Menachem Mendel Morgensztern of Kotzk (1787–1859), known simply as “the Kotzker,” was one of the leading figures in Polish Ḥasidism in his day. He has been much romanticized by those—among them Martin Buber and Abraham Joshua Heschel—wishing to bring ḥasidic ideas to a non-ḥasidic audience. Jonathan Boyarin has recently translated a Yiddish-language collection of stories, compiled (or authored) by one Menashe Unger, in which a very different image of Morgensztern emerges. Alan Brill writes:

Even though the Kotzker died in 1859, the early 20th century saw his reputation ascend through many works that painted him as a master epigrammist with a sharp wit. . . . The major collections of his sayings appeared in 1929 and 1938. [In these collections and other writings,] the Kotzker was variously recast as an individualist, truth-seeker, opponent of the religious establishment, and, in later years, as a proto-existentialist. . . .

Menashe Ungar . . . [was] the son of a prominent ḥasidic rabbi, receiving rabbinic ordination at the age of seventeen; he then turned his back on the religious world to attend university and join the Labor-Zionist movement. He worked as a stonemason and journalist, and eventually immigrated to America, where he spent the remainder of his life writing about East European Jews, their histories, folk tales, and wisdom. . . .

Centered around a core narrative of crisis in ḥasidic leadership, Unger’s stories [about Morgensztern] offer a detailed account of everyday ḥasidic court life—filled with plenty of alcohol, stolen geese, and wives pleading with their husbands to come back home. . . . First published in Buenos Aires in 1949, Unger’s volume reflects a period when East European Jewish immigrants enjoyed reading about ḥasidic culture in Yiddish articles and books even as they themselves were rapidly assimilating into American culture.

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.