A new Israeli TV show, called ha-Paytan, features young men competing with their vocal renditions of traditional liturgical melodies. Remarkably, writes Liel Leibovitz, the program manages to touch a spiritual chord:

The men vying for glory on the show are, with almost no exception, thoughtful and sweet and immensely talented, and when they sing, they do so with all their heart. Which is a must when the song you’re trying to sell is intended not only for man’s ears but also God’s. Instead of the archetypal entertainers we get on The Voice and elsewhere—the bad-boy rocker, the sensitive crooner, the country boy, the R&B dynamo—ha-Paytan offers real people displaying real emotions, just as they do, one imagines, every Shabbat when letting loose on the bimah. . . .

[E]ach contestant brings his unique tradition to his lyrical interpretations. Some sing tunes learned by their grandparents in small synagogues in Morocco, others songs imported from Turkey or Yemen or Egypt. Each episode, then, is a mosaic of Jewish music, offering the pleasure of hearing so many variations on the same basic themes and contemplating once again the richness and diversity of our culture. Which is why you finish each episode of ha-Paytan feeling wholesome, a sentiment rarely associated with evenings spent lazing on the couch and glaring at the screen.

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.