Serah

NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH SARAH: It’s biblical! This week: Serah (rabbi Daniel Epstein, Jewish News).

THIS WEEK: Serah I’m PRIVILEGED to be inaugurating this new series of Biblical biographies, so thought I’d venture into a lesser-known but perhaps the most intriguing of all of the personalities in the Hebrew Bible. Our forefather Jacob had a grand-daughter called Serah (pronounced “Serach”); daughter of Asher.

We know of her because in the Torah’s listing of Jacob’s 54 grandchildren, 53 are male and she is the only woman. A woman of significant importance, no doubt, but who is she?

She is first mentioned in the book of Genesis 46:17, in a listing of the 70 who journeyed to Egypt with Jacob, “And the sons of Asher…and Serah their sister…”, and again in the book of Bamidbar (Numbers 26:46) as one of the family of Asher who escaped Egypt after 210 years of slavery.

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She also figures in Targum and Midrash.