The Love Israel Family: Urban Commune, Rural Commune (review)

The communitarian impulse in American culture has a long and varied history. Some communities had European roots, such as the Shakers; others were purely homegrown, such as the Transcendentalist community of Brook Farm and the Perfectionists of the Oneida Colony. Generally, but not always, these groups were utopian, striving to form an ideal society, trying to show the way to a different and better life than the “outside” society. In difficult times, there would be an upsurge of these communities. In more stable and economically prosperous times, the communitarian impulse would diminish.

The “hippie” years of the sixties and early seventies saw the wrenching assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and the trauma of the Vietnam War. Those decades experienced a tremendous increase in the number of intentional communities. Commune historian Timothy Miller estimates that there might have been 750,000 persons in thousands of communities by the early seventies. One of those communities was the Love Israel Family.

Paul Erdman, aka Love Israel, charismatic founder and leader of the Love Israel Family, began the group in 1968 after experiencing spiritual visions in 1967. At its zenith, the group totaled over 300 persons. It engaged in many business activities, as well as trying to live an intentional spiritual life centered on Love Israel. Its basic ideology was “We are one. Love is the answer. Now is the time.” The conflict between its ideology and its attempt to exist economically and prosper in the outside world, with a guru who had grandiose economic dreams, was a perennial problem and one of the important reasons for its eventual fracturing.

The community lasted thirty-five years, far longer than most intentional communities of its time. Now, there are only a handful of communities started in the late sixties that still function—for example, The Farm, Twin Oaks, The Lama Foundation, Libre, Black Bear Ranch, and Ananda Village. The unusually long-lived Love Israel Family, therefore, deserves the detailed attention to its history and community culture that this book provides. Charles LeWarne writes well. Although he describes thoroughly the complex life and history of The Family, he still captured the interest of this reader. He combines a chronological history of the community with informative depictions of how The Family lived. The book uses interesting photos to supplement the text. Most descriptions of sixties communities are memoirs and diaries. But this author is a trained historian who followed The Family for many years. He uses a variety of different sources: sociological research, histories of the communal development in the United States, newspaper articles, and interviews.

Thirty-two in-person interviews (respondents identified) form the bulk of interview data, with seventeen informal and telephone conversations also collected. Serious Israel, who stayed loyal to Love Israel after the community fractured in 1983–84, is a principal source. Serious’s reflections about the community and its development constitute a fascinating five-page epilogue to the book. His testimony allows the reader an immediate contact with the thoughts, feelings, language, and culture of the community. I commend the author for including Serious’s words. I only wish that he had also included more than a snippet of the entire three-page letter from the community’s “elders” to Love Israel that precipitated the community’s split. “Dear Love, We have some important things to say to you . . . We believe that you have alienated yourself from the general family to such a degree that the very existence of the Family is in jeopardy” (150).

As is typical of gurus who start their communities with good intentions, Love Israel had abused his position in many ways. He refused to accept the letter. Most then left The Family. The remainder moved with Love to rural land, the only property that the community still owned. They lived there until 2004 when bankruptcy forced them to move. The successful switch to rural living is unique in American communal history. Unfortunately, many...