Terms of Use

Yorucha is a program of Bais HaVaad, a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Where these terms say we, that is who is meant.

• An account belongs to one person. Please do not share your sign-in with somebody else — what you have opened, what you have been marked as learning, and what you have written are all recorded against you.
• Keep your details accurate, and if you move, change your address on your account page. Booklets you have set to go to your home address follow it from the next month. If you chose a different address for your booklets, change that on your account page too.
• If you set a PIN or ask a device to be remembered, treat those as you would a password. You can see and remove your remembered devices from your account page at any time.
• You must be an adult to hold an account. Yorucha is written for adults learning business halacha.
• On the Kollel’s shared computer, Chavrei HaKollel sign in with their name and a PIN the office sets for them. It signs you out by itself after five minutes, and payments and your personal details are closed there. Sign out when you leave.

Some of Yorucha is open to anyone with a free account, and some of it comes with a paid tier. Wherever we describe what a tier includes — on a program’s own page, or in what the office tells you when you join — that description is what we are bound by. Your account page shows which tier you are on and what it costs. If what a tier includes is not clear to you, ask the office before you pay rather than after.

You pay by card, on the site. We show you what is owed before anything is charged, and your plan opens as soon as the charge goes through. If a card is declined, nothing is charged and nothing opens. If we cannot tell whether a charge went through, the screen will say so and ask you to call the office rather than pay again — and the office will put it right rather than leaving you to.

When you pay for a plan yourself, you choose at checkout what happens when it reaches its end date: renew it automatically, or send a reminder only. Either way, we email you 14 days before. If you chose to renew automatically, the card you paid with is charged on the end date; if that charge is declined, we email you once and the plan ends on that date. If you chose a reminder only, the plan ends on its end date unless you pay again. You can change your choice on your account page at any time. If the price has gone up since you last paid, we will not charge the new price unless you agree to it.

Prices can change. A change never applies to a period you have already paid for.

A code from the office can lower a price. Only one code can be used on a payment, and if you later cancel, the refund for that period is never more than what you were charged for it.

You can end your own subscription yourself from your account page, at any time, without asking anyone — a Yorucha tier and a Yoru Mishpatecha subscription alike.

A chaburah’s Chaburah Enhanced setup is different. It covers everybody learning in that chaburah, so it is not ended from a button by one person — write to the office and we will go through it with you.

When you do, we work out the unused part of what you have paid and we ask you which you would like: that money back, or left with Yorucha. The figure is calculated by us from the dates on your plan, not typed in by anyone, and you are shown it before you choose. If you choose the money back, it is refunded to your card, and usually arrives within a few working days. The same applies if you move down to a lower tier. If you paid nothing for the plan — a scholarship, for example — there is nothing to refund.

A scholarship lasts a year. Nothing is charged for it, so nothing is refunded when it ends; if you added to it by card, that part is refunded the same way as any other plan.

If you gift a scholarship to someone by name, your card is saved but not charged. It is charged only if they accept, within 90 days, and until then you can cancel the gift without being charged anything. To ask about a gift or a sponsorship once it has been charged, write to the office.

If you are covered twice — your own plan and a chaburah that also covers you — you keep both until you end your own, and that includes both sets of booklets.

• A printed booklet each month comes with the paid Yorucha tiers — you sign up for it on your account page, and it is mailed to the address you give there. On Yoru Mishpatecha it is automatic and there is nothing to sign up for.
• If you are learning a topic on your own, you can buy everything Mekushur includes for it — the marei mekomos, the overview shiurim, the sikumei halachos and the booklet — until the end of the cycle. Sections are sold whole; the Special Topics are sold one at a time. If we have the printed booklets in stock, we mail them to you at no charge.
• What you buy opens as soon as it is paid. Your orders and where each one stands — not paid yet, paid, shipped or delivered, with the date — are listed on the booklet order page in your account, and you can look at any time.
• If a booklet arrives damaged, or does not arrive, write to the office and we will sort it out.

Everything on Yorucha is for learning. The shiurim, the booklets, the marei mekomos, and the answers given on the boards are teaching material. They are not a psak on your situation, and no one should act on them as though they were.

Business halacha turns on the facts of a case, and two cases that sound alike often are not. If you have a real question — a dispute, a contract, a claim — take it to a rov or to a beis din who can hear the whole of it. An answer written for somebody else’s question is not an answer to yours.

Using Yorucha does not create a relationship in which we are advising you, and it is not legal advice.

• What you write stays yours. By posting it on Yorucha you allow us to show it on the site and in the app to whoever the board or space it was posted in is open to.
• How your name appears on the boards is your choice, and you can change it from the boards themselves. The default shows initials rather than a full name. In your chaburah’s learning space the default is your full name, and you can change that there too. Dayanim and Chavrei HaKollel are always shown by their full name.
• A shaila you send the Dayanim privately stays private. Only you can ask for it to be put on the board, and a Dayan agreeing to that is what publishes it. Nobody can put it there without you asking first.
• A shaila you ask in your chaburah’s learning space, or together with your chavrusa, is seen by them too, and so is the answer.
• Do not post anything you do not have the right to post, and do not identify somebody else in a shaila without their agreement.

The shiurim, booklets and other materials on Yorucha are ours or are used with permission. They are for your own learning: please do not republish them, sell them, or pass around copies of the files. Learning from them with a chavrusa or a chaburah is exactly what they are for.

Yorucha is a beis medrash. Disagreement about a sugya is the point of it; disrespect toward another member is not. We ask that what you write on the boards would not embarrass you if it were read aloud in a beis medrash — because in effect it is.

Do not try to reach parts of the site you have not been given, do not use the site to send other members unsolicited messages, and do not use it in a way that stops other people learning.

Any member can report a post. The office may hide a post that goes against these terms.

You can delete your account from your account page. It cannot be undone. If you run a chaburah, first hand it to another member from your chaburah page, because other people’s membership hangs on it; you can then delete your account straight afterward. If there is nobody to hand it to, write to the office and we will arrange it.

Two things stay, with your name taken off them: forum posts, and shailos you asked on behalf of your chaburah. Other members are reading and replying to those, and removing one person’s words from a conversation would take away everybody else’s. They appear afterward as written by “a member”. Our record of what you paid, and when, stays too, for bookkeeping. What else is kept and what is destroyed is set out in the privacy policy.

We may close or suspend an account that is being used against these terms. If we do, and you have paid for a period you have not had, we will deal with the balance the same way as §4.

We may change these terms as Yorucha changes. The date at the top says when they were last settled. If a change materially affects what you have paid for, we will tell you rather than leave you to find it.

To ask about anything on this page, write to yorucha@baishavaad.org.