Nor was it rare that fortune
failed to smile upon the students, and-not to give a list of
examples-cases of poverty were fairly frequent in the Christian
universities, at which mendicancy itself was almost respectable.
The temptation might be legitimate to sentimentalize over this
love of knowledge, this zeal for work, as they manifested
themselves in Rashi, causing him to brave all the evil strokes of
fortune for their sake; but one must strain a point to take him
literally when he says, as he does in a certain somewhat involved
passage, that he studied "without nourishment and without
garments." However that may be, the same passage shows that while
still a student whose course was but half completed, he married,
in conformity with the Talmudic maxim, which recommends the Jew
to marry at eighteen years of age. From time to time he went to
visit his family at Troyes, always returning to Worms or Mayence.
The fact that the academies of Lorraine which Rashi frequented
were in his day the great centres of Talmudic learning, is due to
the happy lot which the Jews enjoyed in that country. The chief
trading route of Europe at that time connected Italy with Rhenish
Germany, and the Jews knew how to render themselves indispensable
in the traffic along this route. Moreover, they lived on good
terms with their neighbors. The explanation of the cordial
relations between Jews and Christians lies in the ease with which
the Jews rose to the level of general culture.
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