“give your servant a hearing” (44:18). In the Hebrew, what Judah literally asks is to speak a word in Joseph’s ears. Midrash B’reishit Rabbah 93.6 understands this locution as implying that Judah was relaying a private caution to Joseph—warning him of violent consequences, both human and divine, if Benjamin were to be enslaved in Egypt. All of the examples Judah uses to back up his threats (according to the Rabbis) refer to episodes of retribution in the lives of female family members—starting with Sarah and Rachel: “Because Pharaoh took Benjamin’s great-grandmother for only one night (12:15), he and his household were afflicted with plagues (12:17).” Moreover, “[Benjamin’s] mother died only because of his father’s curse, But the one with whom you find your gods shall not live (31:32). So take heed lest he hurl a curse against you—and you die!” Judah goes on to warn Joseph that two of his brothers once entered a large city and destroyed it (Genesis 34): “And if they did so much on account of a woman—their sister Dinah—how much the more so would they do when it is on account of a man [namely, their brother Benjamin], the beloved of the eyes, the one who gives hospitality to the blessed Holy One, as is said: Of Benjamin he said: Beloved of the Eternal, / He rests securely beside [God], / Who protects him always, / [God] dwells amid his slopes (Deuteronomy 33:12).” This valuing of a man over a woman is reflective of the social ordering of human beings in rabbinic literature, where women are seen as a secondary creation, both lesser and other than men. Nevertheless, the Rabbis did not view the women of Israel as nonentities; as each of the examples cited makes clear, their reputations, their words, and their actions were highly valued.
“your servant made himself responsible for the lad.…how can I go home to my father without the lad…?” (44:32–34). The Rabbis very much admired Judah’s loyalty to Benjamin and to the pledge he had made to Jacob. Contrary to the biblical narrative, in which Judah speaks to Joseph with cautious and even obsequious words, the rabbinic sages imagined so mighty a confrontation between “Judah the lion and Joseph the bull” that even the angels descended from heaven to witness the dispute (Midrash Tanchuma, Vayigash 4, 5).
His sons and his sons’ sons were with him, his daughters and his sons’ daughters (46:7). In B’reishit Rabbah 94.6, Rabbi Judah bar Ilai noticed that this verse includes both the sons and daughters of Jacob’s sons but not his daughters’ children, and commented: “The daughters of one’s sons are as one’s own children, whereas the sons of one’s daughters are not as one’s own sons.” This statement reflects a frequent situation in ancient times where daughters left their birth families at marriage and became part of their husbands’ households. Thus, their children were less likely to spend time with their maternal grandparents. In rabbinic halachah (that is, legal traditions), a married woman received a dowry from her father’s resources at the time of marriage but did not automatically inherit anything from her father’s estate.
Asher’s sons…and their sister Serah (46:17). This is the first biblical mention of Serah bat Asher. She reappears in Numbers 26:46 among Asher’s descendants who participated in the Exodus. Some rabbis linked these passages and imagined that Serah’s lifetime spanned not only the four hundred years of Israel’s captivity in Egypt but extended far beyond. Her remarkable longevity is attributed to a powerful blessing of praise that her grandfather Jacob bestowed on her when she informed him in song that Joseph was still alive (Midrash HaGadol and Sefer HaYashar on 46:8). At the time of the Exodus, Serah showed Moses where Joseph had been buried, so that his coffin might return with the Israelites to the land of Israel (M’chilta, B’shalach on 13:19; BT Sotah 13a). Other rabbis identify Serah with the “wise woman” who negotiated with David’s general Joab in II Samuel 20:16–24, another four hundred years after the Exodus (B’reishit Rabbah 94.9; Midrash HaGadol on Genesis 23:1). In the 13th-century Yemenite compendium Midrash HaGadol, Serah is further linked with Proverbs 31:26, “Her mouth is full of wisdom, her tongue with kindly teaching” (on Genesis 23:1). Other medieval sources claim that Serah “did not taste death” but entered Paradise alive (Alphabet of Ben Sira 20–21).
—Judith R Baskin