She is one of the seventy members of the patriarch's family who emigrated from Canaan to Egypt,[1] and her name occurs in connection with the census taken by Moses in the wilderness.
The verse states, "The sons of Asher: Imnah, Ishvah, Ishvi, Beri’ah, with Serach their sister."
She was three years old when Asher married her mother, and she was brought up in the house of Jacob, whose affection she won by her remarkable piety and virtue.
[citation needed] Fearing that the news would be too much of a shock for the old man, however, she tells a praying Jacob, through playing the harp and singing in rhyme, that Joseph is "alive and living in Egypt, and has two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim."
She recognized him by the code phrase "God has surely remembered" that had been passed down, according to the midrash,[citation needed] from Abraham to Isaac and then to Jacob and his sons.
The Midrash[citation needed]relates that Moses addressed himself to Serach when he wished to learn where the remains of Joseph were to be buried.
Without Joseph's bones, the Israelites could not leave Egypt, so the Pharaoh entombed him in a lead coffin and cast it into an underground chamber in the Nile to thwart their escape.
[8] Another story, from the midrashic Pesikta de-Rav Kahana,[9] relates that Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai was discussing the parting of the Red Sea and wondered what the walls of water looked like.
There was a discussion in the house of study (Hebrew: בית מדרש, beit midrash) as to whether the sea took on the shape of latticework or brickwork.