Parashat Beshallach by Rabbi Debbie Young-Somers

Shabbat Beshallach is celebrated around the world as ‘Shabbat Shirah’ – The shabbat of song. We accompany the Israelites across the Reed Sea, to freedom, where they burst into the Song of the Sea, a unique passage written to look quite different to the regular columns of Torah (shown in our picture).

Some say this poetic arrangement is meant to resemble the rolling waves of the sea. Other that it is meant to look like the sea being held back on either side with people walking down the middle. But I think I have stumbled on another possible visual clue we are being given, and it is rooted in a fascinating and allusive Biblical figure I first began studying and becoming aware of when I was studying Midrash at Leo Baeck College.

In the last parashah of Bereishit/Genesis, we hear about the caravan that came down to Egypt with Jacob and his 12 sons.  There aren’t many women that get a mention in this long list of the tribes, apart from the Matriarchs and Dinah. However one woman’s name jumps out once you know it is there. It is the name ‘Serach Bat Asher’. She is listed as a daughter of Asher and sister to Imnah, Ishvah, Ishvi, and Beri’ah. She joins her family in their emigration south to Egypt to see out the famine in Canaan. She isn’t mentioned again until Bamidbar/Numbers 26:46, where she is seen to be counted among the census of Israelites who came out of Egypt 

It is tantalizing titbits like this that are just made for Midrash! How is it possible that she lived so many hundreds of years? And what might she have witnessed in that time? What role did she serve living so long?

For the Rabbis, the two mentions of Serach in Torah were the starting point for a wonderful narrative. She joins a small group of men and women who are considered to have never died, and she becomes a tool of the Rabbis, who used her in Midrashim to fill in gaps in stories, for example an anonymous woman in 2 Samuel 20 is named as Serach. In this way, a rich life tapestry is woven for Serach, with no need for modern novels to bring her to life (though I do think she would be a great candidate for such a work!) The first question the Rabbis needed to answer is what on earth she did to merit such a long life. So the Rabbis ascribe Serach the task of informing Jacob that Joseph is still alive. The original account doesn’t mention much of anything, let alone Serach, but in Midrash it is explained that the brothers feared the news might shock Jacob to death, and so Serach delicately delivers the news of Josephs’ presence in Egypt in song, and enables him to take it on board gently. Jacob blesses her saying ‘if this is true, the bearer of the news shall live forever’ (The Alphabet of Ben Sira 28b, and Midrash HaGadol 46:25).

Serach also helps to solve a riddle left to us in Exodus, when we learn that Joseph's bones were taken out of Egypt with the Israelites. How did they know where to find them? Serach showed Moses of course! As she was there when Joseph would have been buried, and when his coffin left Egypt with the Exodus (Sotah 13a), she begins to provide a generational link between those who came down to Egypt, and those who left. In a similar vein she is said to have provided the prophetic proof that Moses was the leader that the slaves had been awaiting . In all of these tales she is the key bearer of information, and a link from one generation to another. The Rabbis suggest that Serach must have been a woman of incredible integrity and merit to warrant such an honour, but what is fascinating is that a woman so closely linked to the exodus story, and who is such a key transmitter of information from generation to generation, gets no mention in the Haggadah, the text that tries to do exactly what Serach does, according to tradition.

Serach's presence through Jewish time does not end in the Tanakh, and she even pops up in the Rabbinic period itself, where we read in a collection of Rabbinic sermons from sometime around the 6th century (Pesikta de Rav-Kahana 11:13):

‘Rabbi Yochanan was sitting and expounding, how the waters were made into a wall for Israel. Rabbi Yochanan explained they were like opaque walls. Serach the daughter of Asher grew angry and said, “I was there and they were like nets”.’

I was teaching about Serach at Limmud a few years ago, and an old RSY friend, Ben Soloway, had an amazing insight. I had always assumed Serach was angry because she had not been consulted despite being present. Ben suggested her anger came from somewhere else. Walking through water being held back by walls is one thing. Walking through water being held back by nets, that is a real act of faith! Her anger lies in the ignoring of this incredible devotion and bravery.

So we return to the text as it is written in the Torah scroll itself. When I look at this special arrangement of poetry all I can see now is nets. Nets that indicate the faith and fear that may have been felt by the Israelites, and the oral tradition that Serach bat Asher came to represent in the Midrashic tradition, filling in gaps and passing on from one generation to another the stories that would otherwise have been lost.

Every Pesach our seder meal is a beautiful recreation of this mesorah, this oral tradition, with every family adding in their own stories and traditions. So this year, why not add a cup of Serach. Like Elijah she ascended to heaven and could return at any time to help us tell the story. Unlike Elijah she was actually there!