As I was working on yesterday’s post, the words to Look Over There from the musical La Cage aux Folles was an earworm running through my head (specifically, When your world spins too fast, And your bubble has burst, Someone puts himself last, So that you can come first.) It wasn’t until after I hit “publish” on the post that I found out that Jerry Herman passed away on Thursday night. Herman became a member of Zeta Beta Tau at the University of Miami.
Herman moved into the fraternity dormitory and shared a suite with three Zeta Beta Tau members. Their suite had a piano and Herman played all the popular songs and Broadway show tunes. He was a natural to write and produce the fraternity’s entry in the annual musical competition. Potpourri, for he had spent summers doing the same thing at summer camp his parents ran in upstate New York. His first effort for the 1951 Potpourri was about a college on Saturn. The Zeta Beta Taus won handily. And they won easily again the following year. In 1953, there were not enough entrants in the Potpourri competition because no one wanted to compete against the ZBTs. Herman suggested they do a musical revue, Sketchbook , instead, so that all interested students could take part. The 1953 Sketchbook was a Jerry Herman production, with 19 of his original songs. Because there were nearly 100 students in the cast, and more working behind the scenes, the venue changed from the small Ring Theatre on campus to the Dade County Auditorium. In 1974, the University of Miami built a new theater and named it the Jerry Herman Ring Theatre.
Zeta Beta Tau was created on December 29, 1898 when a group of young men attending several New York universities met at the Jewish Theological Seminary and formed an organization called Z.B.T. (yes, with the periods between the letters). The organization was inspired by Richard J. H. Gottheil, a Columbia University professor of languages. For a few years the organization served as an organization for the Jewish students who were excluded from the other Greek-letter organizations in existence on the campuses where they were studying. In 1903, the organization became Zeta Beta Tau. Six years later, there were 14 chapters, all but one in the Northeast. The first chapter outside the Northeast was at Tulane University. In 1913, the fraternity became international with the establishment of a chapter at McGill University.
Although Zeta Beta Tau began as a Jewish fraternity, in 1954, sectarianism was eliminated as a membership qualification. Five other national Jewish fraternities became a part of Zeta Beta Tau. Phi Alpha merged into Phi Sigma Delta in 1959. Two years later, Kappa Nu merged into Phi Epsilon Pi. Phi Sigma Delta and Phi Epsilon Pi merged into Zeta Beta Tau in 1969-70.
In 1967, Herman and his sometime collaborator Jerome Lawrence won a Zeta Beta Tau Man of Distinction Award. Lawrence joined ZBT at The Ohio State University.
