He left many pupils and a talented son, who, however, did not add glory to his name. The Jewish community in France at this time also possessed a highly gifted man, who not only concentrated within himself the chief characteristics of the French school, and thus became an authority for several centuries, but who also partook of the spirit of the Jewish-Spanish school. Jacob Tam of Rameru (born about 1100, died 1171) was the most distinguished disciple of the school of Rashi. Being the youngest of the three learned grandchildren of the great teacher of Troyes, Tam could not have acquired anything from his grandfather, whom he knew only in the early years of his childhood. However, he attained so high a degree of excellence in the study of the Talmud that he outshone his contemporaries, and even his elder brothers, Isaac and Samuel (Rashbam). The interminable paths and the winding roads of the Talmudical labyrinth were familiar to him, and he had a rare knowledge of the whole region. He united clearness of intellect with acuteness in reasoning, and was the chief founder of the school of the Tossafists. None of his predecessors had revealed such profound knowledge and so marvelous a dialectical ingenuity in the sphere of the Talmud. Although not in office, and engaged in business, he was esteemed the most famous rabbi of his time, and his renown traveled as far as Spain and Italy. Questions upon difficult points were sent to him exclusively, not only from his own land, but also from southern France and Germany; and all the rabbinical authorities of the period bowed to him with the deepest reverence. In his youth he was surrounded by pupils who regarded him with veneration as their ideal. He was so overwhelmed with the task of answering questions sent to him that he sometimes succumbed. The fanatics of the second crusade, who almost deprived him of life, robbed him of all his possessions, and left him nothing more than his life and his library. Nevertheless, he composed his commentary to the Talmud just at this troubled period. He was a man of thoroughly firm religious and moral character, in which there was only one blemish: he took usury from Christians. Indeed, he, to a certain extent, disregarded the rigid Talmudic laws on usury, in contravention of the practice of his grandfather.