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TEL AVIV — Eran was dressed in regulation Tel Aviv hip attire — black T-shirt, black pants, red sneakers. His black Charlotte Hornets cap wasn't part of the outfit, however. For him it was a kind of "starter" kippah.

Like the growing number of once-secular, bohemian-inclined Israelis, Eran is a hozer b'tshuvah — a newly religious Jew.

He became exposed to this world a few years ago, when at age 20, he got a job at Tel Aviv's Basta La Basta restaurant. The restaurant turned out to be owned by Ezra Brautman, leader of a local group of hozrei b'tshuvah who follow the teachings of one of the movement's "hottest" sages, Nachman of Bratslav.

For two years, Eran argued about the God's existence with those who congregated around the restaurant. Eran said that God did not exist.

But then, a little over a year ago, he says, "I had a dream where I was in my room, and the room was dark but I could see everything as if it was daytime. There was a man dressed in black with silver hair and dark eyes, smoking a cigarette. I was terrified and I woke up, and I realized I was praying words I didn't know. The last thing I said was, `Sh'ma Yisrael.' I said that to save myself, because I know now the man was the angel of death."

Since that dream, Eran has joined the Bratslavers' Thursday night prayer group. He keeps Shabbat in the company of friends, prays in synagogue Friday mornings, attends yeshiva study sessions, and, like thousands of other hozrei b'tshuva, makes the occasional all-night pilgrimage to the graves of sages buried in the Galilee.

"I believe that their souls are alive and well, and when I visit their graves, I get close to them," he says.

Like the multifaceted Jewish religion, the hozrei b'tshuvah have their own splintered nature.

The most dynamic stream in the movement is found in Israel's poor urban neighborhoods and outlying towns, where the Shas (Sephardi fervently religious) Party is drawing masses of young Sephardim to its brand of haredi, or fervently religious, Judaism.

With the large funding it receives from the state, Shas is able to lure poor Sephardim — who invariably grew up in religious or "traditional" Jewish homes, and are thus open to the party's message — with generous social benefits like low-cost education, food and even jobs.

But this stream of the hozer b'tshuvah movement is authoritarian, hostile to the secular world, and emphatically political with strong right-wing leanings.

The smaller stream of the movement to which Eran belongs is more informal and pluralistic, and gentler. It's made up mainly of Israelis known as "searchers," who came to Judaism after trying other spiritual alternatives.

Eran formerly was a Buddhist and "always searching for the truth."

Brautman, who became hozer b'tshuvah two years ago, says "searchers" have to be attracted in a special way. "If you tell a person, `If you don't do this and that, you're going to go to hell,' he'll laugh in your face. He'll say, `I'm bisexual, I did heroin; don't try to frighten me with your nonsense.' But if you tell him, `Come let me teach you what love is,' he'll listen."

The movement has begun attracting some of Israel's leading performing artists. Actor-director Shmuel Viloszny is now a hozer b'tshuvah. A more recent acolyte is Shuli Rand, one of the country's most prominent theater actors. Even comedian Gil Kopatch, who enrages the haredim with his irreverent commentaries on Torah, is among the hozrei b'tshuvah.

These hip devotees haven't turned away in disgust at their previous lives and beliefs; they're the same people, except that they've discovered God. Sitting in front of Basta La Basta, which has a "Shabbat Shalom, Haver" sticker on the wall, Eran notes, "My politics are still left-wing. I voted for Shimon Peres and I still support him."

Shortly after his dream, Eran says he began to wear a kippah and tzitzit (ritual fringes). Soon, though, he realized he was getting ahead of himself, and settled for covering his head with the Charlotte Hornets cap.

"Everybody takes it at his own pace," he says.