This agreement is between you and Mulunesh Sror of New Jersey, United States (“we”, “us”), about the Kol Aliyah app (“the App”). We may transfer the App and this agreement to Noesis Works LLC, a New Jersey limited liability company that Mulunesh Sror owns; from then on “we” and “us” mean that company, and nothing else in this agreement changes for you. It is the licence agreement for the App, and it is also the Terms of Use. By downloading, installing or using the App you accept it. If you do not accept it, do not use the App.
Kol Aliyah is made for Bar Mitzvah students and their parents. If you are under 18, a parent or guardian must accept this agreement for you and is responsible for your use of the App.
1. Apple is not a party
You and we agree that this agreement is between you and us only, and not with Apple Inc. (“Apple”). We, and not Apple, are responsible for the App and what it contains. This agreement is read together with the Apple Media Services Terms and Conditions and the Usage Rules in them, and it does not limit those rules.
2. Your licence
We give you a personal, limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to install and use the App on Apple-branded devices that you own or control, as the Usage Rules allow, for private study of a Torah and Haftarah reading. We license the App to you; we do not sell it. We keep every right we do not expressly give.
You may not copy, modify, reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the App, rent, lease, sell or sub-license it, make it available over a network to be used by several devices at once, or remove any notice from it. The exceptions are what the law allows whatever this agreement says, what the Usage Rules allow, and what the open licences in sections 7 and 8 allow for the material they cover. If you sell your device, delete the App from it first.
3. Subscriptions
The App is free to download. The setup, the blessings and the opening verses of a reading are free. The rest of the verses, with the test and the full parents’ report, need a subscription.
- Plans. There are two plans, Monthly and 6 months, both for one student. The subscription is not shared through Family Sharing, and there is no free trial. The price of each plan in your country is shown by Apple before you confirm.
- Payment and renewal. Payment is charged to your Apple Account when you confirm the purchase. The subscription renews automatically for another period of the same length unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the current period ends. Your account is charged for the renewal within 24 hours before the period ends.
- Cancelling and managing. You manage or cancel on your iPhone in Settings, your name, Subscriptions. Deleting the App, or using “Delete everything” inside it, does not cancel a subscription. If you cancel, you keep access until the end of the period you paid for.
- Refunds and price changes. Apple handles purchases, refunds and changes to a subscription price under its own rules, and we cannot refund a purchase ourselves. Ask Apple at reportaproblem.apple.com.
- Parents and minors. Where the law requires a parent or guardian to approve a purchase by a minor, Apple asks for that approval, and we cannot buy anything for anyone. A purchase that waits for a parent stays unavailable until it is approved.
- When it ends. If the subscription ends, the rest of the verses lock again. The recordings, results and reading kept on your device stay there.
The subscription pays for the App and its features. It does not pay for the recordings and text described in section 7, and it does not restrict them.
4. Your recordings and your data
The App has no account, no ads, no analytics and no tracking. What you enter and record stays on your device: the student’s first name, birth date, country and Bar Mitzvah date, the settings, the verses marked as learned, the test results and practice time, a parent’s e-mail address if you type one, and the student’s recordings. Deleting the App, or using “Delete everything” in Settings, deletes all of it.
- The microphone. The App uses it only when the student records or takes a test. The test checks his words on the device with a speech model that runs inside the App. The recording is not sent to us or to anyone else.
- Your recordings are yours. We never receive them, so we get no licence to them and do not use them for anything.
- The parents’ report. It leaves the device only when you send it yourself, through your own Mail app, or share it yourself. We do not receive it and cannot see it.
- Downloads. The reading packs are downloaded from our servers, once, after setup. The download carries nothing about you or the student. We keep no log of it.
- Purchases. Apple handles payment. We never see your card or your Apple Account details.
- Technical data. We collect no technical information about your device ourselves. Apple may give us aggregate information about the App’s downloads and subscriptions, with nothing that identifies you.
The privacy policy at https://kolaliyah.app/privacy says the same in more detail. If it and this section ever differ, the one that protects your data more applies.
5. Age
In some places the law asks app stores and apps to know whether a user is a minor. This is so in Texas, Utah and Louisiana at the date of this agreement. Where it applies, the App asks Apple’s system for your age range (under 13, 13 to 15, 16 to 17, or 18 and over). It asks once in a while, never asks for a birthday, keeps only the range, and keeps it only on your device. The App works the same whatever the answer is, and if you decline or the system is unavailable. The App never blocks you because of your age.
Apple, and not we, asks a parent or guardian for permission before a minor downloads the App or buys a subscription where the law requires it, and Apple may stop the App from opening if that permission is withdrawn.
6. A study aid, not a religious authority
Kol Aliyah is a practice tool. It plays recordings, shows the text, and checks which words were read. It is not a rabbi, a teacher or a religious ruling, and nothing in it is religious, halachic, legal, medical or other professional advice.
- Customs differ between communities and synagogues. Check with your rabbi or tutor how your community reads, which blessings and additions it uses, and when the student is ready.
- The test checks words only. It can mark a word wrong that was right, or right that was wrong. It does not grade the melody, and its result does not promise how a reading will go.
- Kol Aliyah is an independent app. No synagogue, movement, rabbi or reader endorses it, and the readers named in the credits have no connection to us.
- We work to keep the text, the timing and the cuts right, and we fix mistakes in updates, but we do not promise that the content is free of errors.
7. Recordings and text under a Creative Commons licence
The recordings of the Torah and Haftarah readers and the Hebrew text of the Bible in the App are not part of the software this agreement licenses. They are licensed to everyone under their own licence, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA): version 3.0 for the recordings, version 4.0 for the text.
