Reviews for How to Be a Mentsh (And Not a Schmuck)

The average rating for How to Be a Mentsh (And Not a Schmuck) based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-01-19 00:00:00 Andrew Cavanagh I'm still not sure what makes Wex think he's a member of the Most Unpopular People on Earth. How does he judge Unpopularity? The number of people who don't like them? The number of people who are Unpopular? The depth of the Unpopularity? How is that quantitative? Anyway, I did like his take on the "Do not unto others" rule as compared to the "Do unto others." What if someone wanted to help you out of your depression by showing up with Barry Manilow's Greatest Hits even though they knew you were a classic Jazz fan? But that's what cheered them up. They were doing unto you what they liked, what had worked for them. Then he extrapolates it to what if your neighbor or your government thought that Jesus was all you needed to cheer you up? He sure made their lives better! Of course, this argument doesn't work on people who love Barry Manilow or Jesus. You have to point out something else that they wouldn't like. What if your friend decided that your fixation on Jesus and your inability to live up to his model was what was bringing you down? What if she came over with some Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens books and cheerfully began to deconstruct your religion? Her life improved beyond all knowing when she realized she didn't have to worry about an afterlife and that getting the most out of the here and now was more important. Would you really want some Born-Again Secular Humanist with a wild hair up her bum showing up at your front door? Jesus (and, gods know, Barry Manilow) are not vegetables to be pushed on children with unadventurous palates. Maybe you can just "be there" for your friend. Maybe they can find you a job if you need one, introduce you to some interesting people if you're lonely, ask you what you need or like if you're sick before bringing you a big basket of something that would send you into anaphylaxis. The rest is just midrash. Feh! I originally had trouble with the New Standardized Transcription of Yiddish Wex subscribes to, which is kosher these days, as opposed to the Leo Rosten Yiddish I was familiar with. Okay, I can see why it's nice to standardize and can understand wanting to separate the handful of Yiddish words from their German derivations - it just annoyed me.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-12-06 00:00:00 A.rahman Shaheen Alkuwari This book has lots of tips and ideal concepts on how to be a mentsh and not a smuck. The book uses phrases from the Talmud and the author translates them to humerus terms. The book shows how people have acted like shumcks and the author describes how people can change. In the final chapter the author describes how you can use what you've learned and transform the knowledge into a real life transformation if your already a shmuck. I made a text-to-self connection in the book on how some people act rudely to other people and how they can stop. I sometimes acted rudely to other people. I read how people could change the way they thought about others and the world. I give this book 5 stars because 1. of it's non related jewish humor. Also I thought that the way the author wrote the book could help turn a persons life around by taking small steps at a time. I also thought that the book could have had more jokes along the way and a little more dailouge. But other than that the book was really good.