Download or read book Despair and Deliverance written by Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1992-01-01 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author examines the varieties of religious and secular salvation that have recently appeared in Israel as evidence for Israelis' willingness to embrace private salvation in the face of immense cultural upheavals. Drawing on interviews, field observations, clinical data, and media reports collected over ten years, he surveys four roads to private salvation: the return to Judaism, new religions (sects or cults), psychotherapy movements such as est, and occultism. These dramatic forms of conversion are unique to Israeli society within the last decade, and Beit-Hallahmi provides a social history and social psychology of this transformation.