Erev Rosh Hashanah 5786 | September 22, 2025

Watch Rabbi Faryn's D'var Torah here:

Read along with Rabbi Faryn's D'var Torah here:

We’ve been meeting in secret for months. Behind the hush of closed doors and secret knocks, we have found our way to one another. Each with our own story, with our own background and station in society and for our own reason, we are fed up. Fed up with the status quo, a status quo that seems to serve no one–Israelite and Egyptian alike–, perhaps except Pharoah and his courtiers.

“Tonight, we’ll receive a report-back from Ahmose. Ahmose, how were things looking down by the water?” Aaron asks.

“Pretty grim” Ahmose answers. “I arrived at the riverside, as I do every morning. But with all the blood, the fish have all died. Pharoah has sent servants to collect their carcasses, for fear of permanent contamination. Otherwise, not a soul in sight. I was sent home–no fish to catch today. People are scared. And, word around town is, Pharoah is scared too.”

Moses looks pleased. He whispers in Aaron’s ear. Aaron turns.

“Good,” he says. “Fear is good. Great idea, Ma’at.” He nods toward a woman in the corner. “We’ve narrowed in on the very heart of things. Their, quite literal, lifeline. And the symbolism of blood, I couldn’t have thought of something more poetic if I had tried. Ramses, do we think this is enough to move Pharoah?”

“Unfortunately, no,” says a man in seemingly royal garb, near the front. “At the cabinet meeting today, he was talking about a counter-attack. I think we need to escalate.”

“Okay, what are we thinking?” Aaron asks the room. “Ideas?”

Miriam pipes in. “If water is so important to them, let’s stay focused there for a moment. What else will continue to disrupt their access to water?”

“What about frogs!?” Someone shouts from the back. “Lots and lots of frogs.”

“Or one giant frog!” someone yells from another corner.

“Brilliant!” Aaron says. “Let’s hone in.”

This is a meeting of the Erev Rav.

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In Exodus, we are told that, the night Pharoah finally gave issue to let the people go, as they had so been demanding, the Israelites did not depart alone, but an Erev Rav rose with them.

The term itself is never explained and henceforward, there is no mention of the erev rav in Torah. So there is much speculation as to what this Erev Rav is. But, first, let's break the term down etymologically. 

We have Erev, which many of us may recognize as the Hebrew word for “evening.” But the word has a second meaning–something more akin to mixture, or something that is knit together. 

And then we have Rav, which means “much,” “many,” “great.”

So out of the narrow place with the Israelites arose a “great mixture” or a “mixed multitude”–what comes to be understood in the commentary as “a mingling of various nations, of sojourners in our midst” (Rashi on Exodus 12:38) and/or “peoples of Mitzrayim (Ancient Egypt) who knitted themselves together with the Israelites.” (Ibn Ezra on Exodus 12:38)

What is the significance of this? Who were these people? Why did they leave Mitzrayim with the Israelites? How many were there? Did they stay with the Israelites from there on out, or did they set off on their own? Were they opportunists, who joined with the Israelites at the exact moment of their liberation, or had they been part of the community already? The Torah says nothing to answer these questions. Never again, in all the stories of the wilderness, is the Erev Rav mentioned. They simply appear to dissolve into the people.

That is, as I said, in Torah, in the sense of the Five Books of Moses. However, the later rabbinic and kabbalistic literature tell a very different story.

But to tell that story, we must begin again in Torah. In the Book of Numbers, following our previous story and after a long time wandering in the desert, eating nothing but the magical manna that fell from the sky, we hear that the “as’p’suf” (more on that later) began to desire more. This increased desire led the Israelites to cry and complain, saying “If only we had meat to eat!” (Numbers 11:4). Now, according to the Torah, this complaint came across as quite ungrateful, given that the Divine had literally rescued them from servitude and was now providing them with ample food and water in a climate where none was to be found otherwise. So complaining was considered definitively a bad thing, and the as’p’suf, the instigators of this misbehavior.

