Deathless
The Complete, Uncensored, Heartbreaking, and Amazing Autobiography of Serach bat Asher, the Oldest Woman in the World
By Andrew Ramer
Foreword by Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie
DEATHLESS
The Complete, Uncensored, Heartbreaking, and Amazing Autobiography of Serach bat Asher, the Oldest Woman in the World
Copyright © 2018 Andrew Ramer. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Resource Publications
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
www.wipfandstock.com
paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-1202-2
hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-1204-6
ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-1203-9
Manufactured in the U.S.A.
For Constance Tomestic
1929—2017
With love and gratitude.
Your heart and home were a haven
when one was needed more than fifty years ago.
Foreword
This story starts with a little girl, singing to herself behind the tents, not knowing just how deeply soothing her songs are to her grandpa, the patriarch Jacob, shrouded in his grief. As a reward for his healing, Serach bat Asher will become the oldest woman to live within the pages of the Bible, perhaps beyond, and the story, her story, never quite seems to end either. Some stories are worth infinity.
Known to us through a narrative that is part myth, part midrash, part mystery, this lesser-known heroine from the margins of Jewish folklore is enjoying a comeback. After thousands of years in footnotes, Serach’s story once again pops up in children’s books, feminist anthologies, and in this astounding work of fiction. It’s not just a story about the power of song that Serach brings to us, but also a critical message for humanity’s progress and for what it means to persist, to resist, to be other, and to belong.
Like other mythic muses, Serach is the one who chooses when to show up and with whom to chat. One hot summer afternoon in the last year of the 20th century I was hanging out on Venice Beach in California when I caught a glimpse of an older woman with white hair and a bikini, rollerblading down the boardwalk, headphones on, and singing loudly. Possibly in Yiddish. That night I started writing about Auntie Mem, a tough old Holocaust survivor who chose to live in California and chose to live, live, live. Some of what she had to say was published and even made it to the stage, her essence living on—always surprising, bitter, not sweet, but funny, loving, and in-your-face real. Whoever that rollerblading woman was, and no matter where the story came from—she profoundly changed my life.
Many years later my dear friend and revered teacher Andrew showed me the outline of a project he’d been working on: the story of the 3,000 years of Serach, including the part where she’s living—on Venice Beach. “We’ve already met, right on the beach,” I told him, with amazement. And now I know I’m not the only lucky one. Serach, a heroine with many faces, has a lot to say and she knows how to find the proper channels. That’s how she met Andrew.
Andrew Ramer is a brilliant bard who knows how to spin sacred texts and how to queer the very myths we’re living. His Serach is a crone with an eye on the big picture and the long arc, a brittle laugh and the wizened wisdom of longevity that has a lot say to our impatient digital days of instant gratification. This is a prophetic work of protest, only somewhat shrouded in the veils of satire and imagined meanderings through time and space, the tale of a survivor, of an often-bitter old woman whose story isn’t always easy to read. Through his telling of her travels he is not just telling us her story but is also offering a radical way to reread the original biblical stories themselves, now more queer, more nuanced, and even more interesting.
A longtime scholar and author of midrash, Andrew wrote about this delicate process of retelling in his book Queering the Text: “The text itself changes, and we do as a result. While this may seem radical, it is, in fact, a part of a longstanding anti-fundamentalist strand of the Jewish tradition, which sees the Bible not as a quasi-historical record. . . but as a font of multiple interpretations.”
So here she is. Put on your seat belts, and enjoy the ride. And if and when you meet her, on the beach at dusk, in the margins of this book, or in your dreaming, please send regards and pause to listen with attention. This story begins with a girl who is singing, and if you are reading this—she’ll be singing her songs for you.
Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie
Creator of Storahtelling and the founding spiritual leader of Lab/Shul NYC
Ours is not a bloodline but a textline.
Amos Oz & Fania Oz-Salzberger
I want an invented truth.
Clarice Lispector
Chapter One
In which I introduce myself
and begin my ancient story
People say we Hebrews are a talkative nation. This is true. It’s also true that our contribution to world literature is far greater than our small numbers would indicate. How could this not be the case when the god of our national epic is said to have brought the entire universe into being with words? We are a people of words, a people of the book, as our Muslim cousins call us. In fact we are a people with lots and lots of books. And yet, for every story that we’ve written or told there are as many that have not been told. Take my own case, for example.
You may have heard of me, as I am mentioned—by name only—three times in the Hebrew Bible. I make my first brief appearance in chapter 46, verse 17 of the book of Genesis, in a list of the family members who went down to Egypt with my beloved grandfather, the patriarch Jacob, where I appear among my father’s children:
Asher’s sons: Imnah, Ishvah, Ishvi, and Beriah, and their sister Serach. Beriah’s sons: Heber and Malchiel.
If you take a look at the full text you will see that almost everyone in the list is male. The few women named, and one unnamed, seem to be asides—but please pay attention to the other female descendant who is named, my aunt Dinah. Later you will understand why.
There’s a nearly identical list in the last book of the Hebrew Bible, Chronicles, which is very tidy, showing up at the beginning and the end of the book—but my name in those lists won’t tell you anything about me, because everything about me was either left out—or cut out—by several sets of ancient editors.
The text of the Torah as it exists today says that I was the only daughter of Asher the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham, all of which is true. I am the daughter of Asher, but your Torah says nothing else about me, and doesn’t mention my mother Arsiyah or my full sister Tamimah at all. In fact, the Bible says almost nothing about most of the women in my family. For instance, the Torah tells us that my Grandfather Jacob had four wives, twelve sons, and just one daughter, Dinah, when in fact he had five wives and thirteen daughters. But where are their stories? Forgotten, never written down, or deliberately edited out of the book, for a variety of reasons that you will come to understand in due course.