The Soles of My Old Hiking Shoes

Comparing them to my new ones showed me how far we've come along together

Dear Healthy Jew,

On a visit back to the US back in 2019, I decided after days of research that the perfect hiking shoe for walking in Israel on a budget is the Merrel Moab 2. So I picked up my first pair there, because buying good shoes in Israel costs about double.

Now, I’m aware that everyone says to get new hiking shoes after a certain amount of miles or months, whichever comes first. But I’m both defiant and cheap, so I pounded through Israel with the same pair of hikers for half a decade.

Yet in recent months, I noticed that I wasn’t getting the same grip I used to. So I ordered my second pair of Moabs, this time the 3.

Last week, after the regular wartime delays, Amazon delivered my new shoes to the local toy store that private carriers use to deliver mail because Israel’s postal service hasn’t been upgraded since the Ottoman era. (There is even a bank-of-sorts attached to the postal service: in the 19th century the post office was the only public institution in most towns, so it did pretty much everything official.)

I was shocked when I glanced at the soles of the new shoes.

Instead of mostly flat rubber, a thick web of treading bulged out.

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Holding both pair of shoes together, I pondered this tangible result of walking along Israel’s trails, fields, and hills.

The heart of Jewish wellness, as I’ve shared with you many times, is being on the journey “from here to there,” moving through life with our bodies, minds, and souls.

Of course, the primary journey is the internal, spiritual journey toward God, the World to Come, and our true selves.

But for the metaphor to have any meaning, we must become walkers: people who purposefully walk and run to work, shop, pick up the kids, and simply to move through God’s world.

(You can learn much more about this in the Move Well section on Healthy Jew website, or, even better, in chapter 16 of my new book, Land of Health: Israel’s War for Wellness, which will soon be out from Menucha Publishers in a revised and expanded edition - and is already available on Amazon here.)

I try practicing what I preach, walking through life with several pairs of shoes:

• Walking shoes straddle the border between dress and casual, looking dignified enough not to stand out in formal society, but also strong and sturdy with good support and soles. (I recently finished wearing out a great pair of Abeo’s. Sorry but no link; they stopped making them.)

• Running shoes are for running, what we call the “to” of moving “from here to there.” These shoes are specially built for the full immersion into the journey of life. (I like the Asics GT-2000 series, although running shoes are a very individualized matter.)

• Hiking shoes are for deeply experiencing the twists and turns, the rises and falls, of life’s journeys, following the path ahead exactly as we find it.

My old Moab’s supported many of my journey throughout the Land of Israel. They (unfortunately) left tiny bits of degraded rubber stretching from the Golan to the Negev, their soles becoming a bit thinner with every hike.

They bear silent witness to every time I experienced how our precious land is the healthy body of the Jewish people.

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When I first set out with my Moab’s, I was alone with the land - not lonely, but still sometimes wishing I had a few friends to walk with together.

I’m so grateful that for the past 20 months I’m now walking through Israel together with thousands of Healthy Jews:

• Thank you for reading and appreciating my stories and messages of Jewish wellness from Israel’s natural world.

• Thank you for joining me and my Moab’s in person for foraging walks in the Land of Israel.

And thank you, my dear Moab 2’s. May you rest in peace as I continue journeying through life with my new Moab 3’s.

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Be well,

Rabbi Shmuel Chaim Naiman