Who were the Erev Rav? (part 4 of 4)

A few among the Erev Rav, those who stand at the tip of every outcast Jewish movement, most probably have non-Jewish roots! These have been bastardized in foreign nations via some former mixed-marriages, or via sin, by mistake or purposely. But the rest of the Erev Rav are kosher Jewish children. The Jews are being misled through their ignorance. They do not grasp that their misleaders make them lose both worlds.

Both worlds indeed! This very expression is important to remember; Not only the world-to-come are the mislead made to lose, but actually this physical world as well, because, undeniably, when an accumulation of misled Jews reaches a critical mass within the Jewish nation, a new inquisition appears on the scene, a new Haman, where the Jewish nation loses blood. At such times all Jews suffer, including the non-misled, because the latter are also guilty for not having fought the Erev Rav with full vigor and earnestness.

In the outcome, however, genuine Torah-true Jews survive, while the Erev Rav factions entirely perish. Of all sorts of Hellenists in Jewish history, no traces remain. Only those Jews remain who keep tugging the Jewish fiber.

In our days [1942], everyone knows very well that again a horrifying "ביעור חמץ", "burning of the leaven" is transpiring today to exterminate the spiritual contamination amid the Jewish nation, and therefore confronts the present-day Erev Rav with the logical call to consider what they are doing. The punishment that Jews suffer therefrom the Erev Rav cannot avert because the Hitlers and Coughlins offer no noble status for Jews who broke away from Judaism. The anti-Semites even pursue and send to ghettos and concentration camps children and children's children of converts.

So to what sin must the Erev Rav/political provocateurs hold on to, in their skirmish against Judaism, to set themselves up for extinction; When, in fact, with an about-face back to their own Jewish people and to Torah and faith, these provocateurs can be rescued from downfall?

We ask them, do they not yet see that Egypt has forsaken them, or that they can no longer persist with their foul play? We remind them they have only one choice -- to remain faithful Jews and live in Jewish communities -- or fall in the desert!

We regret their ripping themselves away for a downfall when so easily they can avoid it. Finally we remind them the Erev Rav emerged from Egypt together with the Jews -- and did not suffer a downfall! Those Erev Rav who left Egypt changed their minds before the Plague of Darkness, during which time the real evil ones, the leaders, perished. Those that left Egypt shook off their resistance sooner and committed themselves to drop their leadership, to go with the Jews and become elevated with the entire Jewish nation. So why present-day mislead ones fall deeper instead of fetching for themselves an opportunity?

These sound assertions every Jew can learn from. It must become clear that today too we have an Erev Rav -- and that they are all kosher sons and daughters, except that they are misled by a few obstructionists to adopt every viewpoint that no Jew shares -- by actual Gentiles who have no Jewish soul, by "Nefilim", as the Zohar calls them, fallen into our midst from Gentile derivation -- and therefore these leaders are so strongly drawn to Gentileness, so strongly wanting to prevent anything that smacks of Jewishness. These misleaders are the true evil ones among the Jews and every Jew must run away from them lest they get dragged away by them to their deaths and to Hell. These very evil people are to be found everywhere; They are among the rabbis, among union workers, among journalists, among the most intimate movements, even among the synagogue leaders and other leaderships. As our sages tell us, on the eve of the Era of Moshiach, the Erev Rav will occupy the best Jewish leadership positions, which is why that generation's face will be the face of a dog.

Jews, sons of Avrohom, Yitzchok and Yakov, use your built-in, congenital sense and smell out these "canine personalities" and -- flee from them.

Who were the Erev Rav? (part 3 of 4)

God told Avrohom, "Through Yitzchok will pass your descendants". Yitzchok locked out Esav and passed on Avrohom's blessings to Yaakov. Yaakov, proud of all his righteous children, received the inheritance derived from Avrohom's blessings. During his lifetime, Moshe counted each tribe a few times and precisely recorded every paternal family's numbers. Before his passing, Moshe blessed each tribe separately. It was he whom God sent to the Jewish people. He spoke to the Jewish people. The prophets punished the Jewish people. King David in his Psalms speaks of the forefathers and refers to the Jewish people as "The Children of Israel", "The Tribes of Yeshurun", "The Tribes of Israel". Nowhere in Torah is even one word spoken of an alleged Gentile presence among the Erev Rav, whom some venture to say constituted more than half the Jewish population!

