Somehow No One Ever Asked

A Catholic's Journey to His First Seder  (Part One)

As Passover approaches, my thoughts, other than to wish all of our readers of the Jewish faith a "Good Pesach"  (Good Passover), are to share a story that took place MANY years ago....the journey to my first Seder.

This is the first part of how that journey began.

How does the product of a Catholic school upbringing even know what a seder is?

It goes back to 1965 when I met a great bunch of guys who were looking to start some kind of social club on a new University of Illinois campus that had just opened in Chicago....all of which...with the exception of two of us...

...were Jewish.

And...ironically, it was there that I first met my blog partner, Allen Weintraub, who some 40 odd years later, I would bump into again one morning at the Sun City Anthem Liberty Center.   (He got old, I didn't)

...and after three years of "tearing up" that Chicago campus, having a ball after we rented an old deserted mansion and renaming it a fraternity house,  we were approached by a national fraternity to become one of their "official" chapters.

...that frat's name....Sigma Alpha Mu (affectionately known as  Sammies)...a predominantly Jewish fraternity.

During that time, while getting my degree in Business Administration,  I became quite involved in that "club" (I make no excuse for freely admitting that the main objective was meeting girls), but because we had become a "national house", someone had to learn their rules to pass it on to succeeding generations. 

That became my job when I was elected the first Pledge Master. Yet in my mind, incorporating the local culture of the guys who were responsible for establishing it, was every bit as important as learning the rules of Sigma Alpha Mu.

Those were fun days, and perhaps my proudest accomplishment in meeting that objective was writing a song that included our original local Chicago name, Sigma Delta Pi, that whoever would become a member, would be required to learn it...

...never forgetting it was started by a group of lower middle class guys, almost entirely Jewish, and later including Christians, whose parents were unable to afford out of state college tuitions, rarely had any advanced formal education, yet would work their fingers to the bone to make sure their kids had opportunities they never had.

...a song that to this very day, has been passed on through succeeding generations for almost 50 years !

But during that time and in succeeding years, despite a great number of my friends being Jewish....

Somehow....I never got invited to a Seder.

It took meeting my wife, Marla, 20 years later,  for that to take place !

And that will be explained tomorrow...in Part Two.

Dick Arendt