Who Is the Erev Rav — And How Do They Fit Into the End of Days?

A Theological Concept the Mekubalim Treated With Great Seriousness — And One Our Generation Must Approach With Equal Seriousness, and Equal Caution

The concept of the Erev Rav — the Mixed Multitude — appears throughout Torah literature, beginning in Sefer Shemos and developed extensively in the Midrash, the Zohar, the writings of the Arizal, the Vilna Gaon's school, and the works of major Acharonim including Rav Elchonon Wasserman Hy"d. In Charedi thought — particularly among those steeped in the teachings of Chassidus and Kabbalah — the Erev Rav is not simply a historical curiosity but a spiritual force with ongoing consequences, especially in the days leading up to the geulah.

Understanding the concept faithfully — what the sources actually say, what they do not say, and how the mainstream poskim teach us to apply the framework — is essential for navigating a generation in which the term is increasingly invoked, sometimes responsibly and sometimes recklessly. We work through it here in detail.

I. The Origins: Shemos 12:38

The first explicit mention of the Erev Rav appears in Shemos 12:37–38, recording the moment of Yetzias Mitzrayim:

"וַיִּסְעוּ בְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל מֵרַעְמְסֵס סֻכֹּתָה כְּשֵׁשׁ מֵאוֹת אֶלֶף רַגְלִי הַגְּבָרִים לְבַד מִטָּף. וְגַם עֵרֶב רַב עָלָה אִתָּם וְצֹאן וּבָקָר מִקְנֶה כָּבֵד מְאֹד"

"And the children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succos, about six hundred thousand on foot, the men, besides children. And also a mixed multitude went up with them, and flocks and herds, very much cattle."

The Mekubalim and many Rishonim — based on Midrashic and Zoharic sources — understood that this erev rav consisted of non-Jews who had been moved by the makkos and the kiddush Hashem of Yetzias Mitzrayim and attached themselves to Klal Yisrael as it left Mitzrayim. According to the dominant interpretation, Moshe Rabbeinu accepted them out of a deep desire for kiruv and tikkun olam — to bring the entire world toward recognition of Hashem.

The subsequent record of the Torah is, however, that the Erev Rav became a source of repeated spiritual difficulty for Klal Yisrael. The Sin of the Golden Calf — Cheit Ha'Egel — is identified by Chazal (Rashi on Shemos 32:7, citing the Midrash) as having been initiated by the Erev Rav, with Klal Yisrael following them into the sin. Similarly, the complaining about manna at Kivros HaTaavah is attributed in Bamidbar 11:4 to "the asafsuf that was in their midst" — a term Rashi and the Targum identify with the Erev Rav.

The Torah's account, in short, is not that the Erev Rav were simply marginal converts. It is that they were a distinct spiritual category whose presence within Klal Yisrael generated specific patterns of communal failure — patterns whose continuation into later generations the Mekubalim would address explicitly.

II. The Zohar's Treatment

The Zohar develops the Erev Rav as an ongoing spiritual force rather than a closed historical episode. Several key passages:

Zohar Chadash, Parshas Balak establishes the framing that the Erev Rav generated the foundational pattern of communal trouble for Klal Yisrael across the generations.

Zohar III, 124b describes the role of the Erev Rav in the end of days — specifically, that they will rise to positions of influence among the Jewish people, but their leadership will draw Jews away from Torah rather than toward it.

Zohar, Parshas Vayakhel 220a describes that the geulah sheleimah — the complete redemption — cannot come until the power of the Erev Rav is broken and the Shechinah can rest among true ovdei Hashem once again.

The Zohar's framing is not about specific individuals across history. It is about a spiritual category — a k'lipah, in the technical kabbalistic language — that operates across generations through whichever individuals or movements happen to embody its essence at a given moment. The Erev Rav, in the Zohar's framework, is less a population and more a force whose operation is recognizable by its effects: drawing Klal Yisrael away from Torah authority, fragmenting communal unity, replacing service of Hashem with substitute ideologies.

III. The Arizal: Five Categories

The Arizal — Rabbi Yitzchak Luria zt"l — developed the Zohar's treatment systematically in Sha'ar HaGilgulim. In Hakdama 11 and Hakdama 23, the Arizal describes how the souls associated with the Erev Rav return in gilgulim across the generations, manifesting through specific middos ra'os (negative character traits).

The five categories, drawn from the Arizal's writings and Tikunei Zohar 41, are typically described as:

1. Nefilim — those characterized by gaavah, prideful self-aggrandizement, who seek honor and recognition above Torah
2. Anakim — those who mock Talmidei chachamim and the authority of Torah leadership
3. Refaim — those who abandon mitzvah observance and discourage others from observance
4. Giborim — those who use power, position, or force to oppress observant Jews and Torah institutions
5. Amalekim — those who sow hatred among Jews and ultimately deny the foundations of emunah

The Arizal's framing here is critical. He is not identifying biological descendants. He is identifying spiritual patterns — middos and behaviors — that, when they appear in any individual or movement, indicate the operation of the Erev Rav k'lipah. The categories describe a typology of opposition to Torah, not a genealogy of opponents.

