Vi bringer den smukke mindehøjtidelighed for Phil Rubinstein, som fandt sted i New Jersey, USA, den 4. oktober 2020. Han var et enestående og beskedent menneske og omsorgsfuld leder, med stor indsigt i videnskab, filosofi, historie, økonomi og politik.
Nogle af jer kendte Phil fra møder i Danmark, når han var på besøg i sin hustru Lenis hjemmeland.
Afskrifter af mindetaler af Helga Zepp-LaRouche og Harley Schlanger findes nedenunder.
Her er to LaRouchePAC-film, som Phil medvirkede i.
The Extraordinary Genius of Albert Einstein:
1932: A True History of the United States
Helga Zepp-LaRouche Remarks at the Phil Rubinstein Memorial October 4, 2020
Dear Leni, dear friends of Phil Rubinstein:
We are gathering here today to honor our great companion, teacher, and friend, Phil Rubinstein. I can’t help but think that at a moment when the whole human civilization is in such a fragile condition, that the world must suffer the loss of such an exceptional person like Phil, who was one of the very few people who had a deep understanding about the scientific ideas of Lyn, which are so crucial for the world to overcome its present situation.
Lyn always said to me that he thought that Phil was completely integral. He was one of the most reliable persons; he would always try to get at the essence of the scientific ideas, and making them intelligible for everybody. He had no respect for academic formalism or academic personas. He was actually a kind of Socrates, who made it his life’s vocation to teach and educate the youth. His writings are very important, but even more important was the direct impact he had on hundreds, and over the decades, thousands of people whom he introduced to scientific ideas which would change their lives, and to Lyn’s method of thinking. He was always concerned to look for breakthroughs in real science, and he would not get stuck in questions of mathematics or molecular biology, where science has been stuck for a very long time.
Phil made it his mission to communicate effectively the knowability of Lyn’s idea, that creativity per se is the essence and the substance of the universe, because the human mind is not outside the universe, but it is the most developed part of that universe. Phil also had a very clear identity and understanding of the role of imagination in scientific breakthrough. That is because he had no fear of formalism; and especially in the foundation of the organization in the 1970s, he had an absolutely crucial role. It is not an accident that there are still so many people from the original Buffalo local in the organization. He had no respect for scientific bluster, which some people at that time clearly had, and also not for the effort to get lower-level influence. It soon would turn out that those people didn’t have the strength to stay within the organization.
Phil played an absolutely crucial role also in the recruitment of the LYM — the LaRouche Youth Movement — on the West Coast and beyond. Phil was, and everybody has funny stories about that, was an absolute expert in the animal kingdom, and he knew the behaviors of many different animals very much in detail. He knew what skills these animals had, but he also never tired of emphasizing that there is a fundamental difference between all the animal species and the human mind. From the same standpoint, he rejected the idea that it would be possible at any moment that artificial intelligence or computers would bypass human creativity.
If you read the beautiful Festschrift which was pulled together for this occasion of the memorial, and actually to pay tribute to Phil’s impact on people, you can actually see how much impact he had on people and how much love he caused them to experience for him and for humanity. Phil represented the kind of leadership where he was leading through inspiration, and never emphasizing his rank or his importance. Everybody who knew Phil was convinced and spoke of the absolute deep goodness of his character, the gentleness of his soul. He was incapable of any nastiness. He had a very genial absence of any ego. He was humble in his manners, yet very bold in his intellect.
Together with Leni, they had a very exceptional relationship and marriage. There are many marriages which are good or even excellent, but there are those where the couple is becoming almost one because they are becoming so complementary in the way they think. That is for sure the case about Leni and Phil; that was known around the world from Taiwan to Denmark, from the North to the South. I could name a couple of such extraordinary couples, but without doing that, I want to already put Phil and Leni on such a short list.
It is very clear that we cannot replace Phil, but we can honor his contribution to the LaRouche movement and mankind by striving for scientific and artistic breakthroughs, and reach out to the many young minds around the world with the solemn commitment to pull back the human species from the abyss where it finds itself at this moment.
We will miss you, Phil, but you will always be alive in our fight.
Harley Schlanger Eulogy for Phil Rubinstein
Oct. 5 (EIRNS) — Eulogy for Phil Rubinstein Memorial Event, by Harley Schlanger, October 4, 2020
Dear Leni, Richard, Dear Friends and Colleagues,
When I think of Phil Rubinstein, our beloved colleague and mentor, friend and counsellor, two Yiddish words keep coming to mind; two words with both a simple meaning when applied to everyday life, but words which also contain within them a shadow of the Infinite.
These two words are TSOURIS and NACHES.
