Lamdan is a late Hebrew expression for a man who is well informed in rabbinical literature, although not a scholar in the technical sense of the term ("talmid hakham"); it does not seem to have been used before the 18th century. Ezekiel Katzenellenbogen (1670-1749) decided that rabbinical scholars were exempt from paying taxes even though scholars then were not scholars in the proper sense of the word, "for the law does not make a difference between lamdan and lamdan" (Resp.