Who Were the Erev Rav Really?

The Torah only mentions the Erev Rav or the Asafsuf (who might be the same people) briefly. Today Erev Rav is used a lot in some circles. But who were the Erev Rav really?

The accepted interpretation is that they were non-Jewish slaves, criminals and foreigners in Egypt who accompanied the Jews on their exodus. This isn’t impossible, but it’s not really likely. Why would Moshe have accepted a large number of foreigners on the way out? There was no conversion yet. Yitro, the first Ger only arrived around or after Har Sinai when the Torah was given. The Egyptians would not have agreed to free non-Jewish slaves or prisoners. Remember, they even chased after their Jewish slaves and only let them go after incredible devastation. And why would non-Jews have volunteered to go into the desert with no real hope of survival, and then wanted to return?

There’s a simple alternative answer that covers all these points. Who were the Mixed Multitude really? They were mixed. They were the children of Egyptian men and Jewish women. We encounter one of them as the blasphemer, but he was probably representative of the Erev Rav as a whole.

Accepted interpretations claim that he was the only such case. We know how unrealistic this is. Kohanim whose wives were in captivity had to divorce them because the halachic position is that captivity means a high probability of rape. If the Egyptians could enslave the men and kill the children, could they rape their women. Obviously yes.

When Pharaoh gave the order to kill. He only ordered the deaths of male babies. Female babies survived. His goal was to have Jewish women, while wiping out Jewish men. Egyptians obviously wanted Jewish women. The Jewish people survived his attack. Polygamy may have even been a defense mechanism against this type of ethnic cleansing. But there still would probably have been a surplus female population. And some Jews did become corrupted in Egypt. So some Jewish women may have even been voluntarily mistresses or concubines to Egyptian men.

The children of rape or even voluntary liaisons with Egyptian men would have become the Erev Rav. To the Egyptians they were Jews. To the Jews they were Egyptians. After the 10th Plague, the Egyptians may have in their panic banished anyone with Jewish blood from their country. Or the Erev Rav might have gone willingly.

But in the desert things changed. In Egypt, the Erev Rav might have held a higher status than full blooded Jews, the way that in the American South light skinned blacks of mixed race were House Slaves. But in the desert they were lower ranked. In a camp based on tribal divisions, the Erev Rav belonged nowhere. They were “rabble”, a mixed group without their own tribal leadership. They didn’t answer to anyone, and could get into all kinds of trouble. Pecking order would be established not by descent, the way it was with the tribes, but through Prison Yard showdowns.

No surprise then that the Erev Rav kept bringing up the theme of going back to Egypt. Among the Egyptians, they might have been considered Jews, but among the Jews, they started seeing themselves as Egyptians. In Egypt, they were superior because they were part of the master race. Among the Jews, they were inferior for that same reason.

And if things were bad in the desert, they were only going to get worse, if the Jews actually made it to Israel where land was allotted based on tribal divisions. Again by the father. Which is why the Erev Rav did everything it could to stop the Jews from getting there. What the Erev Rav wanted most of all was to get back to Egypt. But they settled for sabotaging any progress the Jews made along the way. Because any progress in Jewish nationhood would set back their status even more, and make it harder to push for a return to Egypt.

There’s no way to know how large the Erev Rav was. But even a 1000 men with no leadership structure and a sense of grievance can do a lot of damage.

In more modern times, Erev Rav came to mean any fifth column or foreign element among the Jews. Today It usually means people who might be biologically Jews or members of the Jewish community, but whose real allegiances lie elsewhere. This is what makes them “mixed”. They have a mixture of Jewish ethnicity but alien loyalties. And this makes them act as a fifth column, obstructing and sabotaging the Jewish people.

Erev Rav is used today for everyone from Jewish anti-Israel activists to Jewish leaders who pursue goals not in the interests of their communities. It doesn’t mean that their parentage is mixed, but that their loyalties are. The Erev Rav were living together with the Jewish people, but not part of it. In the same way the Erev Rav today is part of the Jewish community, but has a different destination in mind.

So Who is your God Anyway?

Oh it’s a basic question I know. But who is God anyway?

The odds are that your answer to the question is based on a religious answer. Who is God? He’s the being that my religion tells me about.

So to answer the question of who God is, we first have to answer the question of what religion is. What is religion? There are two kinds of religion, one which imposes laws on the community from outside, and one which serves as an expression of the identity of the community.

