Students of American culture have often commented on the prominent role Jews played in the leadership of the countercultural movements of the '60s and '70s. In particular, Jews played leading roles in establishing "alternative" religious movements such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sufism. As a participant-observer in some of these movements, I assumed that the impetus behind them was part and parcel of the '60s mindset, a mindset fueled by political unrest, psychedelics, and the sexual revolution. But to my surprise, and the surprise of other historians of American religious movements, it is now clear that the roots of the "turn toward the East" of American spiritual seekers didn’t start in the sixties, but rather at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century.