He took an interest in the shy youth, allowed him to attend his rabbinical lectures, provided for his maintenance, and employed him in copying his Commentary to the Jerusalem Talmud, because Mendelssohn had inherited a beautiful handwriting as his only legacy from his father, a writer of scrolls of the Law. Even if Mendelssohn learnt from Fränkel nothing besides the Talmud, yet the latter exerted a favorable influence upon the mind of his disciple, because his method, exercising itself upon virgin soil, the Jerusalem Talmud, was not so distorted, hair-splitting, and perverse as that of most expounders of the Talmud, who made the crooked straight, and the straight crooked. Mendelssohn's innate honesty and yearning for truth were not suppressed or hindered by his first teacher, and this was of value. Like the majority of Talmud disciples (Bachurim) Mendelssohn led the life of poverty which the Talmud in a measure makes a stipulation for study:-- "Eat bread with salt, drink water by measure, sleep upon the hard earth, live a life of privations, and busy thyself with the Law." His ideal at this time was to perfect himself in the knowledge of the Talmud. Was it chance that implanted in Berlin the seed destined to produce such luxuriant fruit? Or would the result have been the same, if he had remained with Fränkel in Dessau, or if the latter had been called to Halberstadt, or Fürth, or Metz, or Frankfort? It is highly improbable. Retired though Mendelssohn's life was, yet a fresh breeze was wafted from the Prussian capital into the narrow chambers of his Rabbinical studies. With the accession of Frederick the Great, who besides war cultivated the Muses (though in a French garb), literary dilettanteism, French customs, and contempt for religion began to grow into fashion among Berlin Jews. Although their condition under Frederick was restricted, yet, because several became wealthy, the new spirit did not pass over them without leaving an impression, however inadequate and superficial. An impulse towards culture, the spirit of innovation, and imitation of Christian habits began to manifest themselves.