men, Israel Moses Halevi and Daniel Jaffe, he was introduced to
Mendelssohn, and was enabled to devote himself systematically to the
study of German, the alphabet of which he had learned from Wolff's
treatise on mathematics, and to French, Latin, physics, philosophy, and
medicine. In a very short time he mastered them all, especially German.
His _Gedichte eines polnischen Juden_ (Mitau and Leipsic, 1772) caused
no little stir among the poets. Lessing and Goethe, close observers of
symptoms of enlightenment among the Jews, expressed themselves
differently as to the real merit of the collection; but both concurred
with Boie, who, writing to Knebel, the friend of Goethe, remarked
concerning them, "You are right; the Jewish nation promises much after
it is once awakened."[29]

For one reason or another we find that some Slavonic Jewish youths
preferred other places to Berlin for the pursuit of their studies. Such
were Benjamin Wolf Guenzberg and Jacob Liboschuets. The former was
probably the only Jew at the Goettingen University. It was from there
that he inquired of Jacob Emden "whether it was permissible to dissect
on the Sabbath," and his thesis for the doctor's degree was _De medica
ex Talmudicis illustrata_ (Goettingen, 1743).[30] Liboschuets studied at
the University of Halle. After graduation, finding that as a Jew he
could not settle in St. Petersburg, he established himself in Vilna,
where he became celebrated as a diplomat, philanthropist, and, more
especially, expert physician. When Professor Frank was asked who would
take care of the public health in his absence, he is reported to have
said, _Deus et Judaeus_, "God and the Jew" [Liboschuets]!

In their deep-rooted love for learning, they sometimes ventured even
beyond the German boundaries, into countries whose language and customs
had little in common with theirs. Padua continued to be the resort of
Russo-Polish Jews that it had been before 1648. Moses Hayyim Luzzatto
found an ardent admirer and zealous propagandist of his principles in
the young medical student Jekuthiel Gordon (ab. 1729), who wrote
concerning his master to friends in Vienna and Vilna.[31] Judah Halevi
Hurwitz (d. 1797), whose work _'Ammude Bet Yehudah_ (Amsterdam, 1765)
was highly recommended by Mendelssohn and Wessely, was a graduate of the
same famous institution. In addition to his medical and philosophic
attainments, he wrote a number of poems, and he was among the first to
translate fab