Despair and Deliverance - Private Salvation in Contemporary Israel

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.

About the author

Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi is in the Department of Psychology at the University of Haifa, Israel. The author of several books, he is co-editor with Zvi Sobel of Tradition, Innovation, Conflict: Jewishness and Judaism in Contemporary Israel, also published by SUNY Press.

Product details

• Authors: Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi
• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 01.07.1992
• EAN: 9780791410004
• ISBN: 978-0-7914-1000-4
• No. of pages: 221
• Dimensions: 152 mm x 229 mm x 25 mm
• Weight: 318 g
• Series: Suny Series in Israeli Studies; SUNY series in Israeli Studies; Suny Israeli Studies
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous