Rashi's commentary, therefore, entered into the religious life of the Jews. It is chiefly the commentaries on the Five Books of Moses and the Five Megillot, the Scriptural books forming part of the synagogue liturgy, that were widely circulated in print and were made the basis of super-commentaries. The best of these are the super-commentary of Simon Ashkenazi, a writer of the seventeenth century, born in Frankfort and died at Jerusalem, and the clear, ingenious super-commentary of Sabbatai ben Joseph Bass, printer and bibliographer, born in 1641, died at Krotoszyn in 1718. The other representatives of the French school of exegetes have fallen into oblivion. Rashi alone survived, and what saved him, I greatly fear, were the Halakic and Haggadic elements pervading his commentary. An editor who ventured to undertake the publication (in 1705) of the commentary on the Pentateuch by Samuel ben Meir,[156] complains in the preface that his contemporaries found in it nothing worth occupying their time. Rashi's commentary was better adapted to the average intellects and to the Talmudic culture of its readers. Rashi's Talmudic commentary, also, was more generally studied than other commentaries, and gave a more stimulating impulse to rabbinical literature. Teachers and masters racked their brains to discover in it unexpected difficulties, for the sake of solving them in the most ingenious fashion. This produced the kind of literature known as <I>Hiddushim</I>, Novellae, and <I>Dikdukim</I>, subtleties. A rabbi, for example, would set himself the task of counting the exact number of times the expression "that is to say" occurs in the commentary on the first three Talmudic treatises. Jacob ben Joshua Falk (died 1648), who believed Rashi had appeared to him in a dream, attempted in his "Defense of Solomon" to clear the master of all attacks made upon him. Solomon Luria and Samuel Edels (about 1555-1631), or, as is said in the schools, the Maharshal and the Maharsha, explain the difficult passages of Rashi's Talmudic commentary, sometimes by dint of subtlety, sometimes by happy corrections. Still more meritorious are the efforts of Joel Sirkes (died in 1640 at Cracow), who often skilfully altered Rashi's text for the better.