Regulations

The Bylaws of the Sacred Society for Torah Study are as follows:

1. This Holy Society was established so that its members should oversee the entirety of the study of Torah including all the teachers here, both the teachers of little children and those who teach Gemara, to ensure that they will not do their work slackly. Every week, members of the Holy Society will go to hear the students with their teachers, to ascertain whether the material has been learned properly, each student according to his ability.

2. By no means should any teacher teach the Pentateuch with any other commentary except the Beer Moshe [Well of Moses] commentary, which is in the language we speak. This is so the boy knows the correct meaning. Furthermore, in the case of a student who can grasp the commentary of Rashi, he shall study no other commentary, only the commentary of Rashi, which is the correct commentary, in accordance with the plain meaning of the words and the truth.

3. By no means should any teacher of little boys keep more than forty children in his heder. For that purpose, he must hire two assistant teachers [see b. Bava Batra 21a, where it says that a teacher should hire one assistant], with whom he can teach, and a young assistant teacher who will bring them to their houses. Likewise, a teacher of Gemara should not have more than twenty-five students, and he must have two assistant teachers to teach them and bring them to the school.

4. By no means should a teacher trespass upon the territory of his fellow teacher in the middle of a term and take a pupil away from him for his heder. Also, no teacher should go to any householder at the end of a term to persuade him to take away his son, who is studying with another teacher, and give him to his school. It is only if the householder himself comes and delivers his son to study with him that the teacher has permission to accept him into his schoolroom. All of these matters shall be supervised by the members of the Holy Society for Torah Study.

5. The members of the Holy Society for Torah Study shall supervise the hiring of an honest, God-fearing teacher to study with the children of the poor and the orphans who are brought to the School of the Lads [the name for this institution], which was established for this purpose. They will also hire assistant teachers, to meet the quota of children who attend.

6. The teacher and the assistant teacher of the school will study with the children who are brought to the school the alphabet with vowels, and prayer book, and the Pentateuch, specifically with the Beer Moshe commentary, and also with Rashi’s commentary, as well as the order of prayer for each occasion, and good manners and proper conduct, each pupil in accordance with his intellect and ability. He shall also teach them foreign letters, in which foreign books are printed, in their language, so that they can read them, and they must be made familiar with ethics, etiquette, and honest behavior. He should also teach them the art of writing in foreign letters and the foreign vernacular. With the most intelligent students, he should study the table of verbs, so that they will know the fundamentals of the Holy Tongue: past, present, future, singular, plural, second-person, third-person, regular and irregular verbs, geminate verbs, and also all the derivations and conjugations. He should also teach them the science of arithmetic: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. If one of the students is a particularly bright boy capable of advanced learning, he should start studying Gemara with him, together with Rashi’s commentary and the Tosafot.

7. When a pupil approaches the age of thirteen years, he should teach him how to observe the commandment of phylacteries.

8. If a boy turns fourteen and is unable to study Gemara, he should be given some vocation or become an attendant to a householder. All of these things shall be under the supervision of the Sacred Society for Torah Study, so that everything is in done in the proper and correct order in all regards.