Behind the Scenes at Healthy Jew
The inside story of how Healthy Jew and I have grown together over the past 2+ years.
Dear Healthy Jew,
Many writers want to publish a book. Yet few finish a viable manuscript, and even fewer see their words printed, bound, and sold.
A big part of why I’m a published author is this Substack publication,
. In today’s special post, I will show you how our humble email newsletter grew into a real, live book, and how the book, the newsletter, and my foraging guiding business continue to support each other in a spiraling positive feedback loop.
Searching for Subscribers
In late 2022, after graduating from a 3-year college program as a certified health counselor, I set out to teach my Orthodox Jewish community how our faith-life ought to integrate with our body-life. I had a million-and-one ideas how to do that: workshops (in person and online), magazine articles, public speaking, and more. In the following months, I tried and failed with most of them.
One of the few things that worked was writing - not social media (more on that in a minute), and not “getting the column,” but building and nurturing my own little corner of the internet.
It wasn’t that complicated. I’ve always loved writing, and have a knack for consistency, so when my dear sister Aliza suggested I start a Substack,
was born on January 1, 2023 and since then has published every single Sunday at 7:00am (Israel time). began with 3 subscribed emails - my wife, myself, and my other email. After canvassing family, friends, family of family, and friends of friends, we were up to around 80. By using every trick in the Substack book, and emptying my soul on social media posts luring people to my longer essays here, the subscriber count graph steadily pointed upwards.But I was burning out. I’ve met many wonderful people who are cognitively and emotionally capable of engaging in the thousands of tiny connections that build followings on social media and communities on Substack. I’m not one of them. I get distracted, inefficient, obsessed, empty, and miserable. I become welded into the screen, hating myself but unable to walk away.
By early 2024, I knew that I needed to leave most online interaction - except my long-form Substack writing where I was developing, week by week, a Healthy Jew path to wellness that covers every area of living: “eating well” (nutrition), “moving well” (exercise), “being well” (working with stress), and discovering the biblical Land of Israel (the healthy body of the Jewish people).
But if I’d leave all the “platforms,” how will people “find me”?
Finding Foragers
Even more worrisome was that social media was driving another angle of Healthy Jew that was starting to gain traction.
Much of my health counseling training had been in Western herbalism, with a special emphasis on the local herbs that have grown wild in Israel for millennia. The college took us on a few foraging walks in the area, and I took myself on a few more, then bought a few books. Now I was finding that people really like when I walk with them through the hills and valleys of the Land of Israel, telling the stories and tasting the plants whose ancestors were eaten by our ancestors right here.
Whether I like it or not, people find out about these types of activities by following cool social media accounts. Email newsletters to a worldwide audience of Healthy Jews aren’t targeted to the local mom who’s looking for a family activity for next Sunday afternoon. And the local mom who loved my Healthy Jew foraging experience is usually far more keen to tag me on Facebook than to subscribe to
.I thought about making a colorful brochure and giving it out everywhere. But my heart wasn’t in that - I’m a writer and teacher, not a marketer. (I’m sure I’d also put it in all the wrong places and it wouldn’t get anywhere.)
The Healthy Jew Triangle
Instead, I copied my best Substack posts into a Word document and crafted a small book that shows how the Land of Israel is the healthy body of the Jewish people, together with practical suggestions on finding wellness during challenging times.
The subject was timely, as the Jewish people were (and still are) reeling from the horrific massacre of October 7, 2023 and the ongoing crisis here in Israel. People found my hopeful message meaningful, and the first self-published edition quickly sold out. Over the spring and summer, I worked with the talented team at Menucha Publishers on an expanded, professionally published edition of Land of Health: Israel’s War for Wellness. The book hit the stores in September 2024 - shortly after I walked away from my social media accounts.
Land of Health is the third corner of the Healthy Jew triangle, together with the newsletter and foraging walks. Two years after sending the first edition of
into the void, Healthy Jew is settling into a sustainable business model in which each completed task supports everything else.Every Sunday morning, subscribers to
learn about my book and foraging walks in two ways: I often mention them inside posts, and the regular email footers give them a callout.Everyone who reads Land of Health learns about
and my foraging walks in a special appendix that presents Healthy Jew’s vision and mission. I also explain in the introduction how the book was born from the newsletter, and discuss throughout the book how foraging is an incredible way to experience the life of the Land of Israel.On open foraging walks, I sell the book for a discounted price, and give it out for free on private walks. I’ll also ask every participant if they’d like me to add the email they put on the disclaimer form to
list.