So what of this as’p’suf? Who, or what, were they? Again, the Torah doesn’t say, but according to medieval commentators such as Rashi, they are none other than the Erev Rav–the mixed multitude of our previous story. The Erev Rav planted this seed of “more”, and it led the Israelites astray. It led them to break rank and act out of alignment with the gratitude owed to their Source of Life.

So we find in this later commentary a retrojection of the Erev Rav back into the story of the wilderness. We learn, the Erev Rav are still with the Israelites in the desert. Yet in their togetherness, they still maintain this sense of being distinct. There is the as’p’suf– or the Erev Rav– on one side, and there are the Israelites on the other. And, in this framework, the Erev Rav seems to be the problem.

The kabbalistic tradition–that of the medieval Jewish mystics– expands further on the presence and role of the Erev Rav in the wilderness.

In the Zohar, the central book of Kabbalah, the narrative of the Golden calf is referenced. It cites the Torah, which reads “When ha’am–the people– saw that Moses was delayed in coming down the mountain, ha’am, the people gathered around Aaron and said “Come, make us a god who shall go before us, for that fellow Moses—the man who brought us from the land of Mitzrayim—we do not know what has happened to him.”” (Exodus 32:1) Aaron then, in response to their ask, proceeds to make a golden calf, an idol for the people to worship. 

Now, as this story reads in its plain-sense, the creation of this idol is considered a grave transgression, of/performed by the Israelite people against the Gd that just delivered them from the throes of oppression. But the Zohar is unwilling to accept that plain-sense reading. Their logic is, if “Israelites” was the people intended, it would have said “Israelites,” not “the people.” So, the Zohar’s authors choose to ask the question: if “the people” were the ones to instigate this transgression, who were these people?

And no sooner is the question asked then answered: why, they are the Erev Rav, of course! It was the Erev Rav who convinced Aaron to make a false idol, not the children of Israel. The Erev Rav planted the seed, stoked the fear, and led the people astray. 

This is not the only instance that the Zohar indicts the Erev Rav.  In this literature, a new definition of the Erev Rav begins to bloom. In earlier rabbinic works, there is this, as we have seen, scapegoating of the Erev Rav–casting blame on them as an easy way to shirk Israelite responsibility. “Oh, that was just the Erev Rav that did that bad thing, not the beloved Israelites!” But their mistakes appear unintentional–simply a symptom of, perhaps, not being Israelite. But, in the Zohar, we are painted a picture of an Erev Rav acting with deceitful intent. Not only do the Erev Rav transgress, but they intentionally do so in order to lead the Israelites astray.

The Zohar extrapolates thus from the story: Any time Torah refers to “the people,” it is referencing the Erev Rav. There are many instances in the Torah’s tales of the wilderness-wandering times where it says “The people complained…” “The people challenged.” “The people rebelled.” For the authors of the Zohar, these “people” are never–could never be–the Israelites (as I believe the Torah’s authors intended to imply). Rather, they are the Erev Rav meddling, needling, attempting to destroy the Israelites from within.

And so too, today, continued the Hasidic tradition. According to the disciples of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, in every generation, the Erev Rav rise up against the people Israel. And, with this exegetical turn, the Erev Rav is sealed in the Jewish canon as the eternal “enemy from within.”

The rhetoric of the “enemy within” is all too familiar in our times.

Quoting the current leader of the “free world”:

“But, you know, we do have an enemy from within. We have some very bad people, and those people are also very dangerous. They would like to take down our country.” (Oct 31, 2024)

As I believe we in this room recognize, there is no enemy, infiltrating the United States, trying to take us down from within–at least, not in the way Trump is implying. We are merely made up of a patchwork–an erev rav, if you will–of peoples with vast ways of being, all trying to build life together on one land, under one banner, within a system rooted in inequality, built by slave labor, upon stolen land, in an increasingly globalized and interconnected world, characterized by mass migration due to the impact of war, colonization, and climate catastrophe. But Trump’s goals are not served by acknowledging these truths. So he constructs an enemy within–a rhetorical strategy to achieve a larger goal.