The simple definition of Tsouris is the pain and suffering one experiences in daily life, the troubles, the woes, the grief and aggravation which are often our everyday companion. Tsouris is experienced when we have setbacks, as when our efforts to find solutions to difficult problems are dashed, or when we or others fail to live up to our expectations, or, as today, when we are confronted with the loss of a loved one.
Naches is defined as proud pleasure, or special joy, such as that which accompanies seeing the first glint of understanding in the eyes of a baby, when watching a child learning to read, or play a musical instrument, as there is a glimpse in that moment of a future potential which warms the heart of any sentient adult.
In everyday life, these two emotional states, which seem to be such opposites, often coexist. We learned this from Sholem Aleichem, who provided profound insights into the human condition, through the eyes of his poor dairyman, Tevye. Tevye had seven daughters: for him, this was, on the one hand, a blessing, a source of Naches, as he took delight as he watched them grow; but, on the other hand, it was a source of Tsouris, for as they grew, he felt helpless when they were confronted by problems, many of which were related to being the daughters of a poor dairyman. An additional source of Tsouris was that he must provide seven dowries, if he wished to see them properly married — “Oy”, one can hear him sigh, from the rickety milk wagon pulled by his lame horse, through the rutted roads of the Russian shtetl of Yehupetz, “what’s a Mensch to do?” followed by a wistful, “Ah, but such is life.”
With Phil, these moments of Tsouris in everyday life involved such perplexing problems as how can we pay the office rent and taxes, and still have enough money to feed the 50 or so youth we have recruited? And Naches resulted when he saw those 50 or so youth recruit another 50 or more — of course, bringing with them, future Tsouris.
But with Phil, the higher meaning of these two concepts was ever-present in his search for the meaning of human existence, which was often the real subject of his classes and briefings. Both contain within them a deep longing for a better world, even as we know that such a world will still contain hardships and even bitter disappointments. But that world is also one which can be changed by human creativity.
To me, it is clear that Phil discovered that there is both Tsouris and Naches in his life-long investigation of the struggle of humans to advance from a simple hunting and gathering society, to our complex world today, a history which includes great tragedies, of awful suffering, many of which could have been avoided, had wisdom prevailed; as well as great universal triumphs, such as the defeat of evil by the allies, under FDR’s leadership, which ended the Second World War, or the footsteps left by American astronauts in the dust on the Moon.
Phil was fascinated by the full scope of the three phase spaces that we know of — the non-living, the living, and the noetic — and by the dynamic interaction between them. His hunger for discovery was insatiable, to the last days of his life. And he took great pleasure in sharing with others what he had learned, not just as presenting “facts” or “plausible explanations” of historic events or scientific discoveries, but in providing insights into the workings of his mind, as he struggled to get to the inner truths behind these developments. Even as we burst into laughter as he described such things as the war between “eternal enemies” — the hyenas and the lions — and mocked the irony that Californians would turn to an ego-driven Austrian bodybuilder to address a $30 billion budget deficit — we marvelled at his tenacity in investigating the nature of the concept of the Infinite, his rigor in tackling the difficulties inherent in Gödel’s Proof, or Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, and his patient willingness to provide others with the method of his own discoveries. He didn’t just teach us about Socrates, but provided us with a living example of the Socratic method.
In this process, even as we sometimes had to struggle to grasp the ideas he was presenting, we were moved by his humble nature, and his generosity of spirit. Many have shared their stories of watching Phil at a cadre school, polemically challenging young people long after midnight, by the dying embers of a bonfire in the mountains, passionately demonstrating his commitment to their development.
As in the example of his mentor, Lyndon LaRouche, Phil cared little for the societal norms that defined success. Lyn often teased Phil, referring to him as a “Luft-Mensch,” a type of Jewish scholar who was too thin, as he was too poor to eat, but lived on the air he breathed.
As in the case of Lyn, Phil long ago entered the sacred realm of the Simultaneity of Eternity. If one had an opportunity to spend time with him, you found yourself transported, if only momentarily, into the domain of infinite possibility. For in Phil, as in the case of Lyn, one experienced a profound appreciation for the Leibnizian concept, that “this is the best of all possible worlds” — this was not a slogan, but a physical, mental and emotional reality, which included a profound challenge to each of us, to make ourselves the best of all possible examples for those who work with us today, and those who will come after us.
It is in this realm of the infinite expanse of time and space, where Phil now dwells. We saw that, even in his struggles with his health in recent years, he gave us everything he had. Along with his Leni, for whom he had an infinite love, he touched many of us, making us better people, as he prepared us to deal with the moments of Tsouris and Naches we will encounter in our lives. I miss you terribly, Phil, but your living presence will remain an inspiration to me, and I know, for many others.
And for that, we shall be eternally, and infinitely, grateful.
