Two women bridge the stories of Genesis with that of the Exodus. Both women are involved in the birth of the nation and its redemption. They are Yocheved and Serah bat Asher. Both are granddaughters of Jacob; both are identified in different sources as the seventieth member of the family of Jacob to go down to Egypt.
According to the gemara in Bava Batra, Yocheved, mother of Moses, Aharon and Miriam, was conceived on the way down to Egypt and was born “between the walls”–at the entrance to Egypt. Her face had the look of the Divine Radiance of Glory, and that was the meaning of her name–God’s glory. Despite Pharaoh’s decrees, Yocheved had the faith to give birth to Moses and then trusted in Divine Providence when she hid the baby in the bulrushes. She is also identified by the Midrash as Shifrah, one of the midwives who saved the Israelite babies during this period of great affliction. To reward her faith, we are told, she entered the Land of Israel at the age of 250, though none of her children did.
Serah bat Asher is mentioned three times in biblical genealogies and census figures. According to the Midrash haGadol and Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer, it was Serah who, in music and song, told Jacob that Joseph was still alive. (Thomas Mann in Joseph and His Brothers describes the scene beautifully.) Because Serah restored Jacob’s life and spirits, she lived a long life and became one of the few individuals taken up to heaven to enter Paradise while still alive. According to one rendition, Jacob said to her, “the mouth that told me the news that Joseph is alive will never taste death.”
Serah, like Elijah, is said have returned through the ages to help the Jewish people when needed. Serah was the one who managed to convince the Israelites in Egypt that Moses was God’s chosen leader because she recognized in Moses’ speech the special verbal signs that her father had revealed to her. According to the Midrash, it was also Serah who was able to tell Moses before the Exodus where the bones of Joseph were located so that the promise to take him for burial in the Land of Israel could be fulfilled. During the reign of King David, the Midrash identifies her as the Wise Woman of Abel who managed to ward off a rebellion without a battle by persuading a city to surrender Sheba, a traitor and rebel, to Joab, David’s general. Finally, Pesikta de-Rav Kahana records a much later appearance of Serah in Jewish history, noting that in the first century C.E., it was Serah who was able to give details of the crossing of the Red Sea to Yochanan ben Zakkai and thus keep the miracle of the Exodus accessible for future generations.
Thus in Yocheved and Serah bat Asher we have two transitional figures that according to the Midrash were instrumental in ensuring the future of the Jewish people. Both of them appear in the quite extraordinary descriptions of women’s paradise that are found in the Zohar, in other kabbalistic works and in certain tekhines, where women sit together and learn Torah.