And what is this goal?

For Trump, I believe the goal is the consolidation of power. If people are afraid, people obey. Therefore, everyone’s existential fears (including ours) become (his) playthings, used in pursuit of this power, and all actions, no matter how harmful, defensible in the name of “protection.”

In the case of Trump, it is easy to see through his false rhetoric and identify ulterior motive. But when it comes to us, it might be far less obvious that we are engaging in the act of constructing an internal enemy, let alone our motive for doing so.

So let’s return to our story. Why did our ancestors, over thousands of years, take two words from the Torah, never again mentioned together/in construct, and from them weave a grand tale of eternal precarity and what could be considered the greatest threat to Jewish continuity and existence? Why did they fashion for themselves an enemy within?

The authors of the Torah wrote a book of imperfection. Of flawed characters acting in flawed ways, and yet still being deserving of life, of land, of community, of home. But its later Jewish readers and interpreters could not grok this imperfection–“the imperfect ancestor.” Rather than acknowledging that our mythic ancestors frequently and continuously messed up and still not only survived, but remained in covenant with the one to whom they caused harm– Gd–they invented an enemy onto whom all blame could be cast, thus rendering the Israelites wholly innocent. And then, they led us to fear that illusory enemy, not only historically, or literarily, but contemporarily.

So, it begs the question, why were our ancestors unable to accept the imperfection of their ancestors? Perhaps it was because they did not want to see themselves as in a lineage of wrongdoers. Or perhaps their present was riddled by wrongs, by questions, by loss of faith, and they needed ancestors they could believe in–ancestors who modeled a different way. A better way. And if they could just change the story…

So they tweaked the meaning, just a bit, here and there. And they scapegoated. What could be the harm!? And, before they knew it, they had created a beast that grew out of their control until they forgot altogether that this beast–this enemy–was of their own making. They began to fear the work of their own hands.

I do not believe our ancestors, as was the case with Trump, had malicious or selfish intent in the construction of their enemy within. Rather, and more often, I believe people construct an “enemy within” because they are not willing to face the real root of a problem and their own culpability within it. But, as we have learned, avoidance of culpability can create new–and often harmful– realities.

The concept of the Erev Rav as the enemy within has been thoroughly integrated into Jewish thought and lifeways–quite explicitly within Orthodoxy, where the danger of the Erev Rav as the enemy within is discussed openly, but I believe also more subtly and unknowingly within liberal and secular Judaisms. And this concept’s prevalence, however subtle, I believe is one primary factor leading to the increasing isolation of the Jewish people from other peoples with whom I believe we would otherwise be in solidarity.

Let me provide an example.

I met with a representative from the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) recently to discuss Or Shalom’s relationship with the organization, and the different ways our communities are showing up in this political moment. One thing we discussed were the ceasefire resolutions that many cities were voting on back in 2023 and 2024. Putting aside for a moment whether those ceasefire resolutions were rightful or wrong, I said, I fear the optics. I am worried that, by an organized Jewish bloc showing up en masse on one side of the aisle, and seemingly every other marginalized community showing up– in coalition–on the other, we are setting a dangerous precedent. And while the argument from the JCRC’s side may have been "international affairs have no place in city politics,” the optics of such positionality–whether we intend it or not– is that we, the Jewish people, can only be safe if we are siloed and completely alone, set apart from other peoples. That we, the Jewish people, are only safe if they are not safe.

Except, Jews did not fall on just one side of the aisle at these public comments.  There were Jews in favor of the ceasefire resolution. And Jews against the ceasefire resolution. But this ideological aisle expanded to become much more than where one fell on ceasefire–it became the litmus test used by Jews across the aisle to call into question one another’s very Jewishness -who is a bad Jew, and who is a good Jew. Who is a real Jew, and who is the Erev Rav. 

Except, none of us are that Erev Rav. In the sense of the enemy within, there is no Erev Rav.