The Aseret HaDibrot, the culmination of the Exodus from Egypt, was the first case. Hashem imposed that identity by shepherding the creation of Israel, beginning with the one man who recognized God on his own initiative, Avraham Avinu, culminating in forcefully taking Israel out of Egypt and dedicating the Jews to serve God alone.

Parshat Misphatim and all that leads up to it is really God telling the Jewish people, “I’m going to tell you who you are and how you’re going to live in the hopes that you’ll finally get this humanity thing right.”

And what do most of those laws consist of? Category one are ritual things that recognize God’s role in our lives. Category two consists of Google Laws, basically laws that tell you not to be evil, not to oppress others, and to live just lives.

These laws are not ideal, they are functional. They’re laws that a people a few thousand years ago could live with. It’s why we’re told “Lo Bashamayim Hi”. We were not given angelic laws. We were given human laws.

And who was God? He was the one who gave us those laws. Those laws were not about telling us who He was. But about us understanding who we were meant to be. He was the Lawgiver.

Now how does religion become corrupted? It becomes an expression of the identity of the community. Customs grow around rituals. Some are customs of dubious origin from idol worshippers. Rituals are added to, though the Torah specifically forbids that. Religion becomes a product of the culture of the community that keeps it, rather than the other way around. God stops being an object, and becomes a subject.

Now if religion is an expression of the community, who does the community worship? It worships itself, or rather its own power structure. A corrupted religion is centered on worshipping the power sources of a particular community or culture or nations. 

And so you have totems, ancestor worship and God-kings. All examples of a culture worshiping itself. You have popes. You have seers and gurus who serve as the intermediaries to God. Or Gedolim.

When a culture becomes the object of its own worship, when customs trump commandments, and when laws are constantly rearranged for the convenience of every time and era… the culture becomes its own religion. 

Ever heard minchagim referred to as holy or Gedolim as all knowing? You’re seeing a culture that believes it is God. 

And such religion always violates both categories of commandments that Hashem gave on Har Sinai. 1. Remember me and 2. Don’t be evil.

A religion that is a reflection of the community worships the communal power structure. Which means those in charge can do no wrong. So evil and oppression become the norm. Because the intermediaries have become God.

When the Nevim went to Israel with the message, stop being evil. They were naturally locked up or persecuted. Their message came from God, but the people they were talking to worshipped their own system.

We still do that today. Every fast day we may read from Yeshaya telling us that what God wants is not fasting, but for us to stop oppressing others. We nod along. And we keep on living in communities filled with corruption and oppression that always begin at the top. 

Gedolim worship is a culture worshipping its own power structure. For everyone who says we don’t have a pope, you’re right. We don’t have one pope. We have a lot of them. And that’s only because we’re too fragmented and argumentative to unite behind one pope. But it’s a difference that makes very little difference.

So who is God anyway? As far as a large part of us are concerned, it’s whoever the Gedolim say he is. Or more accurately it is the Gedolim. The Christians and Chabad simply took that to the next level. Start worshipping the intermediaries as gods themselves.

The more we cultivate minchagim, the more we impose a communal identity on Judaism, instead of listening to what the Torah says, the more we worship a community, instead of G-d. And when we do that, we actually can’t see the forest for the trees. We get tied down in details and we forget what God wants. 

The Aseret Hadibrot were a culminating event. They were the creation of a nation that would serve God. We mock Fiddler on the Roof Jews, but is your average Chassid any better? Does his religion come from God or from Slavic culture mediated by some scraps of Judaism, all the while speaking a German-Russian-Hebrew dialect, while worshipping a man as their intermediary to God?

Harsh, but true. 

We’re expected to believe that Moshe Rabbeinu, the Avot, the Shevatim, the Nevim, were fallible, but that the leaders of our current power structure are not? We’re expected to believe that Moshe could mangle Hashem’s message, as he did when he was told to speak to the rock, but that no one since then has?

What a load of crap. 

The “Heilige Yid” in the payos and tzizit, who robs the orphan and oppresses the widow, who won’t say Good Shabbos to you, and if he sees you struggling with a load walks on by… is everything that the Aseret HaDibrot were meant to stamp out.

