of age, joins the ranks and is eligible to marry. Additional rights and duties follow at ages twenty-five and thirty. When one becomes elderly, his duties are reduced to make them commensurate with his abilities. The text envisions a community led by priests and including Levites and the remainder of the membership; it is organized militarily (1.22–25). No one with an impurity, a physical blemish, or a handicap is allowed in the yaḥad, “[f]or the holy angels are [a part of] their congregation” (2.8–9;