As the story of a diasporic Jewry threatened by anti-Semitic politicians, who must save themselves without prophetic guidance or explicit miracles, the book of Esther reflected the experience of Jews living in exile in a way no other biblical book could. Hence the proliferation of “Second Purims” or “Minor Purims,” local holidays commemorating particular communities’ rescue from an external threat, modeld after the holiday that begins this evening. Chaya Sara Oppenheim describes one such Second Purim, and the handwritten scroll associated with it:

Megillat Saragossa, [i.e., the scroll of Saragossa], relates the plight of medieval Jews narrowly avoiding the wrath of their Gentile ruler (and a malicious tattletale) with the help of Elijah the prophet and a pious beadle. The Jews of Saragossa recorded the story to celebrate their narrow escape centuries ago, and their descendants annually return to the scroll to commemorate a Second Purim.

The concept of a Second Purim—invoked quite commonly among medieval Jewish congregations throughout Europe and North Africa—baffled me. I could not understand how a single city felt confident enough to inaugurate its own local Jewish holiday. To form a consensus of this kind, people must be strongly united. It’s hard to imagine any Jewish community today mustering up the pluck to pen a 21st-century Purim tale.

While certain clues about the historical tale can be found in the text, debate surrounds the exact date and location of the Purim of Saragossa. For instance, scholars argue whether the miraculous salvation occurred in 1380, under the reign of Peter IV of Aragon, or 1420, when Alfonso V of Aragon ruled. (The king’s personal name is never mentioned in Megillat Saragossa.) The place is referred to in the text only as Saragossa; some maintain this refers to the city of Saragossa in Spain, also known today as Zaragoza, while others say the story took place in Syracuse in Sicily, in part due to its phonetic similarity. Despite the doubt surrounding the details, the acceptance of the story is certain: as the progeny of the Saragossa Purim traveled, their celebration was adopted by many communities along the Mediterranean.

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.