User:Slrubenstein
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Hi. I used to believe I had nothing to say about myself beyond what I contribute to articles, which I hope reflects my knowledge and interests but not my biases, and to talk pages, in which I try to be honest about my biases, especially if someone asks. I still think that as a Wikipedian I am best judged by my work on Wikipedia, although those who now care to, may judge me by what I read and what I watch. Of course, I am always willing to answer a question if you ask me.
Anyway, I now believe I can do what so many other Wikipedians have done on their user pages: introduce myself:
Everyone has one question. For the Little Prince, the question is whether his drawing #1 frightened them. If they answer "Why should I be frightened of a hat?" he knew that they understand nothing.
Here is my question:
- Do you believe that ...
- (CHOOSE ONE: Michaelangelo's ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or statue of David, the Dome of the Rock, The Gilgamesh Epic, the Iliad, Shakespeare's Hamlet, Diderot's Jacques the Fatalist, Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn", Arnold's Dover Beach, Mellville's Moby-Dick, Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus, Forster's A Passage to India, Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge, Greene's The End of the Affair, Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince, Fowles's The Magus, Le Guin's Earthsea trilogy (see [1], [2], [3]), Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians, Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony or Ninth symphony, Ellington and Coltrane's Duke Ellington & John Coltrane, and for the truly well-educated, Springsteen's "Darkness on the Edge of Town", and Elvis Costello's "Alison")
- ...expresses some great truth?
If the person answers yes, I know they will understand why the fact that I think the Bible was written by human beings and that many parts of it are not historically accurate does not mean that I think it a fraud or an anachronism, nor does it mean that I am a blaspheming heretic, but on the contrary that I believe it to be a divinely profound and truthful work. And if the person answers yes, they will understand why as a scientist I think that research with living people, the aim of which is to understand how they make meaning of their lives and their world — something that cannot be measured and subjected to statistical analysis, and research that is not reproducible — is nevertheless among the most significant and valuable research one can conduct and learn from.
If the person answers "no," I know that they understand nothing.
I think of my question whenever I read this passage from Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum:
- Idiot. Above her head was the only stable place in the cosmos, the only refuge from the damnation of the panta rei, and she guessed it was the Pendulum's business, not hers. A moment later the couple went off — he, trained on some textbook that had blunted his capacity for wonder, she, inert and insensitive to the thrill of the infinite, both oblivious of the awesomeness of their encounter — their first and last encounter — with the One, the Ein-Sof, the Ineffable. How could you fail to kneel down before this altar of certitude?
There is one other question I think is rather important (actually, I suspect "my one question" is really a corollary of this question, or this question is just a cruder version of "my one question"):
- Do you believe that a text has only one true meaning, generally that intended by the author of the text?
If you answer "yes," you are, by my definition, a fundamentalist, whether the text you are thinking of is The Bible, The Communist Manifesto, Euclid's Elements, Moby-Dick, or something else. If this be the case, sooner or later you and I will find it very hard to understand each other.
Contents |
[edit] Comments or Questions for me
Since I have been here people have posted questions and comments to my user page and talk page indisriminately. I have archived all of this material on this page. But if you wish to make a comment, please do so here
The rest of this page is somewhat self-indulgent
[edit] Some of my favorite pages
Since I started contributing to Wikipedia I have edited a number of pages. However, there are a few where I am especially proud of the research I did in order to contribute to the article:
Cultural and historical background of Jesus
[edit] Some of my favorite books and poems
[edit] Literature
- Waiting for the Barbarians
- Jacques the Fatalist
- Foucault's Pendulum
- Sonnets to Orpheus
Unknown
- The Gilgamesh Epic trans. by Herbert Mason
Various Authors
[edit] Jewish
- A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (1997) The University of California Press ISBN 0520212142
- God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (1976) Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN 0374513317
- The Prophets (2001) Perennial Classics ISBN 0060936991
Max Kadushin
- The Rabbinic Mind (2001) Global Publications at SUNY Binghampton University ISBN 1586840940
