This summer we've seen riots. On the streets of London and Manchester on the one hand, in Tripoli

on the other. On the face of it, there was nothing in common between them. In London, the rioters

were holding rocks. In Tripoli, they were holding machine guns. In Libya, they were rioting

to remove a tyrant. In London, they were rioting for clothes and flat-screen

televisions. There was only one thing they had in common, namely that they were riots,

reminding us of what John Maynard Keynes used to say that civilization is a thin and precarious crust.

It can crumble quickly and easily. The riots in both

places in their different ways should actually make us think in a new way about the unique

political project Moses was engaged on in our parasha of Chauvthim and in the Book of

Dvarim as a whole. Why do crowds riot?

The short answer is because they can.

This year we saw the extraordinary impact of smartphones, messaging systems and social network

software.

The last things you might have thought to bring about a political revolution, but they've

done so in one country after another in the Middle East.

First Tunisia, then Egypt, then Libya, then Syria, and the reverberations will be with us

for many years to come.

Similarly in Britain, though for quite different reasons, they've led to the worst and certainly

the strangest rioting in a

generation.

What the technology has made possible is instant crowds.

And crowd behaviour is notoriously volatile and sweeps up many kinds of people in its vortex,

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