Jews have been producing broadsides—posters with printed text—since the invention of printing in the 15th century. The Valmadonna library, one of the world’s largest collections of Jewish books, contains several hundreds of these. Sharon Liberman Mintz, Shaul Seidler-Feller, and David Wachtel, who have edited a catalogue of these broadsides, write:

The category of Judaica broadsides in particular includes an astonishing variety of texts prepared for public or semi-public display: communally promulgated regulations, rabbinic responsa, wall calendars, commercial advertisements, poems and riddles in celebration of weddings and public events, dirges, eulogies, educational charts, fundraising circulars, reports of current events, amulets, announcements, prayers both for daily recitation and for special occasions—some celebratory, others tragic—often with vernacular instructions, and so much more.

Naturally, there are also examples of non-Jewish governmental or religious officials using broadsides to communicate with or about the Jews under their authority. Accordingly, the language of Judaica broadsides is both rich and varied: while many are in Hebrew or in Jewish languages written in Hebrew characters, others are in the local vernaculars and scripts which could be easily read by both Jews and non-Jews.

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.