Among those who left Egypt, the Torah speaks of one solitary son of a Jewish mother and Egyptian father. Torah mentions both his lineage and his bitter end, because the man cursed Hashem. Torah says "And he was the son of an Egyptian among the Children of Israel"; One son of an Egyptian among all the Jewish people! How could Torah have said this had there been among the Jews, in fact, millions of Egyptians?

According to Torah, the Prophets, the Holy Books and the sages, the Erev Rav were a Jewish lot! This is why Moshe took them along - and suffered from them. This is also why they were able to raise trouble among other Jews, even to persuade the making of a Golden Calf; Because back in Egypt this bunch happened to be among the famous, assimilated and influential politicians.

Even though the Erev Rav were unworthy, many of their children became much better Jews, just as Korach had good children who remained alive and became important members of the Jewish nation.

Neither Yishmael's progeny nor that of Esav wanted to accept the Torah, even though they too descended from Shem and from our forefathers. Only the Jews proclaimed "We shall do and we shall understand!" (נעשה ונשמע). For this reason they became God's chosen people and merited all sorts of praise by the prophets and sages.

No reason in the world exists to think that particularly the children of Cham - Egyptians - took Torah upon themselves together with the children of Avrohom, Yitzchok and Yaakov - and even in greater numbers! The Prophets warned Jews of Egyptians; They described Egyptians as "flesh as the flesh of donkeys and their ejaculate quantity as that of horses!" Had Egyptians constituted the Erev Rav, why were Jews so proud of their forefathers if Cham's children outdid the Jews quantitatively for recognizing Hashem's unity and adopting the Torah of Moshe?!

"Erev Rav" means an excessive mixture, Jews who excessively mixed with the other nations, and excessively differed from each other. They were idealists, but with nothing that bonded them to the Jewish people. Not only did we have such a mishmash group in Egypt, but we have an exact copy of them here today in America! Take together all those various sorts of Jewish isms, all those who tore away from Judaism for one reason or another, from the wealthy assimilationist to the poor Yevsektsian, and you have no other name by which to call this bunch besides "Erev Rav" - a large mixture; Because they stand for hundreds of ideals as if they belonged to hundreds of different nations.

The kind of Erev Rav as we have today, we certainly had in Egypt, an age that preceded the giving of the Torah. They distance themselves from the authentic Jewish people - but Jewish they are! They join in with non-Jewish churches - but born as Gentiles they never were!

For some reasons, this segment of the Jewish nation finds itself with no sense for which most Jews had suffered for much of their lives, for which most Jews would sooner be burned alive than submit. This portion, in whom the core affiliation with Judaism is absent, is strongly assimilated, confused and mixes with many foreign ideologies and mannerisms, actually willing to sacrifice their own lives for the foreign ideologies and even for foreign nations. These are Jewish children who betray their own nation in the interests of modern Egypts! A few, like the wealthy assimilationists, think only for the benefit of the nations wherein they find themselves, while others, like the impoverished Communists, become obsessed with the like of a foreign "Red Russia". Only for their own Jewish people they possess no spark of love or consideration. Unfortunately, this Erev Rav in fact seeks a Jewish holocaust and would happily squander away the Jewish nation's existence!

These facts everybody knows. To understand such people for a few is near impossible. But we here will not touch the explanatory rationale of this bizarre phenomenon. We only want to mention the essential fact - that we presently also have such Judaism-hating elements today that tear from our flesh, spit us in the face, either from a religious or political perspective, or from a national one. This is our Erev Rav, who drag our children to all sorts of isms, to Godless grade schools, to all sorts of conversions, to spread enmity to Jewish Torah and its faith.

(Part 4 of 4: Here)

Who were the Erev Rav? (part 2 of 4)

The former questions, and innumerably more one can ask - really are not questions at all - because the Erev Rav actually constituted a mixture of assimilated and foreign-minded Jews! Only an insignificant number of actual converts were scattered in their midst, and of these the Torah tells us nothing.

This mass of Jewry that accompanied the Jews who left Egypt the Torah calls Erev Rav. They were a mixture of foreign-minded Jews who, at the time of exodus, stood distant from devoted Jews. They were truly from the lineage of Avrohom, Yitzchok and Yakov, but grossly assimilated. They were a riffraff of arbitrary and whimsical thinkers.

Even today we have such a bunch, and when Moshiach will come to redeem the Jewish majority he will surely apply the same name, Erev Rav, to those Jews torn away by Communistic doctrine, anarchist rationale, socialistic beliefs, or break-away mindsets, whom today Hitler is chasing back into their ranks! Among these we can include the Reform movement or other torn-away heretics. If after the birth pangs of Moshiach such Jews remain, they will probably want to follow all the Jews. They will certainly be called Erev Rav, and Moshiach will certainly have to let them tag along, just as Moshe had no heart to stop them from tagging along.

This is how we must understand it, and are permitted to understand it, because nowhere does Torah say among those who left Egypt more than half were Gentiles. Had, in fact, a large mass of Gentiles actually accompanied the Jews, our sages would probably have created a separate tractate and called "Masechet Erev Rav".

The fact is, our sages do not call this group attached to the Jews as "Gentiles"; They use the specific term Erev Rav!

Everything Torah tells us about the generation in the desert simply does not dovetail with an exodus that comprised a majority of Gentiles.

Regarding several rabble-rousers or malcontents, Torah conveys to us their stories, telling us they were Jewish. The spies were Jewish. Korach and his company were Jewish. Datan and Aviram - Jewish. According to those who would cast several million Gentile bastards among 600,000 Jews, would mean that only Jews were the bad ones and trouble-makers, whereas the Gentiles happened to be Moshe's most loyal adherents; After all, Torah never reports (except the single incident of the Ish Mitzri) how any convert made so much as a peep against Moshe! How odd that Torah deems so worthy to tell about all those "sinful" Jews, as their misdeeds are repeatedly told and recounted, yet never does Torah see fit to breathe one word about the millions of "righteous" Gentile converts!

Certainly Moshe felt grief from his Erev Rav. A third of Jews, at most, were faithful Jews, believers in the ways of their forefathers; Two-thirds, on the other hand, were Egyptian assimilationists and foreign ism worshippers. The latter called themselves "Moshe's Erev Rav" because faithful Jews would gladly have left them behind. Perhaps it's also true God Himself did not want to expressly say these people should be taken along and left it up to Moshe, but definitely these were a Jewish flock.

The Torah speaks nothing of Gentiles among Jews who left Egypt. It makes sense and we can understand that Moshe had no good reason to take along more than 3 million Gentiles together with the 600,000 Jews. But he certainly did have a good reason to take along all Jews without exception, as well as a small number of Kosher Egyptians who submitted to servitude to the Jews. The Holy Zohar states this expressly: It tells us the converts stayed next to the sheep outside the encampments, and these were sustained by their Jewish masters.

(‫'‬דיהבין לון ישראל כמאן דיהיב לעבדיה‫'‬    כי תשא דף קצא‫:‬ב)

We can therefore conclude the Erev Rav were Jewish and among these a small number of converts came along who probably, still in Egypt, befriended some assimilated Jews.

Those who account for converts among those who left Egypt are correct - but they surely do not speak about the entire Erev Rav! R' Yishmael, R' Akiva and R' Yonanssan speak of the Erev Rav and their large numbers without mentioning one word about converts! They meant to say faithful Jews, faithful as their forefathers, numbered no more than 600,000, whereas the majority who left Egypt had assimilated and were distant from the faith. Other commentators who speak of converts furnish no numbers; They speak generally, as did the Rashbi, saying converts lived outside the camps, and for whom Manna did not fall, and that these were sustained by leftovers of the Manna that fell for Jews. From this alone it's understandable their numbers were small - because nearly 4 million converts could not possibly be sustained from leftovers of 600,000 Jews!

(Part 3 of 4: Here)

Who were the Erev Rav? (part 1 of 4)

The following article (translated roughly from Yiddish), written in 1942 (May, p.326-9, הקריאה והקדושה), under the auspices of the Previous Rebbe, appeared at a time when Europe was convulsing in the throes of WWII, while Jews were being murdered by the millions.

The Rebbe here explains the term "Erev Rav" - a term many Jews, until today, still get wrong. I segment his article into 4 parts. By the 4th segment you'll understand the connection between the Erev Rav and the Holocaust.

___________

In only five simple words Torah neatly dispenses with the entire issue of the Erev Rav:
וגם ערב רב עלה אתם
A big mix joined them.

How many were they? R' Yishmael reckons there were 1,200,000 of them. R' Akiva says there were 2,400,000; And R' Yonanssan sets their count to 3,600,000! The Mechilta says "twice as many as made the exodus", which could mean twice 600,000 - or much more if women, children and elderly were included!

And what were their demographics? Here too opinions vary. Holy Rashi believes "they were converts from variegate nations". The Midrash, in a few places, says they were "Kosher Egyptians". The Zohar (191:1) says they were "Egyptian Magicians".

During processions through the desert, or when camped, where did they hang out? Rashbi says "the Clouds of Glory did not embrace them [i.e., they dwelt outside the camp proper], and in procession they followed after the livestock." "The Manna", he says, "did not descend for them; They would get their food from leftovers Jews gave them."

Besides the above inconclusive data, many questions remain on all the above standpoints. It makes no sense Egypt had in their midst that many "Kosher" Egyptians; Or that many "Magicians". And why does Torah remain silent about them; Like, did they or did they not circumcise themselves? Or, how did they fit into familial accounting, if at all, or where was their place in the Jewish encampment? Did they marry, have children? Did they enter Eretz Yisroel in disregard of the law that Egyptians must not merge with the Jewish community until the 3rd generation? For if they did enter, this could mean the genuine Jews became diluted with 5 or 10 times 600,000 converts - a fact that's hardly credible.

After the Golden Calf affair, when Moshe prayed for the Jewish people, his main argument based itself on Jewish lineage with their forefathers. He said they were descendants of Avrohom, Yitzchok and Yakov. He said not one word about converts that led astray the Jewish people. When Moshe ordered the Levite tribe to kill those who worshipped the Golden Calf, he said to kill "a man his brother", a man his friend and a man his relative". Later, when he praised these Levites, he spoke of killing "a man his own son and a man his own brother". This means those who died were Jews! Nothing was said of converts who died. What our sages did tell us was the Erev Rav bore responsibility for persuading the Jews to stray, and that Moshe brought them out of Egypt on his own accord.

When prophets, later in history, punished the Jews, they reminded the nation of their illustrious forefathers:
‪.‬"הביטו אל צור חצבתם ... אל אברהם ... ואל שרה"
Certainly the prophets could not have said this had the Jewish nation absorbed 3 million Egyptians, converts or other nationalities. That the Holy Books make refer to the Jewish nation with terms such as
"שבטי ישורון" , "בית יעקב" or "שבטי ישראל",
proves their familial lineage stems from Jewish forefathers. Had the Jewish people been a minority among those who left Egypt, then a few generations later it would have been impossible to lay claim to the pure pedigree of the Jewish forefathers that ran in their blood.

Otherwise, the Jewish people would not have been a nation but some mass of people clinging to a Moses-given religion, tugging about after him in the desert. What purpose could it have served the true children of Yakov to submit to persecution when foreign converts got the same privileges with no hardships to endure and no sorrow to taste? Why did God never once mention anything to Moshe about taking converts out of Egypt - when all God ever spoke about were the children of Israel and His promise to the forefathers?

Can anyone really believe the Erev Rav who dragged the Jews into all the quarrels in the desert were actually real Gentiles; Or that Jews would allow themselves to be so influenced by Gentiles? Or, that Moshe would refuse to send them away (but rather took upon himself they should come along)? Or that Korach and his cohorts, his family and the many Jewish leaders he influenced, God allowed be swallowed by the earth, but Gentile converts God wouldn't touch? Or, had Gentiles actually wanted to convert, that they would then have the audacity to oppose Moshe?

Many more questions remain on the Erev Rav topic had their real origin been from conversion. But the main question would involve the bond God made with the forefathers, as when God told them their descendants will be "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." If 5 or 10 times that many converts shared the paternal privileges accorded Jews, then the entire covenant made with Avrohom, and the promise "for your children shall be strangers in a land not theirs" (כי גר יהיה זרעך בארץ לא להם ...)‬ would amount to nil!

This is what Christians say in their teachings - that one need not be from Avrohom's lineage in order to be "The Chosen People". It's enough, they say, to be spiritual children of Avrohom. They make this claim so they can thereby take over the special status of being "The Chosen People".

(Part 2 of 4: Here)