IV. The Vilna Gaon and Kol HaTor

The most influential framing for understanding the Erev Rav in the modern period comes from the school of the Vilna Gaon, transmitted through Kol HaTor, the sefer compiled by his talmid Rabbi Hillel Rivlin of Shklov, published in 1947 and again in 1968.

The Gra's teaching in Kol HaTor Chapter 2 is sharp:

"Our main service and battle is to break and to remove the strength of the Erev Rav, the k'lipah of Armelius the Evil, from Israel. The Erev Rav is our greatest enemy, the one who separates the two moshiachs. The k'lipah of the Erev Rav works only through deception and roundabout ways. Therefore, the war against the Erev Rav is the most difficult and bitterest of all."

Several things are critical to understand about this passage.

First, the Gra explicitly identifies the Erev Rav as a k'lipah — a spiritual shell, a force, not a population. This is consistent with the Arizal's framing.

Second, the war the Gra describes is fought through deception and roundabout ways — meaning that the Erev Rav's effectiveness lies precisely in not being identifiable as such by externals. They wear Jewish clothing, speak Hebrew, use Jewish vocabulary. The challenge is recognizing the operation of the k'lipah behind the surface form.

Third, the Gra's framework explicitly connects the Erev Rav to the separation between Moshiach ben Yosef and Moshiach ben Dovid. The kabbalistic logic is that the Erev Rav's spiritual function is to prevent the two moshiachs from being unified — meaning that the operation of the k'lipah is structurally tied to the delay of the geulah.

Fourth, the war against the Erev Rav, the Gra writes, is fought spiritually — through Torah strengthening, through the rejection of the ideologies the k'lipah operates through, through the unification of Klal Yisrael under authentic Torah leadership. It is not a war of arms or of public denunciation of specific individuals.

V. Rav Elchonon Wasserman's Application

Rav Elchonon Wasserman Hy"d, talmid muvhak of the Chofetz Chaim, applied the Erev Rav framework explicitly to twentieth-century Jewish ideological movements in his published Kovetz Maamarim and Ikvesa D'Meshicha. Rav Elchonon's central thesis — anchored in Zoharic and Vilna Gaon sources — was that movements which presented themselves as Jewish while systematically undermining Torah authority were operating, structurally, in the role the Mekubalim assigned to the Erev Rav.

His analysis identified the operating signature: movements that claim to represent the Jewish people while substituting for Torah some other authority — nationalism, secularism, ethnic identity, social progress — as the primary content of Jewish peoplehood. The form may be Jewish; the substance is the displacement of Torah by something else.

Rav Elchonon was not naming specific individuals. He was describing an ideological pattern. He warned that in the generation before Mashiach, many Jews would follow this pattern unknowingly, because its arguments would be wrapped in compelling language — nationalism, progress, equality, modernity — that would obscure its underlying displacement of Torah.

The application of this framework to twentieth-century history was, in Rav Elchonon's view, the contemporary form of an ancient battle. The names changed across the generations. The structure remained constant.

VI. The Modern Application — With Critical Cautions

Here we must be careful, and we must say so explicitly.

The Erev Rav concept is real Torah. It is sourced in the Zohar, the Arizal, the Vilna Gaon's school, and Rav Elchonon Wasserman. It describes a spiritual force whose operation across Jewish history is documented in primary kabbalistic sources. Anyone who dismisses the concept as fringe or invented is dismissing two thousand years of accepted Charedi-mystical tradition.

But the Erev Rav concept has also, in recent decades, been misused in ways the original sources never intended and the mainstream poskim explicitly reject. We must name these misuses clearly so they do not contaminate the legitimate framework:

The Erev Rav is not a population that can be identified by lineage. It is a k'lipah, an ideological pattern. The Arizal's reference to gilgulim refers to spiritual roots, not to genealogical descent. No Jew can be identified as Erev Rav based on parentage, ethnicity, or community. The framework is about ideology, not blood.

The Erev Rav cannot be identified with certainty in specific living individuals. The Gra's own teaching is that the k'lipah operates through deception and roundabout ways — meaning that surface appearance is unreliable. Anyone confident he has identified a specific living Jew as Erev Rav has, by the Gra's own framing, almost certainly misapplied the concept. The mainstream poskim have consistently emphasized that the framework is analytical, not accusatory.

