PARDESPrivacy policy
This policy covers the app Pardes (in Hebrew פרדס; listed as “Pardes” on Google Play and as “Pardes: Torah with a Chavruta” on the App Store, app id app.pardes), published by Tarayants Consulting LLC, the developer named on its App Store and Google Play listings.
The short version: the library is free and needs no account. Your plans, set times, bookmarks and notes stay on your device. The chavruta, an AI study partner on a paid monthly plan, is the one part that needs an account: if you use it, we hold your Google name and email, your plan, and the questions you ask with their answers, until you delete them. There are no ads and no analytics, and we do not sell personal data.
Who we are
Pardes is developed and operated by Tarayants Consulting LLC, a company registered in the United States. For anything in this policy, write to privacy@mypardes.org.
What we collect, and when
Nothing, to learn
The library needs no account and no sign-in. Your language and reading settings, your city, the plans and set times you choose, what you have read, bookmarks and notes are stored on your device (in the phone app's storage, or in your browser's storage for mypardes.app). They are not sent to us. Because they live on one device, they do not follow you to another.
Reminders
In the phone app, the reminder for your set time is scheduled on your phone by its own notification system. If your phone requires permission for notifications, it asks you before the first one, and you can turn them off in the phone's settings. The time is not sent to us or to any notification server. The web app sends no notifications; it shows your set time on its home screen.
Loading the texts
The app loads the texts it does not carry from mypardes.org, and the web app itself from mypardes.app. Both are files served by Amazon Web Services (Amazon CloudFront and S3). Like any web server, it receives your IP address, the address of the file and the ordinary details your browser or phone sends with a request, and it needs them to deliver the file. We have not turned on access logs for either site, so we keep no record of these requests. Amazon handles them under its own privacy notice.
If you write to us
Reporting a mistake in a text opens your own email app with a message to privacy@mypardes.org; nothing is sent until you send it. We receive what you send, including your email address. We use it only to fix the text and to answer you, and keep it only as long as that takes.
Location
Candle-lighting times, the quiet on Shabbat and Yom Tov and the Israel or diaspora calendar use the city you choose in the app, from a short list, and it stays on your device. The app does not ask for your device's location.
On the websites
mypardes.org and mypardes.app set no cookies of their own. If you choose an edition on the front page of mypardes.org, your browser remembers the choice in its own storage, and it is not sent to us. Neither site has analytics, tracking or advertising scripts.
If you use the chavruta: an account
The chavruta needs to know whose plan and whose conversations it is dealing with, so it asks you to sign in with Google. Google tells us your name, your email address, your profile picture's address and an identifier for your Google account. We never see your Google password. We store these with your plan on our server (Amazon Web Services, United States). You can use the whole library without ever signing in.
If you use the chavruta: your questions
When you ask, the app sends our server your question, which page and lines you are asking about, who should answer and in which language. The server passes them to an AI model (Anthropic's Claude models, run for us by Amazon Bedrock), together with the text of the page, which the server reads itself. The answer comes back the same way. Amazon Bedrock does not use your questions to train models and does not share them with the model's maker. We keep the conversation so that you can return to it and ask a follow-up, and we keep a count of the credits and model usage of each question. The chavruta also keeps a short memory about you, such as the language and length of answer you prefer and a summary of earlier conversations, so that later answers fit you better.
You can delete any conversation, erase what the chavruta remembers about you, or delete the whole account, from inside the app (Me). If you report an answer, we keep the report with the text of that answer so that we can look at it.
Dictation
If you dictate a question, your phone's or browser's own speech service turns your voice into text, under its maker's privacy policy (Apple, Google, or your browser's). We receive only the text you send. We never receive or store audio.
Payments
Plans are bought in the phone apps and billed by Apple or by Google Play; nothing is sold on mypardes.app. We never see or store your card number. The store tells us which plan you hold and whether it is active, and RevenueCat, which keeps the stores' subscription records in step for us, receives your account identifier and your purchases, not your name or email.
Analytics and crash reports
There is no third-party analytics, advertising or crash-reporting software in the app or on the websites. If one is ever added, this page will name it before it is enabled. Our server writes technical logs: errors, and for each question the account identifier, who answered, the credits and the model usage, but not the question or the answer. They are deleted automatically after 14 days.
What we use it for
- To deliver the app and its texts to you, and to keep that service secure.
- To answer the questions you ask the chavruta, to keep your conversations, and to count your plan's credits.
- To know which plan you hold.
- To fix mistakes and answers you report, and to answer you.
- To meet legal obligations.
We do not sell personal data, do not build advertising profiles, and do not share your data with anyone except the providers named here.
Who else sees it
- Amazon Web Services, which hosts the websites, delivers the app and its texts, stores accounts and conversations, and runs the AI models (Amazon Bedrock).
- Google, when you sign in with your Google account.
- Apple, Google Play and RevenueCat, when you buy a plan, as described above; and Apple and Google when you download the app from their stores, under their own policies.
- The email providers that carry a message you send us.
- Authorities, where the law requires it.
How long we keep it
What is on your device stays there until you remove it. We keep no request logs for the websites. Your account, conversations and the chavruta's memory are kept until you delete them or the account. When you delete the account, your profile, your conversations and that memory are erased; the record of which plan the account held and how many credits it used in the current month is kept, without your name or email, because a store subscription may still be running, and records of payments are kept as tax law requires. An email you send us is kept until the mistake is fixed and you have been answered.
Your rights
Wherever you live, you can ask us what we hold about you, and to correct or delete it. An account and its conversations you can delete yourself in the app (Me › Account › Delete the account), or write to us and we will do it. What is stored on your device you delete yourself: a plan, bookmark or note in the app, or all of it by uninstalling the app or clearing the site's data in your browser. Under Israel's Privacy Protection Law, the EU and UK GDPR and the California CCPA you have these rights by law; we grant them to everyone. Write to privacy@mypardes.org. You may also complain to your local data protection authority.
Children
PARDES is for adults and teenagers learning Torah; it is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their data. Accounts and plans are for people aged 18 and over, or younger with a parent's consent. If a child has written to us or opened an account, tell us and we will delete it.
Security
Everything between your device and our sites is encrypted (TLS). The sites are hosted on Amazon Web Services, with access limited to the people who run the service. We hold no passwords: sign-in is Google's. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects you we will tell you.
Changes
When this policy changes we update the date at the top, and for material changes we tell you in the app. The current version is always at mypardes.org/en/privacy/. The Hebrew version is at /il/privacy/; if the two differ, the English governs.