Every New Beginning*

👩🏻‍💻 An important newsletter announcement. (Yes, I'm going to keep writing! Just in a new format.)

BnF, Arsenal Library, Ms. 3142 fol. 256.

Hello, dear readers—

For two years, it’s been my pleasure and privilege to write you weekly emails about Jewish history. I wouldn’t have dared to imagine what enthusiasm and interest there was out there about these (true) stories that add so much meaning to my life—and, apparently, to yours!

I’ve written to you (and made recordings) from my desk in Los Angeles, from various trips to New York, Chicago, Baltimore, and Israel, and now, from my desk in Modiin. It has been a joyful constant accompanying me wherever I found myself. Leonard Bernstein wrote in the book version of his Young People’s Concerts that music is not made up of notes, but of the intervals between them. Writing is like that too: it is the space between the author and the reader in which writing lives. You are integral to creating that space and its magic.

So it’s with deeply mixed feelings that I paused paid subscriptions earlier this month. I absolutely intend to keep writing for you, but I’m unable to do so with the frequency that I believe a paid subscription tier deserves.

I’m currently putting together a query package for publishers for my first book, tentatively titled The Worlds of the Rishonim, which I’m writing under the auspices of a Sefaria writing fellowship. It’s always been important to me to do original writing in every place I do it, meaning that the newsletter featured original content not in the book, and the book will feature entirely new writing, though it covers some similar topics. (The book is able to go more in depth and is fully annotated—more on that forthcoming. Some of the translation work does overlap.)

I’ve also been accepted to a second writing fellowship here in Israel, at Migdal Oz, which will support me in writing a halachic essay in Hebrew. This will hopefully allow me to publish the teshuva I’ve mentioned about the use of e-readers (e-ink and LED) on Shabbat in cases of tzorech.

I am doing a number of freelance writing projects as well. Lastly, but certainly not least, having finished my learning program, I’m interviewing for full-time positions.

So as hard as it is to make a change here, I had to admit to myself that a substantial weekly newsletter could not be done well with the time that I currently have. Here is what I’m planning to do instead.

I will send out a monthly, completely free newsletter. I’ll finish up the Maimonidean Controversies series (I still have to cover the 1306 controversy, which was the subject of my dissertation, so obviously I’m obsessed with it). After that, I’ll do single-topic issues rather than series, on a variety of topics in medieval and early modern Jewish history.

In addition to that, I’ll send periodic, brief book and writing updates. They’ll include short sneak-peeks, process notes and reader surveys, and reading recommendations. These are organized in a new section of the newsletter called Book Notes, and if you wish to opt out of these updates, you can do so by going to your account page (trmarvin.substack.com/account).

Archives, eBooks, and audio will remain accessible in perpetuity to all former paid subscribers. I’ve confirmed with Substack that you won’t lose access to them (and you will not be charged, of course). The last two eBooks are now available, too, History of Kabbala and Holiday Editions.

I will be adapting the archives here, and future newsletters, for publication on my website, which I’ve been slowly building up (more slowly than I would like)—it’s currently getting a complete redesign.

If there comes a time when I can feasibly return to writing weekly, I will be the first to jump at the opportunity. I’m looking forward to continuing, if in a a new format. Thank you for reading and supporting my work here, and see you soon in Montpellier in 1306.

Tamar

*I wanted to make the excuse that Seneca said it before Semisonic, but he didn’t (not really), so I’ll just go ahead and date myself.