One of the most important duties of the Waads was the maintenance of Jewish public schools, the Talmud Torahs and yeshibahs, which at communal expense imparted religious instruction primarily to poor children and youths. From the minutes of the Lithuanian Waad which have come down to us we learn of the fact that every one of its conferences placed at the head of its enactments a number of clauses providing for the obligatory instruction of the young in yeshibahs throughout the country, for the maintenance of the students by the various communities in cash and in kind, and for the formulation of the curricula and the statutes of all these institutions of learning. No wonder that the endeavors of the Waad were crowned with success, and that the intellectual level of the Jews of Lithuania was very high. It must be owned, however, that their mental horizon was not large, inasmuch as the whole course of study, even in the highest schools, was limited to the Talmud and rabbinic literature. Furthermore, the Council of the Four Lands established a control over the books issued by the printing-presses of Cracow and Lublin, or imported from abroad. Only such books were allowed to circulate as were supplied with a printed approbation, or _haskama_, of the Waad or some authoritative rabbis. Very frequently the Waad also intervened in the struggle of parties and sects which, as will be seen later,[176] followed the rise of the Sabbatian movement. Many public functions which lay outside the sphere of activity of the central Waads were discharged by the local District conventions, or "Dietines" (_waade medinah_, or _waade galil_), the latter acting as the agencies of the Kahal federations of the given region. In official language these District federations were often designated as "synagogues." Especially prominent during this period were the "Volhynian Synagogue," _i. e._ the federation of the Kahals of Volhynia, and the "White Russian Synagogue," composed of the federated communities of the present Government of Moghilev. The former sent its representatives to the Council of the Four Lands, while the latter was affiliated with the Waad of Lithuania. The periodic conventions of these two "synagogues" not only decided the allotment of taxes within the Kahal districts, but also took up questions of a general character, such as the sending of advocates to the general Polish Diet, the instructions to be given to the deputies of the central Waads, the problem of Jewish education, the rabbinate, etc. Less noticeable was the activity of the Kahal federations of the three "Crown provinces": Little Poland with the central community of Cracow, Great Poland with Posen, and Red Russia with Lemberg. We know, however, that they too assembled periodically, either at the initiative of the Kahals themselves or by order of the voyevoda of a given province. These conventions or "Dietines" had their "floor leaders" or "marshals," after the pattern of the provincial