10 February 28 • 2019
jn

BARBARA LEWIS CONTRIBUTING WRITER

L

ike the ancient Israelites, they’
ve 
come “out of Goshen” and found 
their promised land. For the 
Wormsley family, paradise is a 10-acre 
wooded site near Farwell, pretty much 
smack in the middle of Michigan’
s Lower 
Peninsula.
David and Ashley Wormsley and their 
six children, age 2-18, sold their house in 
Florida and spent many months looking 
for their ideal homestead. They moved 
into their three-story geodesic dome 
house in October. Baby Tovia was born 
a few weeks later, bringing their family 
to nine.
Despite being so far away from the 
organized Jewish community, the family 
tries hard to live an observant Jewish life. 
David, 49, was born Jewish but says his 
parents were “very secular.
” Ashley, 35, 
grew up in a Protestant family; when she 
met Eric, she said, she knew she wanted 
to be Jewish.
She has not formally converted. 
She and Eric gain most of their Jewish 
knowledge from reading, from online 
resources such as alphabeta.org, and 
from the Torah itself. They regard them-
selves as Karaite Jews, following the 
strictures laid out in the Torah but not 
many of the laws and practices from the 
Talmudic/rabbinic period. For exam-
ple, Karaite Jews recognize patrilineal 
descent. The Karaites stem from an 
ancient sect that split from mainstream 
(Rabbinic) Judaism around the 7th cen-
tury CE. (See sidebar on right.)
For Eric, originally from New York, 
wandering in the wilderness took less 
than 40 years — but it was close. He 
joined the Navy after high school to 
see the world, worked as an electrician 
and visited 13 countries. In 1991, while 
serving in the first Persian Gulf war, he 
developed an epilepsy-type disorder 
that causes seizures and numbness; 
he received a medical discharge. The 
Veterans Administration now regards 
him as permanently disabled.
Ashley was born at Providence 
Hospital in Southfield but moved away 
as a young child. The Wormsleys met 
in Colorado, where their families were 
neighbors. They married while Ashley 
was still in her teens. Eric graduated 
from Colorado State University and 
Ashley got an associate’
s degree. They 
started having children.
They moved to Kansas City, where 
Eric earned a degree in chiropractic 
medicine. He practiced for a while but 

gave it up when his brain disorder affect-
ed the feeling in his fingers.
The growing family moved to Florida, 
where they lived for 10 years. Eric taught 
anatomy and physiology at a nursing 
college. The older children — Naomi, 
now 18, Hannah, 16, and Samuel, 13 
— attended a private school when they 
lived in south Florida. When they moved 
to Pensacola, Eric and Ashley were 
unhappy with the schools and started 
homeschooling.

FINDING A NEW HOME
A few years ago, they began to feel 
Florida wasn’
t right for them. It was too 
hot, home- schooling regulations were 
too strict and land was expensive. They 
wanted to find a place that had four sea-
sons, liberal homeschooling laws, good 
benefits for disabled vets and acreage 
they could afford on their limited bud-
get, where they could be as self-sufficient 
as possible.
They sold their Florida home in early 
2018, bought a trailer large enough to 
sleep eight and a van strong enough to 
tow it and began traveling.
They thought they’
d found a place in 

Colorado, close to Ashley’
s family, but 
the deal fell through and they started 
having second thoughts about the state.
“We arrived here (in Michigan) in 
June and almost immediately realized we 
loved the state,
” Eric said. They just had 
to find a large house on land they could 
work at a price they could afford. As 
soon as they saw the 2,700-square-foot 
dome on West Herrick Road, they knew 
that was the place.
Homesteading is a lot of work, as 
is caring for a family of nine. The 
Wormsleys live frugally, depending on 
Eric’
s VA benefits and income from 
ads on their YouTube channel, Out of 
Goshen, a vlog — video blog — they 
started when they decided to leave 
Florida.
Erics posts a new entry almost every 
day except Shabbat and Jewish holidays, 
and the family has amassed a following 
of 19,000 viewers. Dozens of fans sent 
housewarming and new-baby gifts.
“We were visiting my family in New 
York and we went into a kosher restau-
rant and someone recognized us from 
the channel,
” said Eric. “That was pretty 
cool.
”

jews d
in 
the

What is a Karaite?

 
Imagine some of the ways your life 
would be different if you accepted 
the validity of Torah law but not of the 
Talmud, also known as 
the “oral law”:
You would eat only 
kosher meat and fish, 
because that is decreed 
in Leviticus. But aside 
from cooking an animal 
in its mother’
s milk 
— or with a certain kind of fat, which 
is another way of interpreting the 
Leviticus verse — you would not be 
prohibited from mixing milk and meat.
You would take your shoes off in 
the synagogue and prostrate yourself 
during prayer. You would not need a 
minyan for certain prayers.
You would not light candles for 
Shabbat because that command is 
mentioned nowhere in the Torah. And 
you might not celebrate Chanukah, a 
post-biblical holiday.
You would follow patrilineal descent, 
where having a Jewish father, not 
mother, determines if you’
re a member 
of the tribe. And, if you were a woman 
in an unhappy marriage, you could 
divorce your husband.
Jews who follow such practices are 
known as Karaites, an ancient sect 
that split from mainstream (Rabbinic) 
Judaism around the 7th century CE. 
The movement crystallized in Baghdad, 
but, for many years, the largest popu-
lation was in Egypt. The Egyptian com-
munity relocated, mostly to Israel, after 
the Six-Day War.
“Karaite” is an Anglicized form of 
the Hebrew word karaim or bnei mikra, 
which means “followers of scripture.”
Karaites, in general, study and 
respect the Talmud and rabbinic reli-
gious rulings but don’
t feel bound by 
them.
Mireille Plotke of Beverly Hills grew 
up in a Karaite family in Cairo, Egypt, 
but has not practiced as a Karaite 
since she left in 1960 at age 16. She 
is now a member of Congregation 
Shaarey Zedek. She remembers her 
family had many customs most Jews 
would find usual. They did not cele-
brate Chanukah and did not consider 
chicken to be meat, for example. 

Their 
‘Promised Land’

Large family of Karaite Jews tries homesteading 
in the Lower Peninsula.

Mireille Plotke

The Wormsley 

family in the 

geodesic dome 

home in Farwell

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