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Revision as of 20:22, 16 April 2006 by Roserex57 (talk | contribs) (→External links)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)There are three mentions of Serach in the Torah. The first is in Genesis, in a passage that begins “These are the names of the Israelites, Jacob and his descendants, who came to Egypt,” and continues to mention all of Jacob’s sons, his daughter Dinah, his grandsons, and one granddaughter—Serach. The passage reads “The sons of Asher: Imnah, Ishvah, Ishvi, Beri’ah, with Serach their sister.” This sentence is repeated in Chronicles. One would suppose that, since the Torah mentions 53 grandsons and only one granddaughter, she was a person of significance.
The second time Serach is mentioned is in Numbers, in the listing of Israelites who escaped from Egypt, where it simply says “And the name of the daughter of Asher was Serach.” Since Serach is mentioned both as Jacob’s granddaughter and also as one of the people who escaped from Egypt over 400 years later, Serach is often referred to as the oldest woman in the Torah. A number of midrashim have been written about her.
The most well known of those midrashim tells of how she plays a harp for Jacob, gently mixing in the words that his son Joseph is “alive and the ruler of all Egypt,” so that the news does not come as too much of a shock for him. In return, Jacob blesses her, saying “May you live forever and never die.” According to that story, she never does, eventually entering Paradise alive.
There are also stories of her identifying Moses as the man who will lead the Israelites to freedom, and of her telling Moses where to find where Jacob was buried, although his body had been placed in a lead casket on the bottom of the Nile river when he died. Some consider her the guardian of Israel’s communal memory.
External links
- Edward Einhorn's absurdist comedy The Living Methuselah, appearing in his book of plays entitled The Golem, Methuselah, and Shylock, gives another perspective on both Serach and Methuselah. In it, Methuselah and Serach have lived to modern day, through all the major disasters of human history.