The payos have nothing to do with Judaism. We’re forbidden to cut our hair in particular places. We’re never told to make a decoration of it. The Tzizit were never commanded by Hashem as a separate garment. And we’ve left of the Techeilet part entirely.

What we were commanded to do in no uncertain terms was not be evil. And that Unheilige Yid, who donates money to worthy causes, drives a Lexus and talks loudly in Shul on his cell phone, is evil.

Yet he rules us, for as long as the community is the object of our worship. For as long as turn to a system ruled by Gedolim and the whole court they have built around them, the Askanim and the Machers, the “Rabbis” who issue press releases and write columns and popularized seforim.

A religion that reflects a culture and community, rather than guides it will always turn to evil, because evil comes from power, and those in power will rule a community. It will always anger Hashem because those in power will always oppress those who do not have power. The kings did it then, the machers are doing it today.

So who is your God anyway?

Get Out Your Ouija Boards: The Facilitated Communication Train Rolls on to Idolsville

Now boys and girls those of you who were good remember that we talked about Facilitated Communication last week. Facilitated Communication or FC basically means that the parents, guardians or molesters of autistic kids use them as human Ouija boards guiding their hands around a pen or pencil to sketch out messages from the beyond. If you’re a Christian you believe those messages come from Jeebus. If you’re a New Ager, you believe they come from the wacky consciousness of a living universe. If you’re a Muslim you believe they come from a crazy hairy guy with anger management problems.

If you’re Jewish… ah if you’re Jewish you’re not supposed to be using mediums or ouija boards, human or otherwise. You’re supposed to rely on G-d and his Torah. But FC like most avodah zara finds its way into the frum world too where it has its defenders.

Picking up on this thread over at YeshivaWorld where my post was referenced

Now the introducer of this thread tries to claim that it’s not prophecy but some sort of “spiritual radar” (I’m sorry is spiritual radar a Torah term, where exactly does it originate from?) that tells you exactly what the weatherman would tell you.

I. personally, feel that there is no more prophecy here than one would get from the weatherman telling us that a storm is forming or is headed our way….The Autistics simply use information from a kind of spiritual radar source to give us warnings. To say that if we don’t do tshuva, trouble lies ahead, is far from a new prophecy. This has been repeated through the ages.

So it’s not prophecy is it? Let’s sum up prophecy. Hashem sends a navi to warn us that either we do Tesuvah or a coming catastrophe will befall us. That’s what the people here are doing. They are warning of a coming catastrophe and then warning people to do Tesuvah. It is literal prophecy. Look up Yonah or Yirmiyahu.

Yes we’re told all the time that we have to do tesuvah or bad things will happen. This is however a specific prediction combined with a command. That is the prerogative of a Navi.

Anyone can tell you that if you cross a red light bad things will happen. If however I tell you that if you cross a bad light, I sense that bad things will soon happen to you, I have moved from common sense to the realm of the supernatural making me either a prophet, a witch or a fraud. You pick.

Then there’s the even more dishonest argument that if this happened to these kids it could be for only one purpose alone!

we know, i hope everybody will agree on this one , that Hashem is in charge ,and all he does is for a reason. not reasons we can always understand .

Funny how often people begin arguments with this premise only when the whole thrust of their argument is that they know exactly why Hashem is doing it

when a person is a vegetable there is very little gashmiyus,and the neshama has no more boundaries,nothing can separate her from her Creator.and thus the abilty to actually become more of a neshama than a body.

That’s wacky theology at best. Is someone who’s dead from the neck down more neshama simply because he’s disconnected from a lot of gashmiyus things? Of if I lock you in a box and feed you through a straw for 20 years, do you become a malach? The theology that says Gashmiyus is evil in contrast to the spirit is absurdly Catholic.

So in other words by this logic if someone is physically cut off, clearly they’re receiving messages from heaven. After all why would Hashem do so otherwise?

The answer is we don’t know why. We don’t know why Hashem does things. We don’t know why kids wind up autistic or crippled for life or suffering from horrible diseases. WE DON’T KNOW.

Other people’s suffering and our own should encourage us to do Tesuvah. It should encourage us to be kind. It should not allow us to become deluded into believing we are hearing prophecies or to rely on superstition and mediums and other things forbidden explicitly by the Torah. At best they merely produce nonsense. At worst their sources may be something other than Hashem entirely.

