Healthy Jews, Unite!

Together we can find wellness on this Substack.

What’s Substack?

“Are you interested in learning about living healthfully as a Jew?”

“Of course. It’s so important, especially because the Torah instructs to take care of our health. I don’t know why the issue isn’t so popular in the Jewish community.”

“I also don’t. But I’m trying to do something about that. How about signing up for my weekly newsletter, The Healthy Jew? You’ll get in your email inbox every Wednesday a timely insight or experience followed by one practical suggestion. You can even comment and join our community of like-minded health-seekers.”

“I’m in. How do I sign up?”

“On Substack.”

“What’s Substack?”

I’ve had this conversation a zillion times since launching The Healthy Jew three months ago. So today I’d like to tell you a bit about Substack, how the platform can help us grow into a vibrant community, and what this all has to do with our mission of finding wellness with purpose.

Pay close attention, because there’s lots of exciting innovation coming out these days from Substack. There was even some drama the other week with Elon Musk’s Twitter, as

Erik Hoel

analyzed profoundly in

The Intrinsic Perspective

. But I’m going to stay focused on our little corner of the action.

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Questions

How are Substack email newsletters different than everything else spamming your inbox?

Why isn’t the Substack platform just another social media incarnation?

The Answer

Substack isn’t selling you anything besides Substack itself.

The thousands of writers here on Substack aren’t trying to grab your attention so that we can sell you a lawnmower or a lemon. And Substack isn’t trying to keep you engaged online so that a faceless monolith can sell you things that you don’t need. The product is just what you’re reading, right here, right now.

Here’s how it works. Substack provides us – for free – with the infrastructure to build a cutting-edge digital publication, together with tools to grow and support an online community where we can interact with our readers. They even help us find subscribers by integrating every publication into the Substack ecosystem through Recommendations and Notes (more on them soon).

We’re encouraged to start out by sharing everything for free. As our lists grow, we can offer premium content to paid subscribers. Each writer finds the ratio of free to paying subscriber content that works for them. I’m currently inclined to continue keeping this weekly column free and offering for premium a broader interactive experience. (Hopefully soon!) I’ve also got some deep-dive posts up my sleeve which I might publish premium. But don’t worry about The Healthy Jew breaking your bank anytime soon: most writers charge five to eight dollars a month.

Why does Substack do all this for writers and readers? They take a well-deserved 10% cut of everything writers bring in from subscriptions. Because they are essentially investing in writers’ online businesses, they don’t need to own readers’ minds and sanity by building their model around keeping you engaged so they can throw ads at you. Instead, it’s my job to write good stuff so that you’ll want to stick around. Hopefully you’ll even pay a few dollars to support my work and expand your journey toward wellness.

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Chat, Notes, and Recommendations

Substack has recently improved Chat and launched Notes. Chat is a place that writers can directly communicate with their subscribers; on Notes everyone can post and comment together with short-form content. These tools can help us grow into a community of health-seekers, and, to the degree that each of us wishes, link up with other Substack readers and writers. (Another great way to enrich your Substack menu is by checking out my newly curated Recommendations list.)

As you might have seen, I’ve already started posting a bit on Notes. (Click here for my first pearl of Notes wisdom.) So hop right over to Notes today. Hopefully soon we’ll also open Chat. If you’re new to interacting online, and perhaps a bit anxious or confused, that makes two of us. We’ll figure this out together.

We can use these spaces to discuss our successes and challenges in incorporating The Healthy Jew’s suggestions into our daily lives, which is, after all, kind of the point. You can offer feedback and ask questions. And we can organize informal support groups and formal workshops about relevant topics.

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Relate Well

I have lots of ideas, plans, and dreams for The Healthy Jew. For example, I’m currently developing a Healthy Jew Training Course for schools and communities of all stripes and colors. (Hey, maybe I’ll offer it first to subscribers of The Healthy Jew?) I already post shorter picture and video content on WhatsApp and Facebook (in Hebrew and English), and have hosted several history hikes and foraging workshops here in Israel. I’m looking into more ways to present projects like these to a wider audience. As everyone tells me, you gotta shoot in all directions.

Learning about wild garlic on a foraging walk in the Jerusalem hills.

Yet The Healthy Jew here on Substack holds a special place in my heart, because this newsletter harbingers a unique opportunity to connect health-seekers all over the world, from many different backgrounds, for the common goal of finding wellness with purpose.

Each social barrier we transcend peels away another muzzle on The Healthy Jew’s call that healthy living doesn’t only make a good life possible but is where good choices begin. We’re setting aside external differences, uniting instead around our creation in the “form and likeness of God” (Genesis 1:26) - the uniquely human capacity to purposefully choose wellness, and to choose that wellness together.

Community lies at the heart of human health. Unlike most animals, we can’t survive without mutual help. No single person can find sufficient food, protect themselves from the elements, fend off attackers, and provide for their offspring. To live and thrive, we must employ our minds to delegate appropriate tasks to each member of our tribe. We even need to support each other in choosing wellness! Maimonides wrote that our interactions with others define our character: each trait seeks either to come close to, or go away from, something or someone.

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Action Inquired!

The Healthy Jew currently has several hundred subscribers, spread over four continents. Many of you - young and old, women and men, secular and religious, healthy and sick - have reported that you’re enjoying The Healthy Jew and, more importantly, finding my suggestions useful. That’s awesome.

But to become a viable enterprise we must expand our reach. I’m working hard to get as many people as possible on board, and today I’m asking every reader - yes, you! - to pitch in.

Here are some ways you can help your family, friends and community find wellness with purpose:

• Forward this article, or The Healthy Jew’s homepage, to everyone you know. Then post it everywhere on WhatsApp and social media. Okay, not everyone and everywhere. But at least to anyone who might be interested, and where they hang out online, particularly if they happen to be Jewish, or appreciate Judaism or Israel.

  Here’s some buttons so you won’t need to fumble around for links:

• Liked the lovely flyer at the top of this email? Reply “flyer” to this email and I’ll send you a printable and postable file for you hang up on every telephone pole and Facebook group you meet.

• Maybe you know people who are interested but might have trouble signing up or can’t get around to it? Just send me their email addresses (by responding to this email) and I’ll get them on the list.

• Do you know of a digital or print publication in your community that would like to publish a column from The Healthy Jew? Maybe you have a connection somewhere? Let me know by responding to this email.

• At this point all content here is free. Nevertheless, if you’re finding The Healthy Jew interesting or helpful, consider supporting my work with a paid subscription for only $5 a month, $50 a year, or $100 a year to become a founding member. It’s less the price of a piece of pizza pound of blueberries per week. You can even donate a subscription to someone who’d appreciate it. (Special cheers for everyone already supporting The Healthy Jew!)

Together we can reach thousands of people. Many lives will be saved. Countless others will find wellness with purpose.

Healthy Jews, unite!

One Suggestion: I already made more than one. While doing them, be aware that connecting with others for the purpose of seeking health is one of the best things you can do today, for yourself and the world around you.