The American Jew speaking against the ceasefire resolution is not the Erev Rav. The American Jew speaking for the ceasefire resolution is not the Erev Rav. The American Jew who believes that Jewish people will never be safe without the state of Israel is not the Erev Rav. The American Jew who believes the existence of Israel as a Jewish state makes Jews everywhere less safe is not the Erev Rav. The American Jew terrified of rising antisemitism is not the Erev Rav. The American Jew, who is sick of being called an antisemite or a self-hating Jew for their antizionism, is not the Erev Rav.

The Palestinian-American crying out for their family under a sky of bombs in Gaza is not the Erev Rav. The average American citizen–neither Jew nor Palestinian–showing up in the streets with a sign that says “Free Palestine” is not the Erev Rav. 

We may not all agree about the path to liberation. We may not all agree about what keeps us safe, or even whose safety we should prioritize. But we are not enemies. Turning each other into the enemy serves no one. Turning the other into the enemy serves no one. In fact, it is an act of harm to both self and other. We do not get free that way. No one gets free that way.

I want for there to be an Erev Rav. Need for there to be. But in the sense that I believe the Torah’s authors intended: Of peoples who, too, required liberation, and saw their liberation as inextricable from ours. 

There is a midrash that states the Erev Rav did not join with the Israelites just at the moment of their liberation, as opportunists, but joined with them far before. And thus, when the firstborn of every ancient Egyptian was struck down during the tenth plague, the firstborn of the Erev Rav–despite many being Egyptian themselves–survived. They were so integrated into the Israelite people that their fates were now bound together–their fates were the same.

What would have happened if the Israelites had slammed the door in their face? Not allowed the Erev Rav in? How many more deaths? How much more suffering? Would the Israelites even have gotten free if not for the Erev Rav, choosing to rise with them?

I, personally, want to follow the lead of these mythic ancestors. The ancestors who chose to be vulnerable enough to let other people in. To trust them. Their motives. Their intention. eEven if doing so very well might have increased the risk. Threatened their safety. But instead, the Erev Rav was saved, and we too, in kind.

I know so many people–peoples–who are ready, willing and eager to be our Erev Rav. Can we find the same eagerness to be theirs? I see us, already on our way there. What will make us feel safe enough to join with them, knowing that no one’s safety–not theirs, not ours–is ever guaranteed? Not by solidarity, nor by sword.

But what I do know, with total faith, is now is not the time to be alone.

So what if our ancestors had chosen to read the story another way? Rather than turning the Erev Rav into the enemy within, who, in every generation, rises up against us, what if we had understood the Erev Rav as our allies in shared struggle? Those who joined us not to destroy us, but because they too required liberation, and they realized that their liberation and our liberation were one and the same. What if the Erev Rav were the reason we got free? For, at the end of the day, the Torah does not say the Erev Rav rose against us. It quite literally says the Erev Rav rose with us.
____________________________________________

Cries of anguish pierce the simmering air, as we all gather in, close. The smell of the blood coating the doorway still fresh, still pungent.

Everyone appears worn down and terrified, yet in the reflection of each others’ eyes, there glimmers glorious possibility. 

Some had made the choice to stay behind. They had smuggled in jewels and coins and every kind of treasure from their homes across the river, and showered it upon us, hugging us close as they did. And some had gathered their own rucksacks and stood, too, ready to depart with us.

Moses whispers into Aaron’s ear. Aaron reports,

“Pharoah has given in to our demands. He is allowing us to take leave. But we do not know what is next for us. His heart may very well harden again. So we must make haste. At dawn, We Rise. At dawn…

(Sing Batya Levine’s We Rise:)

We Rise… humbly hearted
Rise… won’t be divided
Rise… with spirit to guide us
Rise!

(Chorus) (x2)
In hope, in prayer, we find ourselves here
In hope, in prayer, we’re right here!

We Rise… all of the children
Rise… elders with wisdom
Rise… ancestors surround us
Rise!

(Chorus)
We Rise… up from the wreckage
Rise… with tears and with courage
Rise… fighting for life
Rise!