Recently, violins inlaid with mother-of-pearl six-pointed stars have been showing up in the antiques market, advertised as having some sort of Jewish connection—perhaps having been played by a Klezmer band, or having belonged to a victim of the Holocaust, or, in at least one case, having been played in a Nazi concentration camp. But, writes Dina Gold, there is no evidence backing up these claims, nor is there reason to believe that the symbol on the violins, described by sellers as a Star of David or Jewish star, has any Jewish significance at all:

These distinctive decorations were a signature feature of violins made in the small area known as the Vogtland, on what is today the German-Czech border. The German town of Markneukirchen, located in the state of Saxony, and the town of Schönbach, now the Czech town of Luby, just across the border from Germany in western Bohemia, were noted for such instruments.

For generations, ethnic Germans in Schönbach were employed in violin-making, while final production took place in Markneukirchen, which served as the business and export hub for the industry. . . . Advertised widely as “fancy violins” in U.S. mail-order catalogs, . . . these violins cost on average eight dollars, then likely a week’s pay. Buyers could choose from a large array of patterns and designs as decoration, including statues, flags, flowers, artists’ heads, harps, swirls, eagles, Stars and Stripes, as well as four-, six-, and eight-pointed mother-of-pearl inlaid stars.

Six-pointed star decorations were just one of a range of popular design elements, according to Enrico Weller, a historian living in Markneukirchen who has studied the catalogs produced by Vogtland musical instrument makers and dealers. He points to many wholesalers who advertised violins for sale decorated with what were simply described as “six-pointed stars.” . . . Weller says that none of the violin makers or wholesalers in the Markneukirchen region were Jewish.

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.