Special Announcement: New Features Coming!
🥳 I'm excited to launch paid subscriptions as well as new free features this month. The main newsletter will remain, as ever, free to all.
I want to begin with a note of gratitude to all who have pledged subscriptions while I got the newsletter up and running. I am floored by your support and generosity. I love this stuff and I love sharing it with you all. I wish I could devote more time to writing and content creation and replying to your wonderful comments and emails, and I hope that adding on a paid tier will allow me to do that. (Right now, I write furiously all day on Sundays.) But don’t worry, if you’re not up for another subscription right now, I have some fun stuff planned for everyone.
Paid Subscriptions Launching May 18!
As a paid subscriber, you’ll receive a special monthly newsletter devoted to upcoming holidays explored through Jewish history. You’ll also have access to the complete newsletter archive. The entire first series of “Coffee with the Rishonim” will remain free, but after this series concludes, further archives will be reserved for paid members.
In addition, subscribers will receive an eBook version of each newsletter series, specially formatted for comfortable reading in a number of different file types including Kindle, ePub, and pdf. These eBooks will not otherwise be available for purchase, although I am working on a proposal for a (print) Rishonim book (!!!), so stay tuned for news about that.
You’ll also unlock audio versions of the newsletter that can be listened to like a podcast. I’ve added audio for the last several newsletters, if you’d like to go back and see what they’re like. Here’s a short intro to audio on Substack which you can try out with a click below:
A newsletter comes out to about 7 to 10 minutes in length.
I’ll send out another announcement when everything is live with further details about pricing, tiers, and the fun stuff you get.
New Free Features
Chat
I’m looking forward to talking to you all more directly over the new subscriber chat functionality offered by Substack. I wrote in my first thread: “I'm trying out the chat feature here on Substack. I'm hoping this will be a way to have conversations, ask questions, and share ideas about Jewish history topics. Also to connect and be nerdy humans together.” I’ve already gotten lots of great questions and ideas for future posts over there! It’s sort of like a WhatsApp group, but on the Substack app, now available for both iOS and Android (and web).
You can jump into my thread to say hi right from here:
Notes
Another promising new feature is Substack Notes, which is a platform for sharing short thoughts, similar to Twitter. (I’m still going to post my weekly thread and otherwise be active on Twitter.) I’m hoping to use it to share works-in-progress, behind-the-scenes, ideas, and great content I find out there in the world.
Here’s my first Note:
How to join
Head to substack.com/notes or find the “Notes” tab in the Substack app. As a subscriber to Stories from Jewish History, you’ll automatically see my notes. Here’s what the icon looks like in the app:
Thank you all so much for your enthusiasm, engagement, and support of my work. It means the world to me. I’m just so happy that the knowledge I’ve been privileged to acquire gets to come alive and make a contribution to your learning.
Am I the first!? Hi!