"How the Great Religions Began" review

I like the coexist bumper stickers. I'm interested in different faiths. Hence, when I saw Joeseph Gaer's How the Great Religions Began in a thrift store, I bought it.

I was hoping the book would talk about the circumstances in parts of the world that would lead to certain religions originating in those specific regions - the land, conditions, political situations. This book wasn't that deep. However it did refer to how the caste system under Hinduism led to Buddhism and how the the oppression of Jews under the Roman Empire raised hopes for a messiah and gave birth to Christianity.

Gaer's book is basic, a little naive and innocent, respectful and for the time it was written in, quite forward. How the Great Religions Began was written in the 1920s - a time when Christianity was almost the only religion in the United States and Judaism was was a U.S. sub-culture, primarily practiced among Eastern European immigrants on the East Coast.

Religious bigotry in this country was directed at Jews and Catholics. Islam, while it may have existed here since before the Mayflower, by way of the slave trade, was still too minuscule to attract notice. Islamophobia wasn't invented yet in the United States. Of course it's here now in a big way, which makes Gaer's book - while of average scholarly significance - amazingly forward in terms of subject matter and acceptance.

In today's flat, small earth, we have the world and all its cultures accessible at our fingertips. Ninety years ago, it was rare that we would acknowledge an Eastern world existed in history, rarer still for it to be regarded with respect, equal to that of Western culture. Gaer did this, giving space and consideration to such far Eastern religions as Jainism, Confucianism, Taoism and Shintoism.

This isn't to say the book isn't dated. Some of the language, while not disrespectful, may sound that way today. The opening of the chapter on Judaism, while making a point about the diversity within the culture, sounds laughably stereotypical and un-PC today.

There are a few Jews in Abyssinia as dark as any man in that land.
There are a few Jews in China, who like the Chinese, are yellow-skinned and their eyes are almond-shaped and slanted.
There are Jews in Italy, swarthy and black-eyed.
There are Jews in Northern Russia, Canada, Sweden and Norway with blonde hair, white skins and greenish grey eyes.
And there are Jews in Denmark, Germany and Ireland who are red-haired and blue-eyed.
There are short, dark-haired Jews in warmer climates.
There are tall, light-skinned Jews in colder countries.
There are the slender daughters of Zion in Palestine, and there are the fat Jewesses in Tunis and Morocco.

The passage is painful to  read, but while it's unpalatable to modern ears, it is a reflection of the naivete' of the times. It is unlikely that Gaer was intentionally being disrespectful to any culture, and he definitely was not expressing anti-semitism. Gaer may have been marveling at the reach of his own culture.

Originally, Joseph Fisherman, he was born Jewish in Yedinitz, Russia in 1897. A lecturer in contemporary literature at UC Berkeley, he held several positions in the federal government over the years, and in 1958, he became founder and director of the Jewish Heritage Foundation in Beverly Hills. He also wrote a book called Our Jewish Heritage.

The strength of the book is Gaer's openness to world religions at a time when the Western world was not that culturally open. He can be forgiven for language that wouldn't go down well today.

Weaknesses in the book include Gaer's writing style, which sometimes sounds condescending. Not toward different cultures, but to the reader. He writes as if he's talking to a child.

Also, the book contains no bibliography or end notes, taking away from any historical value it might otherwise have. Historically, the book is accurate, but basic and without a lot of depth. A better introduction to comparative religion would be Huston Smith's 1958 book, The Religions of Man.

When reading Gaer's book, however, one can take delight in the similarities between the diverse religions: Buddha's Sermon at Benares and Jesus's Sermon on the Mount. Buddha's Four Noble Truths, Eight-fold Path, Confucios's Five Constant Virtues and Christ's Beatitudes. It was interesting to read about how Zoroastrianism influenced Judaism.

Despite Gaer's flaws, there is something fundamentally decent in his naivete' that one finds near the end of the book. In his belief that monotheism is the apex of religious thought, he writes:

The believer in One God (or Monotheist as he is called) realizes that all of mankind must be regarded as one large family, different as may be the color of people's skins, the words of their speech, or the manner of their daily lives...
The true Monotheist realizes that whatever one race does affects all other races; whatever one nation does affects all other nations; whatever one person does affects all other people - for good or for evil.
And from this the true Monotheist is forced to conclude that only what is good for mankind at large is good for the individual. And what is bad for mankind is bad for the individual in the long run.
This is what is meant by the Brotherhood of Man that all the great religions of today preach.
And through this Brotherhood of Man can be attained not through hatred, but love; not through strife, but cooperation; not through war but peace.

Oh, if it were so.