International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 10, 2019 87
611). This is an important observation. The Love
Family’s membership was self-selected, in that
people chose to join because the Family offered
something they wanted. They knew they would
have to change and were willing to do so, or at
least give it a try. Self-selection continued after
members joined because turnover was high
among the Hebrew names. At the same time,
selection by the Family also occurred because
not everyone who wanted to join was allowed to.
The community effectively screened out free
riders and people unlikely to adapt to the
Family’s culture.
The result of these selection processes was a
membership ready and willing to go with the
program, and Ms. Israel’s book is peppered with
examples of how Family beliefs and practices
then facilitated the process. The core belief was
“We are One,” and there was enormous pressure
to be One, to not have personal opinions or
independent ideas. Individual thoughts were
from Satan. Any negative comment would result
in gentle admonishments to stay “positive” (p.
88), “take it up” (p. 89), or “brighten up” (p. 91)
and members would be reminded that “thoughts
create” (p. 88). If you continued to hold to an
independent viewpoint, you would be labeled
“dark” (p. 91) and subjected to gossip and
ostracism. Given the rewards of membership—
meaning, purpose, security, and a community of
friends—the cost of leaving was simply too
high. The result was constant self-monitoring
and the suppression of contrary thoughts and
feelings, which, in turn created an illusion of
Oneness in the community. For those like Ms.
Israel, who still harbored “separate thoughts” (p.
91), the appearance of unanimity fostered guilt:
Why am I the only one who doesn’t get it?
Marijuana and, in particular, psychedelic drugs
were used to reinforce the Family’s belief
system. They were regarded as “sacraments”—
marijuana because it brought people together,
and psychedelics because they produced visions.
Visions were common and always discussed in
meetings, where they were recounted in ways
that confirmed Family beliefs, Love Israel’s
authority, or both. Of course, some people made
up visions because there was such great pressure
to have them, and those who didn’t wondered
why they didn’t get it.
Ms. Israel and several of her peers were
introduced to LSD when they were just 12 or 13
years of age. The occasion was an informal rite
of passage, approved by Love and conducted by
an elder acting as guide. The purpose of the LSD
was to help the kids experience Love Israel’s
vision of the Oneness of all things. And Ms.
Israel did have such a vision. Afterward, the idea
of being One “no longer was just something I
was being told it was something I had
experienced, something I had felt, that was very
real, a way of thinking that was now part of my
awareness” (p. 213).
Nonetheless, Ms. Israel struggled with
questions. She wondered how everything could
exist in the present and was confused about
being eternal, especially after she learned about
babies who had died in the community. (These
deaths were never reported to authorities outside
the Family.) But she quickly accepted Family
beliefs, and she describes the blissful feeling of
merging with the collective mind during Family
gatherings. She felt safe and protected by a
loving community. Yet at other times she found
Family life to be “oppressive” (p. 146). For an
escape, she liked to befriend new members who
didn’t know the rules yet because they would
talk about the past and life in the outside world.
“I craved my own mind,” she says, adding that
she would sneak off by herself “just to be alone”
(p. 147). Her diary was perhaps her most
significant way of maintaining her individuality.
So secret was it that she wrote in a code that she
had invented in case someone found it.
If I have given the impression that Ms. Israel’s
book dwells on the matter of commitment, it is
only because the subject is of great interest to
me. In fact, she addresses a wide range of issues
pertaining to communal survival. These include
health and medicine, sexual relationships,
parenting, education, the acquisition and
allocation of resources, relationships with
government agencies and other communities,
and the roots of the discontent that ignited the
breakup in 1983. Here I will touch on a few of
these.
The chapter on medicine (Chapter 8) reveals the
perils of trying to live without it. Since members
were considered eternal, illness was an illusion,

88 International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 10, 2019
a state of mind resulting from negative thoughts.
Ms. Israel describes a hepatitis outbreak, dubbed
“yellow fever” (p. 427), that ravaged the
community for months but went untreated
except for prayer and herbal remedies (it also
remained unknown to authorities). Later, Love
did make a few compromises, such as allowing a
member (conveniently, a dentist) to open a
dental clinic at the Family ranch, but other forms
of modern medicine remained off-limits, even as
members got older and more women were
getting pregnant.
The most interesting medical development was
the emergence of otherwise devoted women who
secretly violated both the prohibition against
medical care and the agreement not to use
artificial birth control. This was deviance at the
highest level, primarily among the elder ladies,
and it was abetted by some of the highest
ranking women, who had access to vehicles
required to get to a hospital. Their actions
signaled a growing gap between ideal and reality
that spread throughout the Family in the late
1970s and early 1980s.
The Family’s belief in living in the present left it
unprepared for the baby boom that began in the
mid-1970s. Shared parenting was the ideal, but
in reality, it didn’t work well. Though every
adult was expected to be a parent to every child,
parenting styles varied greatly. And in any case,
the burden fell on the women, particularly low-
ranking women and girls such as Ms. Israel and
her mother. But, as the author explains, the
diffusion of responsibility often meant no
responsibility, so children commonly went
unsupervised. Paradoxically, in this world where
having no self was paramount and individual
freedom was taboo, Ms. Israel was forced to
become self-reliant and highly adaptable. She,
like other kids, learned to work the system to her
advantage (and, as I found, many adults did so,
too). If she wanted to do something but was
afraid her elder lady might say no, she could
bypass her by going directly to Love. As I found
in my own research, the words “Love said” (p.
209) were perhaps the two most powerful words
in the Love Family. She also learned which
households to avoid, as the elders varied greatly
in the latitude they granted to kids and the
harshness of their punishments.
For a community based on total agreement, there
was a surprising lack of consensus on the
importance of education. The Family had its
own school staffed by dedicated teachers, but
Love put little value on formal education.
Whereas the teachers wanted to expose kids to
the world, Love and the Family conservatives
wanted to protect them from it. Love had to
approve all reading material and, at least once,
books deemed too worldly were burned. On my
first visit to the Family in 1980, I noticed
second-hand children’s readers in which all
references to conventional family roles and
worldly practices had been blacked out—not just
words, but sentences and whole paragraphs—
making the stories unreadable. Classes followed
no calendar or daily schedule and were
frequently moved from one location to another.
Science was “hit or miss” (p. 333). By
conventional standards, Ms. Israel’s education
was clearly inadequate after she left the Family,
she would struggle in the mainstream
educational system, as would her peers who also
left.
Another source of conflict was polygamy. Love
already had two wives, and he encouraged his
elders to take additional wives, as well.
Although the practice never caught on, it
became a source of tension when Rachel’s
mother, beautiful but with a low-ranking
Hebrew name, became a second wife. The first
wife, an elder lady, felt threatened but having
no choice except to submit, she took her anger
out on Ms. Israel’s mother’s by ruining her
reputation in the community. The result was
such extreme ostracism that her mother, then
pregnant with the elder’s child, had to give birth
alone. This was the ultimate insult in a
community in which every birth was a joyous
occasion attended by the whole Family.
The incident seems particularly vicious,
especially for a group called the Love Family,
but Ms. Israel sees it as just one of many signs
that the Family’s culture was breaking down. By
the end of the 1970s, constraints were loosening
and more and more people were breaking the
rules. Women and girls started wearing makeup
and Fresh Squeeze jeans, and the elder of Ms.
Israel’s household brought home a ham for
dinner newcomers weren’t being screened kids