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Marc Kaminsky began his paper by noting that his own self-development entailed the straddling of two cultures, that of Ashkenazy tradition and American Bronx. The American culture with its emphasis on individualism prevented Kaminsky, he said, from recognizing the importance of this concept, mentsh, which was so much a part of his daily life through his Yiddish-speaking parents and grandparents. This single word mentsh conveys both what it means to be a person as well as the approved code of ethical conduct. The latter derived from the Halakah, or religious law describing what is required to be a Jew. This code, which includes the value of collective identity that was reinforced by group experiences in Eastern Europe, stands in contrast to American ideology about individual identity.
When Kaminsky began inquiry into the nature of discourse, he saw how the concept mentsh fulfilled the need for signifying development into personhood and furtherance of culture. This is an example of Horney's explication of self as inextricably formed by culture context as well as by individual experience.
Kaminsky was further aided some years later by Alan Roland's (1988) work, In Search of Self in India and Japan. Roland's work critiqued the view that human nature is everywhere the same. Kaminsky applied Roland's thesis to the immigrant experience of Eastern European Jews who needed to reconcile two antagonistic ideas of personhood. What was normative in Europe became pathological in America.
The interpretation of mentsh and its code of ethics replicates Roland's point that it is impossible to separate culture from person. Kaminsky distilled three primary definitions from the many uses of the word mentsh. First, mentsh signifies a good person in the sense of taking responsibility and showing decency to others. This ethical code of conduct extended to one's thoughts inasmuch as the Halakah forbade even alien thoughts. Second, mentshen, in the plural, pertained to the community in which on