of God should not depart from Israel's mouth."

The law students met twice a year in assembly for examination. Their
studies were pursued at home, except in the months of Elul and Adar
when they went up to the Assembly. Here they were arranged in classes
and under the direction of their masters heard lectures and discussed
the subject matter presented to them topically. At these Assemblies
actual questions of law were submitted from Jewish communities all
over the Jewish world, and the solutions to these problems were
prepared and forwarded by the great masters. In addition to these
professional schools there were everywhere general schools or, as we
might say, high schools connected with the synagogues. It is a tribute
to the importance that was ascribed to the high schools in later
generations that their origin was projected back to the days of the
Flood when Shem and Eber established a law school in which
subsequently Isaac, Jacob, and Rebecca heard lectures. It will be
noted that according to this bit of folklore Rebecca was the first
woman law student. The same fancy which invented this most ancient of
the schools, also invented the law school which Judah built for Jacob
in Egypt, and the school established by Moses in which he and Aaron
were the professors and Joshua was the janitor.

_The Study of the Law "the Chief End of Man"_

The fancy of the people associated nearly all of its great men with
the study of the law. The entire tribe of Issachar was said to have
devoted itself to the study of the law, the merchant tribe of Zebulon
furnishing the means of support. God himself, according to another
mystic, was a professor in the celestial law school in which He taught
the law to the souls of all the righteous, in that heaven which they
conceived of as a place where the law might be perpetually studied;
and even while the Temple was still standing and sacrifices were being
offered, the Jewish teachers used to say that God does not require
burnt offerings but the study of His law.

From all of these traditions it will be seen that to the ancients the
study of the law was the chief end of man. The Jew never considered
ignorance to be bliss and has little sympathy with the religious ideal
of many non-Jewish people that religion is more important than
knowledge. One of the great masters even went so far as to say that
the ignorant man cannot be pious. It was Simon the Just, one of the
survivors of the Men of the