Take a look at the subscriber graph to
. See what happened in the summer of 2024?
Well, nothing happened. The line continues to steadily rise, even though I quit my part time social media job of convincing and coercing everyone I know and don’t know to subscribe to
. Part of the reason for the continued growth is that Land of Health began driving fans and foragers who wanted more to the newsletter.
“You may have to find someone to write it for you.”
There’s also a personal angle to how my weekly Substack newsletter made me a published author.
For many years, I’ve attempted to write and publish essays about many subjects. I even have a half-finished manuscript of a book about Orthodox Judaism’s take on the death penalty. (Hint: we’re completely against it in modern society.)
Yet editors have never failed to reject my submissions, usually by coldly ignoring me. And many well-meaning friends and family members politely remind me that I’ll never make it in the real world with my fifth-grade formal English education.
As one good friend responded some years ago about my capital punishment project:
You will need to do something about how it is written… It appears that the audience you are trying to reach would have been the type that have a college education and have been exposed to proper writing. For them, they would put down the book after reading a few sentences. You may have to find someone to write it for you. Maybe ask some other people who have an appreciation for good literature what they think.
In all honesty, they probably had a point. But I’m too independent and prideful to surrender my time and money to a writing course. I needed to learn writing by experience, but the world wasn’t offering me an audience that would stick around while I learned to create paragraphs and chapters that people would want to read.
I was also stuck regarding strategy. I had many book-length sets of ideas, but no clue how to put them together in a coherent and concise structure with a beginning, middle, and end. “Plot” was (and, I must admit, still is) a mysterious and terrifying word.
Substack has been the perfect solution. Every week I need to teach my subscribers, no matter how few or many they are, something - anything - about healthy Jewish living or the biblical Land of Israel. It can be long or short, mostly pictures or mostly words, an idea or suggestion. Over the years, I’m learning from feedback that less is more, pictures and words together tell a whole story, and practical is better.
But getting it perfect every week doesn’t really matter. What’s important is that I pour my mind and heart into every newsletter, growing as a writer as my audience and I grow as Healthy Jews. All by itself, the size of the archive grows, and groups of posts come together to form themes that I tag into sections.
After over a year of posts, I didn’t need to write a book, because it was already written. Land of Health wrote itself, which is a good thing, because I wouldn’t have known how to write it. All I did was copy, past, cut, expand, refine, and cut again.
Dozens of readers have told me that this is exactly the type of book they like to read. Most people nowadays don’t have patience to wait 200 pages for the author to build his point. They want short, colorful, punchy chapters that contain a complete idea, and then come together to paint a larger picture.
I don’t know where Healthy Jew will go next. Marketing my newsletter and book have taught me that I’m not a marketer, so the next stage will probably involve partnering with someone who has that skill set.
But I’m not there yet. I’m still recovering from the frustrations of strategizing and designing and pitching and endless cycles of “Hi, I’m just following up.”
Yet every time I press “publish” on the Substack editor, sending out a new insight or experience to anyone searching for Jewish wellness, I’m quietly laying a brick on a wall of hundreds of posts. Perhaps one day that wall will turn into another half-dozen books. Hopefully much sooner it will encourage readers to order Land of Health or join me on an unforgettable foraging experience.
Thank you for reading Healthy Jew.
Here are 2 great paths to continue the journey:
Also check out this intro and index to explore hundreds of posts about our 3 Healthy Jew topics: wellness with wisdom, land of life (Israel), and sensible spirituality.
Finally, always feel free to reach out here with any comments, questions, or complaints:
I look forward to hearing from you!
Be well,
Rabbi Shmuel Chaim Naiman
Please note: All content published on Healthy Jew is for informational and educational purposes only. Talk to a qualified professional before taking any action or substance that you read about here.
Thanks for letting us share in this experience of finding your own way, littke by little!
I normally hate the term: "Thanks for sharing," but here it is called-for. Thanks for sharing, Rabbi.