The Jesus Connection TO TRIUMPH OVER ANTI-SEMITISM by Leonard C. Yaseen (Crossroad: $9.95, paperback; 154 pp., illustrated)

“Is enlightened coexistence possible between Christians and Jews?” Leonard C. Yaseen asks this question in the opening sentence of a book that is almost equally divided between his argument against anti-Semitism and a section of photographs and capsule biographies of famous Jews. Yaseen thinks that it is, and that the key to this coexistence lies in understanding the Jewishness of Jesus Christ. Hence: The Jesus Connection.

The book’s main arguments are that Jesus was a Jew, and a devout one; that the Romans, not the Jews, killed Jesus; that the early Christian church departed from Jewish law mainly because circumcision was a painful obstacle to potential adult converts from the Gentile world (Jews, of course, were circumcised as infants), and that generation upon generation of Jews have endured a history of persecution at the hands of Christian groups because they were regarded as “Christ-killers.” Most of these things a thinking Christian already knows. But then, Christians do not exactly have a history of thoughtfulness in regard to the Jews.

Yaseen points this out quite graphically. He cites not only the Holocaust, the Spanish Inquisition, the pogroms of Eastern Europe, the infamous Dreyfus case of 19th-Century France (which he describes in fascinating details), and the defamatory statements only recently excised from both Catholic and Lutheran texts, but also the social suffering of the ordinary Jew in this country and elsewhere. Yaseen’s historical thesis is frequently interrupted by anecdotes of his own experience, such as the “runoff” election his Midwestern high school held for school “mayor,” after he, a Jew, had clearly won the office. Yaseen does not mince words: “Yet one all-pervasive attitude persists among individual Christians of every denomination, and that is the denigration of the Jews. . . .”

The author concludes that “. . . the religion founded in his (Jesus) name ignores his philosophy of love by debasing the Jews--his own people, his earliest followers.” This is ironic because “Jews were among Jesus’ most ardent supporters. His immediate followers considered themselves the most fortunate of Jews. They could participate in all Temple rites, never questioning their Jewishness; in addition, Jesus, their rabbi, was considered a messiah.”

Yaseen, founder of a New York consulting firm specializing in industrial economic geography, has clearly written his account of the Jewish Jesus for a broad, general reading audience. It offers nothing new in the higher reaches of biblical scholarship, but its attractive format and easily readable style make some of that scholarship accessible to the ordinary reader, and its sources are well-documented.

Aside from the all-inclusive nature of the generalizations about Christian prejudice quoted above, the most curious thing about “The Jesus Connection” is that on opening it, one finds oneself staring at photos of Tony Curtis, Jill St. John, Harry Houdini and Jonas Salk. One might suspect that the photos and rather didactic capsule biographies of famous Jews which make up the last 60 pages of the book are offered to entice readers to the more weighty thesis it presents, but Yaseen seems to regard them as part of his argument against anti-Semitism. “Did you know that the music and lyrics of “White Christmas,” “God Bless America” and “Easter Parade” were written by a Jew. . .?” the author asks. “When you have seen a film starring Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall or Paul Newman . . . did you realize that all these people are Jewish”?

While this reviewer would have preferred more history and less Hollywood, the book clearly has its heart in the right place. It comes well equipped with introductions by Billy Graham, Theodore Hesburgh and Marc Tannenbaum. Fundamentalist Christians may be put off by statements suggesting the possibility that revisions “exceedingly critical of the Jews” were added to original New Testament texts in the first three centuries of Christianity, but if the book finds its way to the readers for whom it was intended, it could do a great deal of good.