Community Blog

Shabbat Shalom! It is time to count the Omer. The Blessing can be found on page 570, and this Shabbat we are counting Day 7. 

In Kabbalistic terms, this night of the Omer is assigned to the mystical realms of Yesod SheBeChesed, which Rabbi Jill Hammer translates to “Connection within Love” in her Omer Calendar of Biblical Women. She assigns Serach Bat Asher to this combination of Divine attributes. Serach Bat Asher is named in every genealogical listing of the Tribes of Israel and their descendants throughout the Tanakh, and she is the only daughter so named. Aside from the distinction of being a woman named in these lists, her name is also listed not just in the reiterations of the children of Asher the son of Jacob, or as a Serach, member of the tribe of Asher, but Serach Bat Asher specifically in the list of Jacob’s family that entered Egypt in the end of Genesis, in the list of Israelites that are counted in Numbers, indicating the same woman has lived for at least 200 years (or 400, depending on which account of the period in Egypt you’re reading). This gave way to a host of midrashim about Serach Bat Asher, the immortal Israelite, guiding her uncles, grandfather, nephews, and their descendants throughout Jewish history (most of the stories are about her helping the more famous male characters of our people’s mythos). 

The midrash that explains her immortality is that she sang the news of Joseph being alive to Jacob when the brothers returned from their first visit to Egypt to seek assistance. They were worried the news, though joyful, would be too overwhelming and perhaps hard for Jacob to believe, and that he might have a stroke or something. By breaking the news to him musically, letting the information filter in with the cadence of their daily prayers, Search allowed Jacob to learn of Joseph’s life in a gentle way that he could fully process. For this, he blessed her “May the mouth that told me these words never taste death!” My favorite Serach midrash describes her helping Moses to find Joseph’s bones as the Israelites are preparing to leave Egypt. It feels like an Indiana Jones movie, as they race in tunnels and through shallow riverways to access the sarcophogus and heist it out of Egypt with them. Rabbi Hammer says this is the moment she shows her Yesod SheBeChesed-ness: “Serach’s love, her chesed, showed itself through yesod - through connecting one generation to another.” 

Rabbi Hammer also points out that this day of the omer coincides with the seventh day of Passover, the day on which we celebrate the crossing of the Sea of Reeds. Indeed, the Torah reading for this Shabbat is a repeat of Parashat Beshallach, which we read about a month ago - the story of the Song of the Sea. Another Serach legend is that in the time of the Talmud, Serach poked her head in the window of the Beit Midrash and told the ancient rabbis that the walls of the sea looked like clear mirrors, in which all the Israelites could see all future and past generations of the Jewish people. As far as I know, there’s no story that directly links Serach Bat Asher to the singing of the Song of the Sea, but seeing as her gift that granted her immortality in the first place was song, it is my headcanon that she co-led the singing for both Moses and Miriam, linking the men and women’s tunes. And perhaps she continued to teach that song to generations. Perhaps that is what allows the Song of the Sea to be the oldest extant piece of text describing the Exodus, and one of the oldest surviving excerpts of the whole Tanakh.

In my head, I’m imagining a scene similar to a class I had in rabbinical school. It was a class for creating new liturgical music. I don’t remember if it was specifically for rabbis or if there were also cantorial students in the class, but it was mostly rabbinical students without strong musical skills. We would come up with tunes that we felt matched the tone of the prayers we were setting, and then the teacher, a cantor and composer himself, would polish the tunes and write them down in musical notation, effectively co-composing it with us. I’m not doubting Moses or Miriam’s musical abilities, but they broke into spontaneous song, and neither are mentioned outside of this Torah scene as having singing skills. I am envisioning Serach taking their tunes in the later years, perhaps after their deaths and upon entering the Promised Land, and adding more musical richness to it - composing harmonies or repeating choruses or whatever - and writing it down to preserve as the song of our people’s liberation. Perhaps in this way, she cemented the foundational song, poem, and story of our people’s relationship with the Divine. 

Yesod SheBeChesed can also be translated as “Foundation of Love”. In what ways do we lay our foundations of love, faith, peoplehood, and how do we use those foundations to connect ourselves with our pasts and futures? What might be your foundational song, the story of your family history, the poem that praises your liberation? This Shabbat and Omer season, may we connect deeply to our roots and reach out our branches with open arms. May we learn from our pasts, and plan for our futures. May we lay new foundations for love, safety, and freedom, raised up on pillars of our traditions and the values of our ancestors. And always, may we sing.