Currently on display at Columbia University’s Butler Library are a number of illuminated marriage contracts (k’tubot), alongside prayer books and other documents, produced by or pertaining to the Jews of the Greek island of Corfu (known in ancient times as Corcyra). Cathryn Prince describes some of the artwork found on these artifacts, and their historical backdrop:

When Abraham Shaptei wed Esther Kiridi on a Wednesday evening in 1820 on the island of Corfu, they displayed their richly illustrated k’tubah . . . for their guests to admire. Now, more than 200 years later, it’s not the abundance of gold leaf or the intricate vegetal tendrils that draws one’s eye. It’s the unicorn.

“People are very surprised to see the unicorn. The unicorn is Christian, but unicorns do show up in Jewish art; in the margins of Hebrew manuscripts and texts, on silver. Most often it’s a unicorn confronting a lion as a symbol of Jewish messianic hopes,” said Sharon Liberman Mintz, curator of Jewish art at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Yet, unicorns, the zodiac, and endless love knots feature prominently on the ten k’tubot displayed in The Jews of Corfu: Between the Adriatic and the Ionian.

Forty miles long, Corfu lies between the Adriatic and Ionian Seas. From the 12th century through 1944, when the Nazis sent 1,800 Corfu Jews to Auschwitz, two distinct, albeit small, Jewish communities called it home.  The first to settle there were the Romaniote, or Greek-speaking Jews, from Byzantium. The Italian-speaking Jews arrived in the late 14th century when the republic of Venice seized control of the island.

Over the next few centuries, hundreds of Jews fleeing persecution in Europe found refuge on the island.

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.