Explore every episode of the podcast Din: The Beth Din of America Podcast

Yeshiva Tuition Without a Contract: Who Pays for Shana Bet?

A father and a yeshiva agree on tuition for his son’s first year in Israel. When the son returns for a second year, the two sides never settle on a price. The son attends for the full year, the father pays nothing, and the yeshiva files a claim. The yeshiva asks for its full sticker price. The father argues that he never signed, so he owes nothing.

Episode Host Bailey Spitz speaks with Rabbi Shlomo Weissmann, Director of the Beth Din of America, and Rabbi Itamar Rosensweig, Chaver Beth Din and editor of the Journal of the Beth Din of America, about how the panel worked through the dispute. Topics include:

• whether halacha should treat the case as unjust enrichment or as a contract with a missing term
• what happens when negotiations end in silence, compared with an agreement to compromise
• how dayanim fill in a price the parties never set
• how the BDA’s practice of issuing reasoned, written decisions serves both sides

They also explain how dayanim deliberate and why the BDA has issued only one written dissent in its history.

Read Rabbi Rosensweig’s article on the case in Jewishprudence, “The Case of Unpaid Yeshiva Tuition.”  Learn more about the Beth Din of America at bethdin.org