Becoming a Mensch: Timeless Talmudic Ethics for Everyone

This ’user’s guide’ to becoming a better person takes readers through a process of personal growth by means of modern-day vignettes that draw upon the Talmud’s ancient wisdom. Readers of any or no faith learn what it takes to become a ’mensch’ -- a decent and honorable human being.

Ronald Pies, M.D. is a professor of psychiatry and lecturer on bioethics and humanities at SUNY Upstate Medical University and professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine. Pies is author of Everything Has Two Handles: The Stoic’s Guide to the Art of Living (Hamilton Books), The Ethics of the Sages (Rowman & Littlefield), several psychiatry textbooks, a collection of short stories, Zimmerman’s Tefillin, and a collection of poems, Creeping Thyme. He lives outside Boston and pursues independent studies in Judaic ethics.