Rashi gave himself up
entirely to study, to study without cessation, and to teaching;
but teaching is only a form of pursuing one's studies and summing
them up.
I
Detailed and comprehensive though the Talmudic studies were,
nevertheless the student, especially if he was gifted, completed
the course when he was not much more than twenty years of age.
Rashi, then, was probably close to twenty-five years old when he
returned from Mayence. This return marks an epoch in the history
of rabbinical literature. From that time, the study of the
Talmud was cultivated not alone upon the banks of the Rhine, but
also in Champagne, which came to rival and soon supplant
Lorraine, and having freed itself from the subjection of the
Rhenish schools, radiated the light of science. Jews from all
over Christian Europe gathered there to bask in the warmth of the
new home of Jewish learning. Less than ten centuries earlier, the
same thing had happened when Rab transplanted the teaching of the
Law from Palestine to Babylonia, and founded an academy at Sura,
which, for a while rivalling [rivaling sic] the Palestinian
schools, soon eclipsed them, and finally became the principal
centre [center sic] of Jewish science. The Kabbalist was not so
very far from the truth when he believed that the soul of Rab had
passed into the body of Rashi.
It is noteworthy that this upgrowth of Talmudic schools in
Champagne coincides with the literary movement then beginning in
Christian France.
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