According to a recent ruling by Israel’s chief rabbinate, a pious Jew who wishes to eat an artichoke must first remove the leaves and inspect them for insects; any other preparation is a violation of kashrut. Italian Jews, however, have been eating artichokes without such precautions for centuries, and deep-fried whole artichokes are so associated with the Roman Jewish community that they are known simply as carciofi alla giudia. Dan Rabinowitz comments on the earliest Jewish texts that mention the vegetable:

The history of how the fried artichoke became associated with Jews is somewhat murky but likely dates at least to the 16th century. But we have even earlier manuscript evidence that artichokes were eaten by Jews. Indeed, they were eaten at a time when Jews were especially punctilious regarding food: Passover. A number of medieval haggadahs contain illustrations of maror [the bitter herb consumed as part of the seder]; most include a leafy green of some type. Two haggadot, the Rylands and the Brother, composed in the mid-to-late-14th century, depict maror as an artichoke. . . .

Students of history will recall that this is not the first time the norms and traditions of the Italian Jews came into conflict with different prevailing norms among other groups of Jews. [The most notable such incident was] the controversy engendered by the publication of the pamphlet Divrei Shalom v’Emet [“Words of Peace and Truth”] by Naftali Herz Wessely in [1782], which called for educational reform among [Jews in the Hapsburg lands]. After his pamphlet was found objectionable and insulting by leading rabbis, Wessely wrote to rabbis in Italy, believing that many of the ideas he was advocating, like a graded curriculum, a non-exclusive emphasis on Talmud, and use of the [Gentile] vernacular, were well within the norms of their tradition. In fact, with [one] exception, all [of these Italian rabbis] agreed [with Wessely] and supported him.

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.