We have seen how during this
period Rashi's reputation, at first confined within the limits of
his native province, extended little by little, until it spread
over the surrounding countries, like the tree of which Daniel
speaks, "whose height reached unto the heaven, and the sight
thereof to all the earth; whose leaves were fair, and the fruit
thereof much" (Dan. iv. 20-21).
CHAPTER XII
FROM THE EXPULSION OF THE JEWS FROM
FRANCE TO THE PRESENT TIME
It might be supposed that the Jews of France, chased from their
fatherland, and so deprived of their schools, would have
disappeared entirely from the scene of literary history, and that
the intellectual works brought into being by their activity in
the domains of Biblical exegesis and Talmudic jurisprudence would
have been lost forever. Such was by no means the case. It has
been made clear that the French school exerted influence outside
of France from the twelfth to the fourteenth century, and we
shall now see how the Jews of France, saving their literary
treasures in the midst of the disturbances, carried their
literature to foreign countries, to Piedmont and to Germany.
When the Jews of Germany were expelled in turn, Poland became the
centre [center sic] of Judaism, and the literary tradition was
thus maintained without interruption up to the present time.
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