On March 1, Mordechai Aviam, a professor of archaeology, took a group of students to the site of the ancient Jewish village of Ein Nashut in the Galilee. He expected that the excursion might turn up some minor ancient artifacts, but he was both surprised and pleased when two students found a 62-pound stone carving of a lioness nursing her young, which apparently had been part of Ein Nashut’s 5th-century synagogue. Melanie Lidman writes:

In previous expeditions, archaeologists discovered eight fragments of carvings of lions or lionesses at the site, but this was the largest and most complete specimen discovered recently. There is one complete lion carving from Ein Nashut, which was taken from the site while the area was still under Syrian control before 1967, Aviam said. It’s now housed in a museum in Katzrin. The current carving was found a bit down the hill from the synagogue, leading Aviam to believe that it had either rolled there or someone had tried to steal it and gave up because it was so heavy.

Similar carvings, especially of lions and eagles, are well-documented at synagogues in the area during the late Roman period in 200–300 CE, and continued during the Byzantine period through 500 CE. . . . Lions roamed freely across Israel until the 13th century, alongside a number of large predators. “During a pilgrimage from the Galilee to Jerusalem, which took a week, Jews would have crossed forests and possibly met bears, hyenas, and lions and leopards,” explained Aviam.

Decorative stone carvings were more common at synagogues than churches during the Byzantine era, but lions also appeared in church decorations, usually as part of mosaic floors. However, Jewish communities were much more likely to use lion symbolism than their Christian counterparts, Aviam said.

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.