Terms of Service

1. Acceptance of Terms

By accessing or using the Sh'elah website and services ('Service'), you agree to comply with and be bound by these Terms of Service ('Terms') and all applicable laws and regulations. If you do not agree, do not use the Service. A summary of this acceptance, the version and date of these Terms, and links to every legal document are shown in the footer of every page (see §18 for how we handle material changes).

2. Definitions

• 'Service' means the Sh'elah website, applications, and all features it offers.
• 'Sh'elah', 'we', 'us', 'our' refers to the operator of the Service, Akiva Yevdayev, an individual, not a company (see §20).
• 'You', 'User' means any person who accesses or uses the Service, whether or not they create an account.
• 'Content' means all text, source excerpts, translations, and other material made available through the Service, including both third-party Sources (below) and AI Output (below).
• 'Sources' means primary and secondary texts retrieved from third-party providers (Sefaria, Hebcal, Wikipedia, and other whitelisted corpora) and displayed under their own respective licenses. See the Licenses page.
• 'AI Output' means any synthesized answer, summary, or explanation generated by the Service's AI models (currently Anthropic Claude and Google Gemini) in response to a question. AI Output is machine-generated and is not a Source.
• 'User Content' means questions, bookmarks, notes, preferences, and any other material you submit to or generate within the Service.
• 'Halachic Guidance' / 'p'sak' means a binding religious-legal ruling issued by a qualified rabbinic authority applying halacha to a specific person's specific circumstances. The Service does not provide Halachic Guidance or p'sak; see §7.

3. Eligibility & Age Requirements

You must be at least 13 years old to use the Service. If you are located in the European Union or United Kingdom, you must be at least 16 years old, unless you have obtained verifiable consent from a parent or legal guardian in a manner acceptable under applicable law. The Service does not knowingly permit use by anyone under these thresholds, and any account found to belong to an underage user will be suspended and its data deleted (see §8 of our Privacy Policy). By using the Service, you represent that you meet this age requirement; misrepresenting your age is a material breach of these Terms and grounds for immediate termination.

4. Accounts & Your Responsibilities

Account creation and sign-in are handled by our authentication provider, Clerk. If you create an account, you are responsible for:

• Maintaining the confidentiality of your login credentials
• All activities that occur under your account
• Notifying us immediately of any unauthorized use of your account
• Not using another person's account without permission
• Providing accurate registration information

5. Acceptable Use

You agree not to engage in any of the following conduct. This list is a summary. The full Acceptable Use Policy governs and is incorporated into these Terms by reference.

• Harassing, abusing, or threatening other users
• Scraping, bulk-downloading, or automated extraction of Content or other users' data
• Presenting AI Output as an authoritative halachic ruling, or otherwise misrepresenting its source or authority
• Uploading or transmitting viruses or malware
• Attempting unauthorized access to our systems, or reverse-engineering the Service
• Spamming, phishing, or exceeding published rate limits
• Violating any applicable laws or regulations

6. The Service, AI-Generated Content & Educational Purpose

Sh'elah is an educational Torah-study tool. It uses AI models (Google Gemini and Anthropic Claude) together with retrieval-augmented generation ('RAG') to search Sources and synthesize AI Output in response to your questions. AI Output may be incomplete, may misattribute or mis-cite a Source, may reflect only one of several halachic opinions, and may occasionally be factually wrong ('hallucinate'). See our AI Disclosure page for a full explanation of how this works and its limitations.

• Not a substitute for professional consultation: Sh'elah's AI Output is not a substitute for consulting with a qualified rabbi or Jewish legal expert.
• No impersonation of rabbinic authority: Sh'elah never claims to be a rabbi and never issues p'sak. Every answer directs you to consult your own rabbi for a final ruling.
• Source verification: We make reasonable efforts to make sure cited Sources are accurately attributed, but you should verify primary source citations directly against Sefaria or the original text before relying on them.

7. Not Religious, Legal, Medical, or Financial Advice

The Service and its AI Output are provided for general educational and informational purposes only. Nothing on the Service constitutes religious/halachic, legal, medical, mental-health, or financial advice, and no professional relationship (rabbinic, legal, medical, or otherwise) is created by your use of the Service. When a message sounds like an emergency, self-harm, or abuse, the Service does not answer it with AI Output and shows a fixed message pointing to appropriate help instead. Always seek the advice of a qualified rabbi, physician, attorney, or other licensed professional with any questions you may have regarding a specific situation.

8. Assumption of Risk

You understand and agree that relying on AI Output, including to make religious, halachic-practice, medical, legal, or financial decisions, is entirely at your own risk. You assume full responsibility for verifying any AI Output with a qualified rabbi or other relevant professional before acting on it, and Sh'elah disclaims responsibility for any outcome resulting from such reliance to the fullest extent permitted by law (see §14).