- The Religion of Israel: From Its Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile (1972) Schocken ISBN 0805203648
- The Star of Redemption (2005) University of Wisconsin Press ISBN 0299207242
Leo W. Schwarz, editor
- Great Ages and Ideas of the Jewish People (1977) Modern Library ISBN 039460413X
[edit] Anthropology
[edit] For the Neophyte
- Patterns of Culture (1989) Mariner Books ISBN 0395500885
- Our Kind: Who We Are, Where We Came From, Where We Are Going (1990) Perennial ISBN 0060919906
- Stranger and Friend (1966) W.W. Norton & Company ISBN 0393004104
- Europe and the People Without History (1997) University of California Press ISBN 0520048989
[edit] For the Veteran
- Naven (1958) Stanford University Press ISBN 0804705208
- Race, Language, Culture (1940) The University of Chicago Press ISBN 0226062414
Alan Tormaid Campbell
- To Square with Genesis: Causal Stastements and Shamanic Ideas in Wayãpí(1989) The University of Iowa Press ISBN 0877452482
Terrence Deacon
- The Symbolic Species: The Coevolution of Language and the Brain (1998) W. W. Norton & Company ISBN 0393317544
Johannes Fabian
- Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object (2002) Columbia University Press ISBN 0231125771
- The Anti-Politics Machine: "Development," Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (1994) University of Minnesota Press ISBN 0816624372
William H. Fisher
- Rain Forest Exchanges: Industry and Community on an Amazonian Frontier (200) Smithsonian Books ISBN 1560989831
- Village on the Border: A Social Study of Religion, Politics and Football in a North Wales Community (1989) Waveland Press ISBN 0881334855
Morton H. Fried
- The Evolution of Political Society: An Essay in Political Anthropology (1967) Random House
- The Notion of Tribe (1975), Cummings ISBN 0846515482
Judith Friedlander
- Being Indian in Hueyapan: A Study of Forced Identity in Contemporary Mexico (1975) Bedford/St Martins ISBN 0312073151
Thomas Gregor
- The Mehinaku: The Dream of Daily Life in a Brazilian Indian Village (1980), University Of Chicago Press ISBN 0226307468
Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar
- Laboratory Life (1986), Princeton University Press ISBN 069102832X
- Tristes Tropiques (1992) Penguin Books ISBN 0140165622
- The Dialectics of Social Life (1971) George Allen and Unwin ISBN 0043010490
Yolanda and Robert F. Murphy
- Women of the Forest (1985) Columbia University Press ISBN 0231060890
- Culture and Practical Reason (1978) The University of Chicago Press ISBN 0226733610
Gerald M. Sider
- Lumbee Indian Histories: Race, Ethnicity, and Indian Identity in the Southern United States (1994) Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521466695
- Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America (1983), University of North Carolina Press ISBN 0807841064
- Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing (1991) University Of Chicago Press ISBN 0226790134
- The Nervous System (1991) Routledge ISBN 0415904455
- Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses (1992) Routledge ISBN 0415906873
- Defacement: Public Secrecy and the Labor of the Negative (1999) Stanford University Press ISBN 0804732000
D. Lawrence Wieder
- Language and social reality: The case of telling the convict code (1974) Mouton ASIN B0006C9O5E
- Learning to Labor (1981) Columbia University Press ISBN 0231053576
[edit] Social Sciences and the Humanities
Jessica Benjamin
- The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination (1988) Pantheon Bools ISBN 0394757303
- Ways of Seeing (1995) Penguin Books ISBN 0140135154
- All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (1988) Penguin Books ISBN 0140109625
- I and Thou (1971) Free Press ISBN 0684717255
Nicholas Cook
- Music: A Very Short Introduction (2000) Oxford University Press ISBN 0192853821
Jonathan Culler
- On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism After Structuralism (1983) Cornell University Press ISBN 0801492017
- The Origin of Species (2004) Castle Books ISBN 0785819118
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari
- Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1983) University of Minnesota Press ISBN 0816612250
- Of Grammatology (1998) Johns Hopkins University Press ISBN 0801858305
- Dissemination (1983) University of Chicago Press ISBN 0226143341
- The Prophet Armed: Trotsky 1879-1921 (2003) Verso ISBN 1859844413
- The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky 1921-1929 (2003) Verso ISBN 1859844464
- The Prophet Outcast: Trotsky 1929-1940 (2003) Verso ISBN 1859844510
- The Wretched of the Earth (1965) Grove Press ISBN 0802150837
- Discipline & Punish : The Birth of the Prison (1995) Vintage ISBN 0679752552
- The History of Sexuality : An Introduction (History of Sexuality) (1990) Vintage ISBN 0679724699
- Pedagogy of the Oppressed (2000) Continuum International Publishing Group ISBN 0826412769
- Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (1997) Touchstone ISBN ISBN 0684829460
- Three Case Histories (1996) Touchstone ISBN 0684829452
- The Interpretation of Dreams (1980) Avon ISBN 0380010003
- Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (2000) Basic Books ISBN 0465097081
