Sometime before World War II, many U.S. Jews began celebrating a third ritual meal on Passover, as Jenna Weissman Joselit writes:

A supplement to, rather than a substitute for, the . . . first and second seders commonly observed outside of Israel, it was usually held during the latter part of Passover. More of a communal gathering, a public event, than an intimate family occasion, its origins date to the interwar years. In a replay of that era’s cultural politics, when both socialism and Zionism held high cachet among East European Jewish immigrants, some attribute its creation to the Arbeter Ring (Workmen’s Circle); other, equally insistent voices, credit the Labor Zionist Farband. There’s no consensus, either, on when the third seder made its debut. Some say 1922, others 1927, and still others aren’t sure whether it’s 1932 or 1937.

No matter. At some point within a few years of one another, both communal organizations harnessed the structure and sensibility of the traditional seder—or, more to the point, perhaps, that of the model seder conducted in their respective afternoon schools—to their own ends. Emending, interpolating, politicizing, contemporizing, and theatricalizing the venerable Haggadah, the Arbeter Ring produced a text called Naye hagode shel peysakh (the new Passover Haggadah); the Farband, in turn, produced its own Hagode shel peysakh farn dritn seder (Passover Haggadah for the third Seder). . . .

The Farband linked the age-old story of deliverance to the establishment of a just and equitable homeland for the Jews, while the Arbeter Ring, for its part, linked the same story to the struggle for economic justice and political freedom more generally. . . . Well into the 1980s, people in New York and Chicago turned out in droves for the annual third seder of their choice, held in a hotel ballroom grand enough to accommodate over 1,000 guests. For a generation or two, the event drew a crowd even in places where the number of Jews was much smaller. They came for the camaraderie, not the food: to lay claim to and celebrate a common history, a shared ideology, and a better future.

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.