Most secular Jews are not Erev Rav. The Chazon Ish, the Brisker Rav, Rav Shach, and every major posek of the past century has emphasized the category of tinokos shenishbu — captured infants — to describe the majority of contemporary secular Jews. These are Jews raised without authentic Torah education, who are not personally responsible for their lack of observance, and who must be treated with rachmanus, kindness, and the patient work of kiruv. Calling secular Jews "Erev Rav" as a slur is not Torah. It is the misuse of Torah.

The framework does not license aggression toward fellow Jews. The Gra's teaching is that the war is fought spiritually, through Torah strengthening and rejection of the ideologies the k'lipah operates through. It is not fought through violence, intimidation, or public denunciation of named individuals. Anyone using the Erev Rav framework to justify aggressive behavior against other Jews has departed from the mainstream tradition entirely.

The framework is internal, not external. Rav Tzadok HaKohen of Lublin teaches across his writings (Tzidkas HaTzaddik, Pri Tzaddik, Resisei Laylah) that the work of distinguishing kedushah from k'lipah begins inside the self. Every Jew must first ask the question of himself: am I aligned with Torah, or am I shaping Judaism according to my own logic? The framework is a mirror first, and a description of external forces second.

VII. What the Framework Does Tell Us About Our Generation

With those cautions clearly stated, the framework does illuminate certain patterns of our generation that the gedolim across the centuries identified as bearing the signature of the Erev Rav k'lipah:

The replacement of Torah authority with secular authority. When courts, parliaments, and public opinion are positioned as legitimate arbiters of Jewish religious questions — and when Torah authority is dismissed as outdated, parochial, or undemocratic — the structural move the Mekubalim associated with the Erev Rav is taking place. The Torah is real; whatever displaces it is not.

The substitution of nationalism for Torah. When Jewish peoplehood is reduced to ethnic identity, political sovereignty, or cultural continuity — and Torah is reduced to one element among others within that broader package — the Saadia Gaon's foundational principle ("Ein umaseinu uma ela b'Toroseha" — our nation is only a nation by virtue of its Torah, Emunos V'Deos) is being inverted. Rav Elchonon's analysis explicitly identifies this inversion as a marker of the operation Rav Elchonon associated with the Erev Rav k'lipah.

The "softening" of Torah to fit the surrounding culture. When the response to Torah demands is consistent compromise to fit the values of the surrounding world — when "be normal," "don't be extreme," "you can be Jewish without the details" become the operative principles — the spiritual signature the Gra described is present. The k'lipah operates through deception, the Gra wrote. The deception in our generation often comes in the form of moderation that always pulls in one direction: away from authentic Torah.

The targeting of Torah learning as the locus of attack. The Mekubalim identified a specific pattern: the Erev Rav k'lipah, whenever it manifests in history, focuses its attack on the learning of Torah. The Cantonist Decrees, the Soviet suppression, the Maskilim's campaign against Volozhin — and, in our generation, the systematic effort to subject Talmidei chachamim to conscription and to dismantle the structural exemption the Rambam codifies — all bear this signature.

These are patterns. They are not accusations against named individuals. The framework helps us recognize the operation without licensing us to identify the operators.

VIII. The Proper Response

What the sources teach us about how to respond to the Erev Rav k'lipah is sharply different from what the misappropriation of the framework sometimes suggests:

Vigilant loyalty to Torah and its leaders. The Gra's "main service" is not external attack but internal strengthening — drawing closer to the gedolei haposkim, accepting daas Torah, learning more, davening more, doing the structural work of Torah-observant Jewish life.

Avoidance of ideological synthesis with movements that displace Torah. This does not mean hating individual Jews who hold these ideologies. It means not allowing the ideologies themselves into the structure of Charedi life. The community can love individual Jews while maintaining clear hashkafic separation from the movements that have, historically, undermined Torah authority.

Building genuine achdus on a Torah foundation. The Charedi mesorah teaches that the true unity of Klal Yisrael flows from shared commitment to Torah — not from political coalition, not from shared ethnicity, not from cultural similarity. Achdus rooted in Torah is real achdus. Achdus rooted in anything else is a temporary alliance that will collapse the moment its non-Torah premise comes under pressure.

Tefillah for the return of those whose souls are Jewish. The Charedi tradition treats every secular Jew — even those operating within ideologies the framework identifies as Erev-Rav-aligned — as a potential baal teshuva, a soul that may yet return. The work of return is the work of the gedolei haposkim and the kiruv movement. The hatred or rejection of individuals has no place in it.

Personal teshuvah and self-examination. Rav Tzadok HaKohen's framework — every Jew must first ask the question of himself — is the first practical step. The Erev Rav k'lipah operates externally only insofar as it has not been rejected internally. The work begins with the self, with the home, with the chinuch of one's own children.

