The Book of Mensch

Hirhurim’s Gil Student has just published a review in the Jewish Press of Imrei Baruch (The Sayings of Baruch), a series of essays concerned with the ethical life that draws on biblical, rabbinic, and Hasidic texts.

The three volume set, by Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Baruch Simon, are in Hebrew and probably not on most of your reading lists, but I did want to note it because Gil alludes to a truth I can get behind:

If anyone has the right to write about the ethical life, it’s Rabbi Simon, a paradigmatic mensch who, when I sat in his class as a sixteen year-old a dozen years ago, displayed unquestionable Talmudic brilliance, but more importantly, an unparalleled capacity for kindness.

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