Who is Saul Alinsky, and why is Newt Gingrich saying those terrible things about him?
In the recent Republican primaries, Gingrich has really been putting down the previously not-well-known father of all community organizers, even sneeringly referring to the president as a "Saul Alinsky radical."
So who is Alinsky? I remembered from a college sociology class that Alinsky was a grassroots hero of the 1960's, and more recently had heard more about him because President Obama was once a community organizer too.
But why is Gingrich bothering? It couldn't be because Alinsky was a community organizer; both Republican pundits and candidates belittle them regularly. Was it because Alinsky's work helped to empower poor Americans? I thought that's what Gingrich is about: Empowerment over entitlement. Or maybe it's just because of the sound of Alinsky's name. To ears tuned a certain way, maybe it sounds sort of Pinko and Jewish too.
Alinsky was Jewish. He grew up in a traditional Jewish home in Chicago. And though early on he left his Jewish upbringing behind, he always identified as being a Jew. According to a 1972 Playboy interview, a rabbi once told Alinsky a quote from Rabbi Hillel that stayed with him throughout his life, "Where there are no men, be thou a man."
He was not a communist, nor a joiner of anything, seemingly practicing the dogma of Marx, that is, Groucho Marx, who has often been quoted as saying, "I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member."
Though Alinsky died in 1972, in the year before his death, he published a book that crystallized many of his experiences in community organizing into a how-to book of grass roots organization and empowerment, "Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals."
Although originally aimed at audiences on the left, the organizing handbook which has chapters on communication, tactics, and a section on compromise (which Alinsky thinks is a beautiful word) is now being read by those on the right as well.
According to a piece in the Wall Street Journal, "Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, a Republican, gives copies of Mr. Alinsky's book "Rules for Radicals" to tea-party leaders."
Newt's comments come at a good time. Though the book, over 40 years later, remains in print, Alinsky's ideas and tactics of challenging political power have become so widely used on the political battlefield, especially between community groups and city governments, that his name, I think, was in danger of being forgotten. So thanks Newt. It's a mitzvah to give honor to a teacher, even if they are not your own.
Curious about the source of all the hot air, I recently picked up Alinsky's book and read it (The library copy had only been checked out once between 1998 and 2010).
First off, Alinsky, born in 1909, often comes across like a cranky Jewish uncle who grew up in a co-op: he is blunt, pragmatic, filled with advice that sometimes is gross, and has a humorous charm about him, even when he is insulting someone. In today's anything goes cable newsphere though, Bill Maher seems more jarring, and Stephen Colbert more devious.
In Jewish terms, Alinsky seems an individual so committed to the pursuit of justice; he would not need to hear the word twice in Deuteronomy to get the point.
I didn't have to read far to find what all the fuss was about. The book begins:
"What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away."
That's what has Gingrich in twitches. Alisnky, a Jewish lefty Machiavelli, through studying his opposition, and carefully picking his battles, rallied the "have nots" against the "haves," and sometimes it worked.
Go Alinsky! After spending an evening with "Rules for Radicals" I could see the method to your madness. I hope they continue shouting your name; maybe more of the have-nots, the have-a-littles, and even some of the halves will hear it.
Edmon J. Rodman has written about making his own matzah for JTA, Jewish love music for the Jerusalem Post, yiddisheh legerdemain for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, a Bernie Madoff Halloween mask for the Forward, and what really gets stuck in the La Brea Tar Pits for the Los Angeles Times. He has edited several Jewish population studies, and is one of the founders of the Movable Minyan, an over twenty-year-old chavura-size, independent congregation. He once designed a pop-up seder plate.In 2011 Rodman received a First Place Simon Rockower Award for "Excellence in Feature Writing" from the American Jewish Press Association."
the previously not-well-known father of all community organizers, even sneeringly referring to the president as a "Saul Alinsky radical." 
