The Cult Dossier · No. 127 · Syncretic / Other Nrm
Zendik Farm
Zendik Arts
1969 – 2013 · California, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, West Virginia
XII. THE WIDER FIELD — CONCISE ENTRIES
Quasi-religious — eco-anarchist arts commune
Who led it
WULF ZENDIK (born Lawrence Wulfing in El Paso, 1920–1999) and AROL ZENDIK (born Carol Weinberg in Brooklyn, 1938–2012), who ran it after his death.
What it worshipped and taught
Ecolibrium — a doctrine that mainstream society (the Deathkulture) is destroying the planet and that only the commune's way of life is authentic. Members sold Zendik magazines and stickers on the street, worked long unpaid hours, and arranged sex through a formal DATE system run by go-betweens and a committee that had to approve each pairing.
Who was in it
Wulf Zendik; Arol Wulf; Helen Zuman, whose memoir Mating in Captivity (2018) is the main account.
How it ended, or where it stands
Dissolved.
The dead
—
Of note
A representative small commune: no supernatural claim, no violence, and control exercised entirely through labour, sexual assignment and the moral superiority of the group's mission.
Its timeline
- 1969 Founded near Perris, California, on land owned by Wulf's parents.
- 1970s–2000s Repeated relocations through Florida, southern California and Texas, then to North Carolina and finally Marlinton, West Virginia; peak of about 60 members.
- 1999 Wulf Zendik dies, and Arol runs the community. The same year HELEN ZUMAN, a recent Harvard graduate, joins; her memoir describes Arol crushing any love that threatened her hold on her followers.
- 2012 AROL ZENDIK DIES, AGED 72.
- 2013 The commune disbands, possibly as a consequence of Arol's death.
- 2018 Zuman's memoir, Mating in Captivity, is published after a Kickstarter campaign.