Frequently asked questions

Getting started

Do I need an account?

Not to look. Browse shows every trip, holiday camp and shul on the site to anybody who visits. You need an account, and a trip of your own, to write to somebody.

Why do I need one to make contact?

Because a conversation here is between two trips, not two strangers. The person you're writing to can see that you'll genuinely be a few miles away on the same days, which is the whole reason they'd bother replying — and it's the reason they were willing to be on the map in the first place. An open contact form on a public map would turn a list of families on holiday into a mailing list, and the map would empty out within a season.

It also means we know who sent what, so a message that shouldn't have been sent can be dealt with.

Does it cost anything?

No. There's nothing to pay, nothing to subscribe to, and no advertising.

I used the old site — is my account still there?

Yes. Members, trips and history all came across. Log in with the same email address and password you used before and it will work; the password gets quietly re-secured to the modern standard the first time you do. If you can't remember it, reset it as normal.

Contact details and privacy

Why don't you show people's phone numbers or email addresses?

Because they aren't ours to give out. A trip listing isn't a directory entry: people tell us where they'll be so that other travellers can find a minyan, not so they can be rung up by anyone who happens to be looking at a map.

This isn't a matter of hiding the details behind a login. A private trip's contact details are never sent to a browser at all, so there is nothing to find in the page whoever you are. Writing to us and asking for them gets the same answer, for the same reason.

The one exception is a shul or a holiday camp. Those are venues we maintain ourselves rather than families on holiday, so their full address and contact details are on the map for anyone to read — that's the point of them being listed.

What do other people see about my trip?

The line you wrote in "Where you'll be", your dates, how many men over bar mitzvah are with you, and — if you said there is one — your Rov's name and description. That's all. Your name, your email address, your phone number and your exact address are not on the map, and are not sent to anyone browsing it.

How do messages work if nobody sees my email address?

Conversations happen on the site, under Messages. When somebody writes to you we send you a notification — by email or text, whichever you've chosen — telling you there's a message waiting, and you read and reply here. Neither side ever sees the other's address unless you decide to swap them yourselves, which plenty of people do once they've established who they're talking to.

Your trips

How many trips can I add?

5 a season. That's enough for anybody's real travelling, and the limit is what stops the map filling up with speculative listings for places nobody is actually going. Deleting a trip doesn't give the allowance back, so add the trips you're really taking. If you genuinely need more, ask us and we'll look.

Why won't it take next year's dates?

The site works a season at a time, and a season is a calendar year. A trip has to start and finish inside the current one, because everything built on top of a trip — the allowance, the driving times, who's near you — matches on that year. Add next summer's trip next January.

What does "men over bar mitzvah" mean?

The men in your own party who count towards a minyan — thirteen and over. Not the size of your family, and not the number of people in the car. If you're travelling with your wife and four children of whom two are boys over bar mitzvah, the number is three.

It matters because it's the number that gets added up. Ten of those in one place on one day is a minyan; everything else on the site is in service of finding them.

How exact does my address have to be?

Not very, and deliberately so. Locations are held to postcode level, which is close enough for somebody to work out whether they can walk to you and nowhere near enough to knock on your door. The description you type — "Where you'll be" — is what other people actually read, so write whatever a stranger would recognise: "Bowness, near the ferry" is more use than a house number.

One consequence worth knowing: because addresses are only that precise, two separate families in neighbouring houses can land on exactly the same point on the map. That's why a marker shows a count rather than pretending to be one listing.

How does the Rov search work?

If a Rov is travelling with a party, whoever added that trip can say so. His name and a short description then appear on that trip's marker, and on Browse you can tick Only show trips with a Rov to leave just those trips on the map. There's no separate Rov page or directory: a Rov is part of a trip, and he's there because that trip is.

His number is never shown, and never leaves our server. Instead his marker carries a Contact Rov button: you type your she'eloh and your own mobile number, and we text both to him. If he wants to answer, he rings or texts you back. You don't need an account for that one — it's the only thing on the site you can do without registering — but you do need a UK mobile, because a text is how it reaches him.

If you're the one who entered a Rov's details and he'd rather not be listed, edit the trip and clear them, or ask us and we'll remove them.

Arranging a minyan

How do I find the days that reach ten?

That's what the timeline is for. Open My trips, clicktap Who's near me on your trip, and you get a grid: one row per party listed nearby, one column per day of your trip, and each cell showing how many men that party has with them that day. The Total row along the bottom adds up each day, your own party included, and highlights any day that reaches 10.

Tick the parties you'd like to daven with and clicktap Propose a minyan. Everyone ticked is told, and you're all told again once ten men have committed. How it works goes through this in more detail.

There's nobody near me. Now what?

Widen the distance — the selector goes up to 50 miles — and check the map as well as the list, since a shul or a holiday camp near you won't be in the list underneath it.

If there's still nobody, leave your trip listed anyway. Most people add theirs in the few weeks before they travel, so a search that finds nothing in May often finds several parties by July, and yours is what they will find. An empty map is nearly always a map nobody has filled in yet.

And before you give up on a place, look at what previous years looked like there.

Can I see where people went in previous years?

Yes. On Browse, next to the date pickers, there's a Show trips from dropdown listing every year from 2017 to this one. Choose a year and the dates jump to that year's season and the map redraws on the spot, staying wherever you'd panned and zoomed to — no need to press Search, and no need to work out for yourself what 10–30 Av fell on back then.

It answers a question this year's map can't: whether a town is somewhere Jewish travellers actually go. Half a dozen parties there three summers running is a good sign, even if it's empty today, because people tend to go back to the places that worked. An empty map for this year on its own tells you nothing much, since most listings only go up in the few weeks before people travel.

Two things to know. Previous years are there to be looked at and nothing more — you can't write to somebody about a trip they took years ago, since making contact goes through a trip of your own and yours has to overlap theirs. And shuls have no dates at all, so they stay on the map whichever year you pick.

To get back to this summer, choose the current year, or clicktap Reset.

Messages and your account

Why can I only get texts on a UK mobile?

Because sending a text abroad means paying a per-country premium to a provider, and this site doesn't have that kind of money behind it. So texts go to UK mobiles only.

A number from anywhere else is still perfectly welcome — put it on your trip so the people you arrange with can ring you. It just can't be the way we notify you, so those go by email instead. The email-or-text choice on your profile only appears once you've given a UK mobile and confirmed it with the code we send.

Can I turn the messages off?

Some of them. Under notification preferences you can switch off anything we send on our own initiative, such as the note at the start of the season saying the site is open again.

What you can't switch off is anything addressed to you personally — somebody writing to you about your own trip, or telling you a minyan you're part of has reached ten or fallen apart. Turning those off would leave you listed on a map while unreachable, which helps nobody. If you don't want to hear from anyone, delete the trip.

Somebody is behaving badly. What do I do?

Report them. There's a Report button on every party's row in the timeline, and one inside every conversation. Tell us what happened; nobody but the site's administrators sees it, and the person reported isn't told who reported them.

The same goes the other way round. If you find a minyan rather than making one, remember that a small shul which manages fine with its own regulars can be swamped by a dozen visitors turning up unannounced. Ask before you come, and don't all come at once.