classical gymnasium opened in 1879 in Nikolaev (also in New Russia), 105 Jews and 38 Christians enrolled. 28 And when the narrator of Babel’s “The Story of My Dovecot” passed his entrance exam to that gymnasium in 1905, old “Monsieur Lieberman,” his Torah teacher, gave a toast in my honor in the Hebrew language. The old man congratulated my parents in this toast and said that I had vanquished all my enemies at the exam, had vanquished the Russian boys with fat cheeks and the sons of our coarse men of wealth. Thus in ancient times had David, King of Judah, vanquished Goliath, and just as I had triumphed over Goliath, so would our people by the strength of their intellect vanquish the enemies who had encircled us and were thirsting for our blood. Having said this, Monsieur Lieberman began to weep and, while weeping, took another sip of wine and shouted “Vivat!” 29 The higher one moved within the expanding Russian education system, the higher the proportion of Jews and the more spectacular their triumph over the imperial Goliath and the Russian boys with fat cheeks. The share of Jewish students in the gymnasia was greater than in the Realschulen , and their share in the universities was higher than in the gymnasia (partly because many Jewish children began their education in heders, yeshivas, or at home—with or without the help of a Monsieur Lieberman). Between 1840 and 1886, the number of university students in Russia increased sixfold (from 2,594 to 12,793). The number of Jews among them grew over a hundred times: from 15 (0.5 percent of the total) to 1,856 (14.5 percent). At Odessa University, every third student in 1886 was Jewish. Jewish women represented 16 percent of the students at the Kiev Institute for Women and at Moscow’s Liubianskie Courses, 17 percent at the prestigious Bestuzhev Institute, and 34 percent at the Women’s Medical Courses in St. Petersburg. 30 As elsewhere, the most popular careers were those in law and medicine. In 1886, more than 40 percent of the law and medical students at the universities of Kharkov and Odessa were Jewish. In the empire as a whole, in 1889 Jews accounted for 14 percent of all certified lawyers and 43 percent of all apprentice lawyers (the next generation of professionals). According to Benjamin Nathans, “during the preceding five years, 22% of those admitted to the bar and an astounding 89% of those who became apprentice lawyers were Jews.” Jews constituted 49 percent of all lawyers in the city of Odessa (1886), and 68 percent of all apprentice lawyers in the Odessa judicial circuit (1890). In the imperial