We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Mixed Multitude

by Argyle Torah

supported by
Aaron Smith
Aaron Smith thumbnail
/

  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $7 USD  or more

     

1.
Aleph 15:19
2.
Bet 11:26
3.
Gimmel 13:54

about

The Mixed Multitude (Erev Rav) is an ancient slur at the nexus of myth, genealogy, and prophecy. Originally describing the Egyptians who fled the pharaoh alongside the Israelites in the days of Exodus, the Erev Rav has been used through the millennia as an epithet for those who challenge the very foundations of Jewry. The charge is simple: that the Jews who wish to change Judaism are actually the descendants of ancient Egyptians – that they are not the true Israelites, as if their blasphemy arose as a recessive trait inherited from a nation of slaver goyim.

Kabbalists, Syncretists, Frankists, Karites, Samaritans, all those who “wandered from the path” and in so doing have generated schism within the community – they all receive the charge.

We know that this ethnic purity is a falsity of falsity. That there are no “true” descendants from Moses and his flock. We know that the structure of Judaism changes with power, with the state of Israel, our temples, our grains, our herbs, with material and sensorial cataclysm, with our proximity to the horrors of the modern world.

We know that this appeal to the eternal and ephemeral Jew will always lead to a control which slips away. In part because there is no ultimate control which is possible: the die has been cast, we are molten lava finding our form amidst the contours of history, the various currents pushing and pulling with and against each other but ultimately conforming to the constraints of this earth.

What goes beyond this earth and into a world of dreams, gnosis, everyday intuition is what can change our fate. It is the acts of the Lord which encourage us to bring about new forms. It was the Lord themself who brought together the people of Israel and Egypt to cross the Red Sea. When so-called holy people charge those who seek to bring about this new world with being a part of the Mixed Multitude, they are unsuspectingly arguing on behalf of its divine sanction, and asserting the important place of free thinkers in the frontiers of Jewish practice.

“I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the messiah, and though he may tarry, nonetheless do I still believe.”
– Maimonides

credits

released July 4, 2022

AARON POND
Electronic Wind Instrument
Horn
Vocals
Harmonica
Handbells
Radio

THOMAS PATTESON
Alto saxophone
Keyboard
Modular synthesizer



Performed live at Fidget Space, 27 February 2022

Special thanks to Megan Bridge and Peter Price

Mastered by Bhob Rainey

Liner notes by Aaron Pond

Cover art by Jessica Brown

[Full Copyright]

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Aaron Pond image

Aaron Pond Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Aaron Pond is alive. His improvisational practice is drawn from early atonal music, the playful spirituality of the AACM, and a South Florida childhood spent in synagogues and swamps. His scholarly pursuits center the universal aesthetic structures of spirit possession and the marking power of ritual. Aaron wishes to find himself in the turbulent seas of sensation. ... more

contact / help

Contact Aaron Pond

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like Mixed Multitude, you may also like:

Bandcamp Daily  your guide to the world of Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

Beans joins the show to discuss his album release, "ZWAARD".

listen now