Despair and Deliverance, livre ebook

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.

Acknowledgments

Prologue: Miracles of Self-Transformation
1. Beyond the Pale: New Religions in Israel
2. Back to the Fold: Road to Judaism
3. The Triumph of the Occult
4. The Liberated Self: Developing a Psychotherapy Subculture in Israel
5. Crisis and the Search for Salvation
6. Forming and Preserving the New Self
Epilogue
References
Index