9. Intellectual Property; Third-Party Content & Attribution

Sh'elah's source code is released under the MIT License (see the LICENSE file in the repository). Its design and original text are protected by copyright and other proprietary rights. Content retrieved from third parties, including Sefaria, Hebcal, Wikipedia, and Halachipedia, remains under each provider's own license; Sh'elah does not claim ownership of that Content and displays it under those providers' respective terms. See the Licenses page for the full per-source breakdown, including the Wikipedia CC-BY-SA share-alike obligation that travels with any reuse of Wikipedia-sourced material. Permission is granted to temporarily view Content on Sh'elah for personal, non-commercial use only. Under this permission you may not: modify, copy, or redistribute the Content beyond personal use; use it for any commercial purpose or public display without permission; decompile or reverse-engineer any software on the Service; remove copyright or attribution notices; or mirror the Service on another server. The MIT License for the source code is separate from this permission.

10. User Content License

You retain ownership of your User Content. By submitting User Content, you grant Sh'elah a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable license to host, store, process, and use it solely to: (a) provide and improve the Service to you (e.g., displaying your bookmarks, remembering your preferences); (b) generate AI Output in response to your questions; and (c) produce anonymized, aggregated analytics. We do not use your questions or AI Output to train AI models without your explicit, separate consent, and we do not sell User Content. This license ends when you delete the relevant User Content or your account, except for residual copies retained only as required by §3 (Data Retention) of our Privacy Policy (e.g., backups, legal retention) or already anonymized/aggregated data that no longer identifies you.

11. Links to Third-Party Sites

Sh'elah has not reviewed all of the sites linked to its website and is not responsible for the contents of any such linked site. The inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement by Sh'elah of the site. Use of any such linked website is at the user's own risk.

12. DMCA / Copyright Complaints

If you believe Content on the Service infringes your copyright, see our full DMCA / Copyright Policy for the notice-and-takedown procedure and our designated agent's contact information.

13. Disclaimer of Warranties

THE SERVICE AND ALL CONTENT (INCLUDING AI OUTPUT) ARE PROVIDED 'AS IS' AND 'AS AVAILABLE', WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. Sh'elah disclaims all warranties, including, without limitation, implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, non-infringement, and uninterrupted or error-free operation. Content may include technical, typographical, translation, or factual errors, and may not be accurate, complete, or current; Sh'elah may change Content at any time without notice.

14. Limitation of Liability; Damages Cap

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, SH'ELAH AND ITS SUPPLIERS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR ANY LOSS OF DATA, PROFITS, OR GOODWILL, ARISING FROM YOUR USE OF (OR INABILITY TO USE) THE SERVICE OR RELIANCE ON ANY CONTENT, EVEN IF SH'ELAH HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. SH'ELAH'S TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY FOR ANY CLAIM ARISING FROM THESE TERMS OR THE SERVICE WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNT YOU PAID SH'ELAH IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM AROSE (CURRENTLY $0, AS THE SERVICE IS FREE), OR (B) ONE HUNDRED US DOLLARS (US $100). Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of certain damages, so some of the above limitations may not apply to you; in that case, liability is limited to the smallest extent permitted by that jurisdiction's law.

15. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Sh'elah and its operator from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, losses, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising out of or in any way connected with: (a) your use or misuse of the Service; (b) your User Content; (c) your violation of these Terms or any applicable law; or (d) your violation of any third party's rights, including intellectual-property or privacy rights.

16. Dispute Resolution; Governing Law

These Terms are governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the United States and the State of New York, without regard to conflict-of-law principles, and you irrevocably submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in New York.

17. Termination

Sh'elah reserves the right to suspend or terminate your account and access at any time, for any reason, including, but not limited to, abuse or violation of these Terms, at our sole discretion and, where practical, with notice. You may stop using the Service, or request deletion of your account and data, at any time; see our Privacy Policy for the self-serve deletion flow. Sections that by their nature should survive termination (including §7–§9, §13–§16, and §19) survive.

18. Changes to These Terms

We may revise these Terms from time to time. Each revision carries an updated 'Last updated' date and version number at the top of this page, and the footer notice on every page always links to the current version. For material changes (e.g., new obligations, a reduced level of protection, or a changed liability/dispute-resolution term), we will call out the change in the footer notice and, where practical, notify signed-in users directly. Continued use of the Service after a change, material or not, constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms.

19. Severability & Entire Agreement

If any provision of these Terms is found to be unenforceable or invalid, that provision will be limited or eliminated to the minimum extent necessary, and the remaining provisions will remain in full force and effect. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, AI Disclosure, and Acceptable Use Policy incorporated by reference, constitute the entire agreement between you and Sh'elah regarding the Service, and supersede any prior agreements between you and Sh'elah on that subject.

20. Contact

Sh'elah is currently operated by Akiva Yevdayev, an individual, not a registered company. If you have questions about these Terms of Service, please contact:

Contact: Akiva Yevdayev

Email: contact@shelah.org