ensive scholarship on Talmudic
subjects, the groundwork of his future achievements as a critic. The
circumstance that both these embryo historians had to draw their first
information about history from the Jewish German paraphrase of
"Yosippon," an historical compilation, is counterbalanced by careful
instruction in Rabbinical literature, whose labyrinthine ways soon
became paths of light to them.

A new day broke, and in its sunlight the condition of affairs changed.
In 1808 the _Beth ha-Midrash_ was suddenly transformed into the
"Samsonschool," still in useful operation. It became a primary school,
conducted on approved pedagogic principles, and Zunz and Jost were among
the first registered under the new, as they had been under the old,
administration. Though the one was thirteen, and the other fourteen
years old, they had to begin with the very rudiments of reading and
writing. Campe's juvenile books were the first they read. A year later
finds them engaged in secretly studying Greek, Latin, and mathematics
during the long winter evenings, by the light of bits of candles made by
themselves of drippings from the great wax tapers in the synagogue.
After another six months, Zunz was admitted to the first class of the
Wolfenbuettel, and Jost to that of the Brunswick, _gymnasium_. It
characterizes the men to say that Zunz was the first, and Jost the
third, Jew in Germany to enter a _gymnasium_. Now progress was rapid.
The classes of the _gymnasium_ were passed through with astounding ease,
and in 1811, with a minimum of luggage, but a very considerable mental
equipment, Zunz arrived in Berlin, never to leave it except for short
periods. He entered upon a course in philology at the newly founded
university, and after three years of study, he was in the unenviable
position to be able to tell himself that he had attained to--nothing.

For, to what could a cultured Jew attain in those days, unless he became
a lawyer or a physician? The Hardenberg edict had opened academical
careers to Jews, but when Zunz finished his studies, that provision was
completely forgotten. So he became a preacher. A rich Jew, Jacob Herz
Beer, the father of two highly gifted sons, Giacomo and Michael Beer,
had established a private synagogue in his house, and here officiated
Edward Kley, C. Guensburg, J. L. Auerbach, and, from 1820 to 1822,
Leopold Zunz. It is not known why he resigned his position, but to infer
that he had been forced to embrace th