Until the expulsion of its Jews in 1493, Sicily—then a Spanish province—was very much at the center of Jewish life in Italy. Afterward, many Jews who had undergone conversion to Christianity in order to remain in Sicily continued to practice their religion in secret. Some of their descendants today recall nominally Catholic family members preserving such Jewish customs as lighting candles on Friday evening. On January 12—the anniversary of the expulsion—the city of Palermo opened a synagogue, the island’s first in a half-millennium. Rossella Tercatin writes:

The first traces of Jewish presence in Sicily date back to the 1st century CE, and in the 15th century there were already between 25,000 and 40,000 Jews living on the island, spread out over dozens of communities—more than in the numerous states and kingdoms on the Italian peninsula combined. . . . Five-hundred years [after Judaism was outlawed], many Sicilians have started to figure out the origin of their apparently bizarre family customs and are interested in learning more. National and international Jewish organizations have come to help. . . .

Every year on January 12, a conference is held in Palermo on a topic related to the Jewish history of Sicily. . . . [At this year’s conference, in] the presence of a small but passionate group of Jews, the archdiocese of the city donated the building of the Oratory of Santa Maria delle Grazie al Sabato to the Jewish community. . . .

“The facility is located in the complex of the monastery of San Nicola da Tolentino, at the heart of the ancient Jewish neighborhood, where the synagogue used to stand,” explains the former chief rabbi of Naples, Pierpaolo Pinhas Punturello, who is deeply involved with Palermo’s Jewish community. “The great scholar Obadiah of Bertinoro called it ‘the most beautiful in Europe’ when he visited it in 1487.”

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.