Intermarriage is Against the Torah. Any Questions?

“Neither shalt thou make marriages with them: thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. For he will turn away thy son from following Me, that they may serve other gods; so will the anger of the LORD be kindled against you, and He will destroy thee quickly.” Devarim 7:3

Oh yeah. Newsflash. It’s wrong. Why? Because intermarriage wipes out the Jewish people. Because it dilutes Judaism. And because G-d said so.We don’t need any more reason than the last one.
I am sick and tired of the rush to apologize to Noah Feldman (who was proved to be a liar) for all his suffering at the hands of evil Orthodox Jews who *gasp* didn’t publish his career accomplishments in their bulletin. I’m not even dedicating this to Noah Feldman who’s a sick and poisonous human being who dedicated an incredible amount of energy to making sure that en Eruv didn’t go up purely out of spite for other Jews.

I’m dedicating this to the Rabbis who should know better. I’m dedicating this to guys like Rabbi Shmuel Boteach and now Rabbi Levi Brackman who rush out and tell us how wrong we are as a community not to be more welcoming to Jews who intermarried? Anyone remember when this was the kind of rhetoric Reform Rabbis not Orthodox Rabbis traded in. I do.

Now we get crap like this published everywhere. I know one woman who is no longer converting because of the crap she was put through for years. But if she had married a Jewish guy first, she would have gotten an express train conversion. Remember when it used to be Reform Jews who acted like that? Now we act like that.

Can all the articles on how we need to welcome intermarried couples. I expect stupidity like that from ordinary people. I don’t expect it from Rabbis. I expect better than a “Come one, come all, so what if she’s not Jewish. We can just dunk her in a mikvah and she will be” routine. That’s not how it works.

Conversion isn’t some express train to making people Jewish. It’s a sincere dedication to serving G-d. While we’re making life hell for genuine converts, we’re making it easy for “nice Jewish boys” who hooked up with an asian chick in college and it makes me sick.

No Rabbi Brackman, we should not be “making life easier for intermarrieds.” Why not? Because the Torah says so. Any more questions? If you can’t back what the Torah says maybe you shouldn’t be an Orthodox Rabbi.

For they have taken of their daughters for themselves and for their sons; so that the holy seed have mingled themselves with the peoples of the lands; yea, the hand of the princes and rulers hath been first in this faithlessness.

And when I heard this thing, I rent my garment and my mantle, and plucked off the hair of my head and of my beard, and sat down appalled. Then were assembled unto me every one that trembled at the words of the God of Israel, because of the faithlessness of them of the captivity; and I sat appalled until the evening offering.

And at the evening offering I arose up from my fasting, even with my garment and my mantle rent; and I fell upon my knees, and spread out my hands unto the LORD my God; and I said: ‘O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to Thee, my God; for our iniquities are increased over our head, and our guiltiness is grown up unto the heavens.

Now while Ezra prayed, and made confession, weeping and casting himself down before the house of God, there was gathered together unto him out of Israel a very great congregation of men and women and children; for the people wept very sore.

And Shecaniah the son of Jehiel, one of the sons of Elam, answered and said unto Ezra: ‘We have broken faith with our God, and have married foreign women of the peoples of the land; yet now there is hope for Israel concerning this thing.

Now therefore let us make a covenant with our God to put away all the wives, and such as are born of them, according to the counsel of the LORD, and of those that tremble at the commandment of our God; and let it be done according to the law.

And Ezra the priest stood up, and said unto them: ‘Ye have broken faith, and have married foreign women, to increase the guilt of Israel. Now therefore make confession unto the LORD, the God of your fathers, and do His pleasure; and separate yourselves from the peoples of the land, and from the foreign women.’

Ezra 9-10

Bye bye charlie. No invitations to the local synagogue for tea and crackers and Hebrew lessons. No “let’s invite the women over and teach them about Jewish heritage.” None of that. They simply go.

But that’s not all. They were shocked. They were sickened. They were ashamed by what they did. Not only is Noah Feldman not ashamed but the people replying to him in supposed defense of Judaism are the ones ashamed. Ashamed to be defending something their modern culture has trouble with. And the ones on the attack like Shmuley Boteach and Rabbi Brackman are unashamed to be sanitizing intermarriage and doing an Xtian style “Hate the sin, love the sinner” number.

That is how low we’ve fallen.