Solomon Yizchaki, known under the name of Rashi, was born in 1040 (died in 1105), at Troyes, in Champagne, in the year in which the last Gaon suffered martyrdom, as if to intimate that the new spirit infused by Rashi would fully compensate for the downfall of the old institution. Rashi's mother was the sister of Simon ben Isaac, highly respected on account of his services to the community of Mayence and his liturgic poetry, and his father was well versed in the Talmud. Thus Rashi had, as it were, drawn his nourishment from the Talmud, and in it he lived and had his being. In order to perfect himself in the study of the Talmud, he frequented the Talmudical school of Mayence, but also attended the lectures of the Talmud teachers in Worms, and of Eliakim in Speyer. Like Akiba he left his home and his wife to devote himself to the study of the Law in foreign parts. He tells in what needy circumstances he pursued this study, "in want of bread, denuded of clothing and fettered by matrimony." Now and then, probably on the festivals, he visited his wife, but he always returned to the German, or as they were then called, Lotharingian centers of learning. At the age of twenty-five (1064) he settled permanently at Troyes. In his modesty he did not suspect that at that early time he was honored as a master of Talmudic lore. In Rashi's earliest decisions which he delivered when a youth, there is no trace of the groping novice, they reveal the hand of the skilful adept, the master of his subject. His teachers, in their letters, lavished on him the most flattering praise. Isaac Halevi, of Worms, wrote to Rashi, "We owe it to you that this age is not orphaned, and may many like unto you arise in Israel."