- Recordings. The spoken reading and the Sephardic chant are by Rabbi Dan Be’eri, from his Tanakh narration and cantillation on the Internet Archive. The Ashkenazi chant is by Asael, from his recordings for the Vayavinu Bamikra project of Hebrew Wikisource, on Wikimedia Commons. Both are CC BY-SA 3.0.
- Text. The Hebrew text is Miqra according to the Masorah, as distributed through Sefaria, under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- What we changed. We cut each portion from the recordings, added short fades, set one loudness level per recording, and repaired clipped peaks in Asael’s recordings. We show the text word by word with our own transliteration. Our word timings and these changes are offered under the same licence as the material they change.
- Where to find it. The credits and links for each reading are in the App under Settings, Licences, and at https://kolaliyah.app/sources, where the same recordings and text can be downloaded free of charge.
Nothing in this agreement, in the Apple Media Services Terms, or in the subscription limits the rights those licences give you. You may copy, share and adapt the recordings and the text on the terms of the licence (give credit, say if you changed them, and share what you make under the same licence), whether or not you subscribe. If this agreement and a licence disagree about the recordings or the text, the licence wins for them. Neither reader is affiliated with Kol Aliyah or endorses it.
Everything else in the App is ours or our licensors’, and this agreement applies to it. That covers the code, the design, the name and icon, the arrangement of the lessons, and the blessings and the Haftarah readings that are in a synthesised voice, which we make where no recording of a reader exists.
8. Other software in the App
The App includes open-source software. The test uses OpenAI’s Whisper model, run by whisper.cpp, both under the MIT licence. The type is Frank Ruehl CLM and Stam Ashkenaz CLM from the Culmus project (GNU GPL v2 with the font exception) and EB Garamond (SIL Open Font License 1.1). Their notices are in the App under Settings, Licences. Their licences apply to them, and this agreement does not reduce your rights under them.
9. Updates, downloads and support
We may update, change or stop the App or any feature of it. Reading packs need an internet connection the first time they are downloaded, and we do not promise that the download service will always be available. Once a portion is on your device, practice works offline.
We aim to answer questions and fix mistakes, and you can write to us at any time (section 15). But we are not required to provide maintenance or support for the App, and Apple has no duty at all to provide maintenance or support for it.
10. Ending this agreement
This agreement lasts until it ends. It ends automatically if you break it, and you may end it at any time by deleting the App. When it ends, stop using the App and delete it. Sections 7, 8, 11 to 14, 16 and 17, and anything that by its nature should continue, stay in force. Ending this agreement does not affect your rights under the licences in sections 7 and 8.
11. No warranty
To the extent the law allows, the App and everything in it are provided “as is” and “as available”, with all faults and without a warranty of any kind. We disclaim all warranties and conditions, express, implied or statutory, including merchantability, satisfactory quality, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, quiet enjoyment and non-infringement. Use of the App is at your own risk. Some places do not allow some of these exclusions, so they may not apply to you.
If the App fails to meet a warranty that the law does not allow us to exclude, you may tell Apple, and Apple will refund the purchase price of the App, if any. Beyond that, Apple has no other warranty duty for the App. Any other claim, loss, liability, damage, cost or expense caused by the App’s failure to meet a warranty is our responsibility.
12. Limit of liability
To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential loss, or for lost data, lost profit or business interruption, arising from your use of the App or your inability to use it, however caused and whatever the theory of liability, even if we were told it was possible. Our total liability to you for all claims about the App is limited to the greater of the amount you paid for the App in the 12 months before the claim and fifty US dollars ($50).
Nothing in this agreement limits liability that the law does not allow us to limit, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded.
13. Claims about the App
We, not Apple, are responsible for addressing any claim by you or a third party about the App or your possession or use of it. That includes claims of product liability, claims that the App does not meet a legal or regulatory requirement, and claims under consumer protection, privacy or similar law.
If a third party claims that the App or your use of it infringes their intellectual property rights, we, not Apple, are responsible for investigating, defending, settling and discharging that claim.
14. Law and courts
This agreement is governed by the laws of the State of New Jersey, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules, and the courts located in New Jersey have jurisdiction over any dispute about it. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply. None of this takes away the mandatory consumer-protection rights you have in the place where you live, including the right, if you live in the European Union, Switzerland, Norway or Iceland, to the law and courts of your usual place of residence.
15. Contact
Questions, complaints or claims about the App go to:
Mulunesh Sror, c/o Noesis Works LLC
929 US Highway 202/206, Bridgewater, New Jersey 08807, United States
E-mail: support@kolaliyah.app
Web: https://kolaliyah.app/support
We give notices to you by e-mail where we have your address, or by a new version of this agreement posted at https://kolaliyah.app/terms.
16. Compliance, export and government users
You confirm that you are not located in a country that is under a United States government embargo, and are not on any United States government list of restricted parties. You will not export or re-export the App except as United States law and the law of the place where you got it allow, and you will follow the laws that apply to your use of the App. You also agree to follow the terms of any third-party services you use with the App, such as your mobile carrier’s.
The App and its documentation are “Commercial Items” as defined at 48 C.F.R. 2.101, consisting of “Commercial Computer Software” and “Commercial Computer Software Documentation”. If you are a United States government end user, you receive only the rights given to all other users under this agreement.
17. Apple as third-party beneficiary, and the whole agreement
Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of this agreement. When you accept it, Apple has the right to enforce it against you as a third-party beneficiary.
This is the whole agreement between you and us about the App, together with the Apple Media Services Terms and Conditions and the Creative Commons licences described in section 7. If a part of it cannot be enforced, the rest stays in force. If we change this agreement, we post the new version, with a new version number and date, at https://kolaliyah.app/terms. A change takes effect for you when you accept it or when you keep using the App after we tell you about it. A change to what you pay follows Apple’s rules for subscription price changes.