- Central Problems in Social Theory (1979) University of California Press ISBN 0520039750
- The Best and the Brightest (1993) Ballentine Books ISBN 0449908704
- Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village (1997) University of California Press ISBN 0520210409
- We Have Never Been Modern (1993) Harvard University Press ISBN 0674948394
Jonathan Lee
- Jacques Lacan (1991) University of Massachusetts Press ISBN 0870237373
- Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1963) International Publishers ISBN 0717800563
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
- The German Ideology: Including Thesis on Feuerbach (1998) ISBN 1573922587
Louis Menand
- The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America (2002) Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN 0374528497
James Miller
- The Passion of Michel Foucault (2000) Harvard University Press ISBN 0674001575
- Psychoanalysis and Feminism: A Radical Reassessment of Freudian Psychoanalysis (2000) Basic Books ISBN 0465046088
Ray Monk
- Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (1991) Penguin Books ISBN 0140159959
- Beyond Good and Evil (1989) Vintage ISBN 0679724656
- The Genealogy of Morals (2003) Dover ISBN 0486426912
Stephen C. Pepper
- World Hypotheses: a Study in Evidence (1961) University of California Press ISBN 0520009940
[edit] Forty of my favorite movies
- The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (Terry Gilliam)
- Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola)
- The Big Country (William Wyler)
- Blazing Saddles (Mel Brooks)
- Blue Velvet (David Lynch)
- The Bridge on the River Kwai (David Lean)
- Biruma no Tategoto (The Burmese Harp) (Kon Ichikawa)
- Cabaret (Bob Fosse)
- City Lights (Charlie Chaplin)
- Cop Land (James Mangold)
- Cradle Will Rock (Tim Robbins)
- Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (The Crime of Monsieur Lange) (Jean Renoir)
- Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick)
- Dr. Zhivago (David Lean)
- La Dolce Vita (The Sweet Life) (Federico Fellini)
- 8½ (Federico Fellini)
- Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise) (Marcel Carne)
- The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola)
- The Graduate (Mike Nichols)
- Ikiru (To Live) (Akira Kurosawa)
- Last Tango in Paris (Bernardo Bertolucci)
- The Last Temptation of Christ (Martin Scorcese)
- Little Big Man (Arthur Penn)
- The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer)
- Mary Poppins (Robert Stevenson)
- Moonstruck (Norman Jewison)
- North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock)
- Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone)
- Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) (Jacques Demy)
- Pecker (John Waters)
- Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock)
- Salvador (Oliver Stone)
- The Sixth Sense (M. Night Shyamalan)
- To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan)
- Tom Jones (Tony Richardson)
- Twelve Angry Men (Sidney Lumet)
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick)
- I Vitelloni (The Yearlings) (Federico Fellini)
- Young Frankenstein (Mel Brooks)
- Z (Costa-Gavras)
[edit] Movies I have a soft spot for
- Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (Aguirre, Wrath of God) Werner Herzog
- Amarcord (I Remember) (Federico Fellini)
- The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler)
- Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee)
- Die Hard (John McTiernan)
- Excalibur (John Boorman)
- Lili (Charles Walters)
- The Lion in Winter (Anthony Harvey)
- The Natural (Barry Levinson)
- Network (Sidney Lumet)
- The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor)
- The Pianist (Roman Polanski)
- Raging Bull (the cure to any chick-flick) (Martin Scorcese)
- Searching for Bobby Fischer (Steven Zaillian)
- Secrets & Lies (Mike Leigh)
- Shane (George Stevens)
- Star Wars (George Lucas)
- A Streetcar Named Desire (Elia Kazan)
- The Sweet Hereafter (Atom Egoyan)
- Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood)
- West Side Story (Robert Wise, Jerome Robbins)
- The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah)
- The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming)
[edit] "Great" movies I hate
- Dances With Wolves (Kevin Costner)
- E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (Steven Speilberg)
- Gone With the Wind (Victor Fleming)
- Intolerance (D.W. Griffith)
- On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan)
[edit] The answers to two common questions
[edit] Archives
[edit] The Closet
[edit] My Sandbox
User:Slrubenstein/Sandbox User:Slrubenstein/Jewish authorities
I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:
| Multi-licensed with the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License versions 1.0 and 2.0 | ||
| I agree to multi-license my text contributions, unless otherwise stated, under the GFDL and the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license version 1.0 and version 2.0. Please be aware that other contributors might not do the same, so if you want to use my contributions under the Creative Commons terms, please check the CC dual-license and Multi-licensing guides. | ||
