Parashat Vayigash: Ki Serach Serach

The Talmud (Ketubot 62) recounts the story of Rabbi Chananya ben Chakhinai, who was away from home for a long time studying. One day, his wife unexpectedly saw him standing in the doorway. The shock caused her heart to leap, and “her soul flew off” (in this case using the word ruach = spirit). Rabbi Chananya was astonished that this should be her fate. He questioned Gd’s sense of justice, and she was miraculously revived. Perhaps what happened was that she fainted, as the shock caused the blood to temporarily leave her heart. 

In our Torah portion, there is a similar scenario when Jacob’s sons find out Joseph is alive and go home to tell their father. According to Sefer haYashar (Vayigash 9), they worry about the shock of the news killing him because he is elderly. With such a large family and so many people to choose from to try to give him the news gently, they see Asher’s daughter Serach coming to meet them and ask her to be the one to break the news.

There are various versions of the midrash, but the underlying question seems to be addressing why Serach is one of the few women mentioned in the list of 70 people who went down to Egypt and why she is mentioned again in a genealogy hundreds of years later after the Exodus. What is so special about this girl from the tribe of Asher? Typically when a woman’s name is mentioned in the Torah, there is some story about them, but there’s no story written about her. The midrash envisions that she is able to sing him a song about Joseph being alive in Egypt to soothingly break the news.Jacob was so happy for the news that he bestowed upon her a unique blessing.

According to the midrashic text The Aleph Bet of Ben Sira, Jacob gave Serach a blessing that “This mouth that informed me about Joseph being alive will not taste the flavor of death,” and indeed Serach appears in other midrashim that take place centuries later in the Torah and Tanakh, and even as a character in Rabbinic texts, carrying on this idea that she became immortal. Yonatan ben Uziel, in his Aramaic translation/commentary of the Torah, has a slightly different take, suggesting that she was able to walk into the Garden of Eden “without having to die first.” So maybe the gift was to choose when to physically die? Another strange legend is that she lived until the 12th Century CE when she  died in a fire in a Persian synagogue where she was buried. 

Among other midrashim about her are that in her long life she was able to tell Moses where Joseph was buried when they left Egypt (Talmud Sotah 13a) and that she prevented a war during the time of King David (Aggadat Bereshit 22). But life is more than just living. The greatest joy of life is sharing and creating life, so how is she blessed if she lives longer than her family and the people she cares for, having to watch them all die? 

If we analyze the words of Jacob’s blessing, “taste the flavor of death,” perhaps he means that she will not experience the feeling of death in the worst sense, as he certainly did himself, thinking that his son was devoured by a beast. Perhaps she would experience the death of a loved one by feeling that the person is being reborn in a new life. This is sort of as Jacob did, hearing from her how much his son had evolved (Joseph in many ways has started a new life in Egypt with a new name, career, and family).

In fact, like the winter snow that kills some plants but also renews the world by regulating the climate and resupplying water gently to the soil. It’s actually “refreshing” that while we are alive, there are different types of deaths. Everything that is part of us, at some point, dies and is reborn. For example, most of our cells die and are replaced. Recent studies show that even eye cells which we thought did not regenerate do so and are replaced. There is the death and replacement of our mental perspectives and the renewal of all our relationships. Sometimes, when we cannot solve a math problem, but are able to leave it alone completely and come back to it, we have the answer. Renewal and having a balance between joy and sadness are biologically necessary. Meditation can also help create this naturally-needed state of “lowness” without having to feel sad. What Serach did was deliver a meditation, with music and words, but in this case, it was to slowly bring the sad state of her grandfather to a higher state. How exactly she did this meditation matters less than that she did so with sensitivity to her grandfather’s needs at that time.

Perhaps Serach had herself experienced grief from death before, and now she would be able to avoid the pain in the future thanks to her blessing of a new perspective from her grandfather. Not only did this large family give such a magnificent task to a girl, but according to some interpretations (including the Ramban), she wasn’t even Asher’s biological daughter, but his stepdaughter. If so, what happened to her biological father? We might surmise the answer… 

Only through strong feelings can she create a vessel to receive such a blessing. Maybe the song she sang to Jacob was also part of this because to receive a blessing she also needs to change emotionally, from mourning her biological father’s death or the music she played. What is also significant is that if she wasn’t blood-related to Jacob, this might have been a significant ritual to become more fully woven into the fabric of his family. 

May you strengthen your bonds with family through only gentle words and meditations.

For more on colorful meditations, check out also my book Better Than You Wished For