With this meal the first consecration of the child‐priest was concluded. In some places they used to come to the father’s house on the third day after the circumcision with the purpose of making inquiries after the child’s health. In the case when the child was the first‐born the ceremony of “redeeming the child”(245) in accordance with Exodus xiii. used to take place. The details of this ceremony are to be found in almost every prayer‐book, and there is nothing fresh to add. But perhaps I may be allowed to draw attention to another distinction that the first‐born received in the Middle Ages. I refer to an account given by the author of the book, _The Ordinance of the Law_,(246) who flourished in the thirteenth century. He says: Our predecessors made the rule to destine every first‐born to God, and before its birth the father had to say, “I take the vow that if my wife presents me with a son, he shall be holy unto the Lord, and in His Torah he shall meditate day and night.” On the eighth day after the Berith Milah they put the child on cushions, and a Bible on its head, and the elders of the community, or the principal of the college, imparted their blessings to it. These first‐born sons formed, when grown up, the chief contingent of the Yeshiboth (Talmudical Colleges), where they devoted the greatest part of their lives to the study of the Torah. In later centuries the vow was dropped, but from the abundance of the Yeshiboth in Poland and elsewhere it seems as if almost every child was considered as having no other calling but the study of the Torah. Indeed, the growing persecutions required a strengthening of the religious force.