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Jewish Fraternity Reinvents, Preserves
100-year Legacy in New Chapter
6 JANUARY 5, 2023 | JEWISH EXPONENT
Sigma Alpha Rho’s 12 new inductees from Bucks County, the group’s fi rst
new chapter in 10 years
A SAR chapter from the 1960s
Louisiana and continued to grow, even
after World War II, with the organi-
zation spanning the country by the
1960s. At one point, Cherry Hill, New
Jersey, had fi ve chapters.

Chapters hosted dances, had
baseball teams, and met up for regional
and national conventions, funding their
housing, entertainment and travel with
car wash fundraisers and ad sales. At
age 20, Hollander hosted an interna-
tional convention in Washington, D.C.,
with 300 brothers in attendance.

After the Vietnam War, interest in
the fraternity waned, but Blumenthal
believed that a self-led Jewish youth
group still had appeal to young men
today. After SAR’s 100th anniversary,
he, as chair of the group’s reactivation
committee, worked with a marketing
fi rm to hold a series of focus groups,
gauging the interest of a group to
young men. His hunch proved correct.

“We had to start somewhere,” he
said. “And I’m pretty bullish on this
group expanding.”
SAR will likely induct another
Philadelphia-area chapter this month.

Though Blumenthal was eager to
give the organization a facelift with a
new website and branding, appeal-
ing to the teenagers of today, part of
the draw of SAR is its storied history.

Lynn’s father was a member of the
organization decades ago and encour-
aged him to join.

“I was kind of motivated to keep this
organization with such a long history
going,” Lynn said. “And just the fact
that we’re building a community with
just a bunch of friends, I mean, there’s
nothing bad about it.” ■
srogelberg@midatlanticmedia.com Courtesy of the Sigma Alpha Rho Alumni Association website
O ne hundred years after its
1917 founding, Sigma Alpha
Rho, a Jewish fraternity for
high school boys founded in West
Philadelphia, was a ghost of what it
used to be.

Once with more than 50 active
chapters spanning from Pennsylvania
and New Jersey to California and
Canada, SAR, by the 2010s, was “limping
along,” according to Larry Blumenthal,
past international president of the SAR
Fraternity Alumni Association.

At the alumni association’s 2017 100th
anniversary celebration, Blumenthal
and a few other alumni announced to
the more than 650 attendees that SAR
was all but done.

“We looked at the reaction — not that
people were shocked because people
know that things have changed over
the years — but the disappointment
was defi nitely there,” Blumenthal said.

But the disappointment was motiva-
tion for Blumenthal. He believed that
there was still great interest in the
fraternity and, along with some other
alumni in the Philadelphia area, he
decided to revive and revamp the
organization. In December, SAR inducted its
fi rst new chapter in 10 years as 12
high school boys from Bucks County
became brothers of the fraternity.

“Once you become part of Sigma
Alpha Rho, you become a brother,” said
Sean Klein, 16, a new inductee from
Richboro. “It’s a really inspiring thing
to be treated on the same grounds
as some of the people who are very
infl uential in their fi elds, who are very
respected as adults, and it’s very inspir-
ing to be brothers with them.”
Just like their brothers decades
before them, today’s SAR members
are tasked with organizing and
running community events, instilling
values of independence, according to
Blumenthal. So far, the high schoolers
have organized self-funded dinners, a
paintball event open to nonmembers
and a haunted hayride.

“It’s typical friend group activities,”
said new inductee Ethan Lynn, a
17-year-old in Southampton. “But the
diff erence is that it’s held together
with the motivation to have a Jewish
community.” The group has also volunteered
with Jewish Relief Agency to package
food boxes to deliver to food-insecure
community members. In the future, the
group hopes to organize a ski trip and
attend a Broadway musical.

The idea of a rebooted organiza-
tion is exciting for Lynn, who wants
to experience a group of young men
“maturing together.”
“I liked the idea of really building a
community for myself and seeing it
form before my eyes,” he said.

Even in an age of social media and three
years of COVID-hindered social lives, that
core value of leadership and community
is what connects the old generation of
SAR brothers with the teenage members
of today, alumni said.

“It gave us the opportunity to make
decisions on our own and plan our own
events, whether they were dances,
Jewish Community Center events,
sporting events or meeting up with
other chapters,” said Joel Hollander,
president of SAR Alumni Association
and an active member of the fraternity
in the late 1960s.

After 11 young men founded the
West Philadelphia fraternity in 1917, the
organization, originally founded as a
“social and athletic” club, took off four
years later, with another Philadelphia
chapter of 10 Central High School
students forming in 1921. A regional
chapter was formed in January 1924,
and the next month, the organization
launched a national newspaper.

By the late 1920s, the fraternity,
fi lled with young men eager for social
connections, had formed a chapter in
Courtesy of Larry Blumenthal
Sasha Rogelberg | Staff Writer