"he was always revered, always admired, even as an exegete, but he was admired to so high a degree that no one thought of continuing his work and of deepening the furrow he had so vigorously opened. It seemed as though his commentary had raised the Pillars of Hercules of Biblical knowledge and as though with him exegesis had said its last word. During this period the grammatical and rational study of the word of God fell Into more and more neglect, and its real meaning became Increasingly obscured. The place of a serious and sincere exegesis was taken by frivolous combinations, subtle comparisons, and mystical interpretations carried out according to preconceived notions and based on the slightest accident of form in the text. Rashi had many admirers, but few successors."[157] Isaiah Horwitz (1570-1630), whose ritual and ethical collection is still very popular in Eastern Europe, compares Rashi's commentaries to the revelation on Sinai. "In every one of his phrases," he says, "marvellous [marvelous sic] things are concealed, for he wrote under Divine inspiration." His son Sabbatai Sheftel is even more striking in his expressions; he says, "I know by tradition that whoever finds a defect in Rashi, has a defect in his own brain." It was related that when Rashi was worried by some difficult question, he shut himself up in a room, where God appeared to throw light upon his doubts. The apparition came to him when he was plunged in profound sleep, and he did not return to his waking senses until some one brought him an article from the wall of his room. Thus a superstitious, sterile respect replaced the intelligent and productive admiration of the earlier centuries. To revive the scientific spirit and the rational study of the Scriptures, a Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) was needed. With the year 1780, when his translation of the Pentateuch and his commentary upon it appeared, the renaissance of Jewish learning commenced; even the study of the Talmud, regenerated by the critical spirit of the time, was resumed. Mendelssohn himself drew largely upon Rashi's commentary, correcting the text when it seemed corrupt, trying to decipher the French <I>laazim</I>, and paying attention to the essential meaning of Rashi's explanations, either for the sake of completing or defending them, or for the sake of refuting them in the name of taste and good sense. His collaborators and disciples, the Biurists,-as they are called, after Biur, the general title of their works- desirous of reconciling the natural meaning of the text with the traditional interpretations, often turned to good account the views of the French commentator. These writings, which renewed the rational study of Hebrew and the taste for a sound exegesis, worthily crown the work begun by the rabbi of the eleventh century. At this day the Perush of Rashi and the Biur of Mendelssohn are the favorite commentaries of orthodox Jews.