IX. The Geulah Framework

The Mekubalim's teaching is that the geulah sheleimah cannot come until the operation of the Erev Rav k'lipah is broken. "V'hasirosi mikirbeich alizei ge'oneich" — "I will remove from your midst the prideful and arrogant ones" (Tzefaniah 3:11) — is, in the Zoharic reading, a specific reference to this removal. The breaking of the k'lipah, in turn, is connected to the unification of Moshiach ben Yosef and Moshiach ben Dovid (Kol HaTor, Chapter 2) — the unification that the k'lipah is structurally designed to prevent.

The Charedi understanding is that this unfolding is happening, slowly, in our generation. The pressure intensifies because the operation is reaching its endgame. The greater the surface conflict between Torah and the ideologies that displace it, the closer we come to the moment when the displacement collapses and Torah reassumes its rightful place.

This is not a triumphalist reading. It is a difficult one. The Mekubalim describe this period as the most bitter and difficult of all — because the work is internal, deceptive, and requires extraordinary clarity in conditions designed to obscure it. The Gra wrote that anyone who does not participate in the avodah — the spiritual work of strengthening Torah against the k'lipah — becomes by default a partner with the k'lipah. The neutrality the modern world demands is not, in the Gra's framework, available to a serious Jew in our generation.

X. Conclusion: Awareness, Not Aggression

The Erev Rav concept is one of the most powerful frameworks the Mekubalim transmitted to us for understanding the spiritual structure of Jewish history. Used correctly — as the Gra, the Arizal, Rav Elchonon, and Rav Tzadok HaKohen used it — it sharpens our awareness, strengthens our commitment to Torah, and orients us toward the geulah. Used incorrectly — as a slur against specific Jews, as a license for hatred, as a tool of communal aggression — it becomes precisely the kind of spiritual harm the framework was supposed to help us recognize and reject.

The Erev Rav is not a person you can point to. It is a k'lipah you must recognize in the patterns of history, in the structure of ideologies, and — first and most importantly — in the temptations within yourself.

The proper response is what it has always been: Torah, tefillah, teshuvah, ahavas Yisrael, and the structural work of being a serious Jew in a generation that pulls in the opposite direction. The seforim are still on the shelf. The yeshivos are still full. The bnei Torah are still learning. The k'lipah operates loudly, but the Torah operates eternally. And when the avodah of this generation is complete, bimheirah b'yameinu, the k'lipah will fall, the two moshiachs will be unified, and the Shechinah will return to its rightful place among the ovdei Hashem.

That is what the Mekubalim taught. That is what we are working toward. That is the framework, used correctly, for understanding the moment we are in.

Sources

Primary Torah and Tanach sources

• Shemos 12:37–38 — the original Erev Rav at Yetzias Mitzrayim
• Shemos 32:7 with Rashi — the Erev Rav and Cheit Ha'Egel
• Bamidbar 11:4 with Rashi and Targum — the asafsuf and the complaints at Kivros HaTaavah
• Tzefaniah 3:11 — "V'hasirosi mikirbeich alizei ge'oneich"

Zoharic sources

• Zohar Chadash, Parshas Balak — the Erev Rav as the source of trouble across the generations
• Zohar III, 124b — the Erev Rav rising to leadership in the end of days
• Zohar, Parshas Vayakhel 220a — the breaking of the Erev Rav as a precondition for the geulah
• Tikunei Zohar 41 — the five categories of Erev Rav

Arizal sources

• Sha'ar HaGilgulim, Hakdama 11 — Erev Rav souls and gilgulim
• Sha'ar HaGilgulim, Hakdama 23 — the five categories and their spiritual roots

Vilna Gaon school

• Kol HaTor, Chapter 2 (Section 2) — the Gra's teaching on the war against the Erev Rav k'lipah; attributed to Rabbi Hillel Rivlin of Shklov, talmid of the Vilna Gaon; published 1947 by Rabbi Shlomo Rivlin and 1968 by Rabbi Menachem Mendel Kasher
• Sifra D'Tzniusa, Chapter 1 with the Vilna Gaon's commentary

Acharonim

• Kovetz Maamarim and Ikvesa D'Meshicha, Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman Hy"d — application of the framework to twentieth-century Jewish ideological movements
• Tzidkas HaTzaddik, Pri Tzaddik, Resisei Laylah, Rabbi Tzadok HaKohen Rabinowitz of Lublin — the internal/external framework
• Emunos V'Deos, Saadia Gaon — "Ein umaseinu uma ela b'Toroseha"

Historical and contextual sources

• Wikipedia, "Kol HaTor" — publication history and scholarly notes
• Torah.org, "The Eruv Rav: Then and Now" and "The Erev Rav" — Rabbi Pinchas Winston, summary of the Vilna Gaon's teachings
• Documented application of tinokos shenishbu framework by the Chazon Ish, Brisker Rav, Rav Shach, Rav Elyashiv, and the contemporary Roshei Yeshiva to the question of secular Jews in modern times