how The Ball mentality was impacting my approach to dating. I was overly pessimistic and distant toward romantic prospects. I spoke about relationships as if it were implausible for their shelf lives to last longer than a week. A friend who’s attended The Ball with me every year called me out on this behavior. “It’s one thing to have a cautious mentality,” she said, “but yours is apocalyptic.”

It is with her words ringing in my ears that I contemplate buying a ticket for my third consecutive trip to The Ball. I looked forward to it every year, and not just because I enjoy the random, PG-13 hookups. The ritual of embracing my identity as a single Jewish woman, of owning an aspect of my life that the rest of the time I find myself either trying to change or having to justify, is liberating. At the same time, I wonder if another year is good for me. The ironic distant I cultivate at an event like The Ball isn’t so healthy to have year-round. And maybe now, I need to let my guard down a bit. 



My first time at The Ball taught me how to protect myself against the disappointments of dating and armor myself from the pain of attachments. Perhaps by abstaining from it this year I can undo just the right amount of that learning.

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