Columbia University’s Hebrew-Language Commencement Speech about Jewish History

The intense anti-Israel agitation at Columbia University, and the increasing hostility faced by its Jewish students, has garnered much national attention, reminding some of the early-20th-century era of quotas aimed at keeping Jews out. But there were better times in the more distant past. Michael Hoberman describes the commencement address delivered by a Jewish Columbia student named Sampson Simson in 1800—in Hebrew—about the history of the Jews of New York City: