Unlocking the Secret of the Erev Rav: The Mixed Multitude in Jewish Kabbalah

 

Unlocking the Secret of the Erev Rav: The Mixed Multitude in Jewish Kabbalah by Rivka Levy is about a religious notion that seems to have some adherents in the “orthodox” Jewish world.  Mixed multitude, erev rav in Hebrew, refers to people who came out of Egypt with the Israelites (who were not Israelites).  Scholars do not know exactly who these people were and in the Torah, they are never mentioned again.

But in later Jewish tradition they became a shadowy group within the Jewish tradition hell bent on destroying it.  Today calling someone an erev rav seems like a way for one Jewish person to cast a shadow on another person’s Jewish credentials because of a political or religious difference.

Needless to say, the concept of an erav rav is dangerous and specious.  Levy’s book does not overly go into conspiratorial territory.  She sees the erev rav as a distinctly Jewish problem (and not an othering issue) with a Breslov solution.  But I don’t like the concept of the mixed multitude.  We don’t need it; we Jews are good enough at creating differences among ourselves without the idea of a shadowy cabal, but at least Levy’s treatment is humane and broad.