In 1621, the famed talmudist and mystic Isaiah Horowitz left his native Prague, where he had served as rabbi to what was then the world’s largest Jewish community, to settle in Jerusalem. Two of his letters home remain extant and provide a rare window into contemporary Jewish life in the land of Israel. Ora recounts some of Horowitz’s experiences:

He traveled to Israel via Syria. The two main Jewish communities in Israel in those days were in Safed and Jerusalem. Both communities sent emissaries to convince [Horowitz] to accept a position as their leader. The emissaries from Safed made it first and met [him] in Damascus, where he told them that he intended to stay in Safed anyway for a few days and that they could talk further there.

The Jerusalemite emissary met the rabbi on his way out of Damascus. The people of Jerusalem were generous in their offer as they were concerned that Safed would bait the rabbi before they even got there. And so they offered [him the position of] head of both the rabbinical court . . . and the yeshiva in the Holy City. They were willing to pay him any salary he wished.

But [Horowitz] didn’t need convincing: he was simply overjoyed that he could realize his dream and live in Jerusalem. He even refused to accept a salary, because he knew that the Jerusalem community was sunk in debt, and instead he asked for a furnished apartment and for the community to cover his tax bill. An apartment, because “there is not much room in Jerusalem, because the Ashkenazi community in Jerusalem is twice as large as that of Safed, and it’s growing daily.”

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.