In 1926, a year after the Scopes trial brought the theological implications of the theory of evolution to public attention in the U.S, two prominent New York Orthodox rabbis—Leo Jung of the Jewish Center and David de Sola Pool of Shearith Israel—engaged in a heated exchange on the subject in the pages of the Orthodox community’s main organ. While in many ways similar in education and outlook, the two took opposite positions on the question of whether Darwinism and Judaism were compatible. Rachel S.A. Pear argues that the differences stemmed as much from their respective communal contexts as from philosophical and hermeneutic abstractions.

Pool led the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States. . . . In 1907, he was called to help lead the synagogue by his cousin, Henry Pereira Mendes. Rabbi Mendes belonged to a group of young traditionalists who were well-educated scientifically as well as religiously, and who came out in strong support of Darwinism in the 1880s. . . . Pool, as well as many other young Orthodox rabbis, followed suit, seeing the embrace of Darwinism as in no way out of step with religious sensibilities.

Jung, by contrast, led a synagogue less than a decade old, whose first rabbi, Mordecai Kaplan, had left due to his increasingly unorthodox positions. (He would go on to found the Reconstructionist movement):

Jung realized that his young congregation lacked the communal and theological stability that Pool enjoyed sixteen blocks away. Jung was at the eye of a storm, fighting for every congregant, and considered himself a defender of an Orthodoxy under fierce attack in the 1920s. While the defense against what he termed “Kaplanism” did not detract from Jung’s mission to display Orthodoxy’s sophistication and elegance, it likely made him hesitant to embrace concepts that seemed radical in their adjustments to Jewish thought, especially one like Darwinism, which Kaplan himself had placed at the center of his [own thought]. . . .

Therefore, somewhat ironically, Pool’s support of Darwinism did not emerge despite tradition but because of the tradition of predecessors like Mendes. . . . Jung’s rejection of Darwinism, on the other hand, was not merely the preservation of old beliefs, but a conscious reaction against what he viewed as a pressing danger to Orthodoxy in America.

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.