Serah

[Gen. 46:17] And the sons of Asher; Jimnah, and Ishuah, and Isui, and Beriah, and Serah their sister: and the sons of Beriah; Heber, and Malchiel.
Serah is the only granddaughter mentioned by name. She may have been the only granddaughter born in Canaan among dozens of male cousins.
Serah, the daughter of Asher From the Jewish literature: Genesis 46:17. After Jacob’s sons discover that their brother, Joseph, is alive and well, they feared that they would send their despondent father into shock if they suddenly told him that his favorite was not dead, but prospering in Pharaoh’s court. The Rabbis teach that it was a young woman named Serah who was responsible for gradually breaking the overwhelming news to him with a gentle song. It is said that in times of sorrow, the Holy Spirit does not rest upon a man, and that it was Serah who helped revive Jacob’s spirit by bringing back to him the presence of the Shekhinah. In his happiness, Jacob gave the young Serah a blessing of long life. In the book of Genesis, Serah is listed among those who journey to Egypt with Jacob. 300 years later, after fleeing Egyptian bondage, a new census is taken by Moses in the wilderness, and again, a woman named Serah is mentioned. Our Rabbis say that the Serah mentioned in both places is the very same woman, and extraordinary individual who was granted a life long enough to witness both the fall into bondage and the rise to freedom of her people. It is taught that there was a mystery pertaining to the redemption from Egypt, which involved the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Among all the 22 letters, there are five, which are given a different shape when they occur as the final letter of a word. These five letters concern a secret tradition, which was communicated first, to Abraham, pass down to Isaac, to Jacob, to Joseph, to his brothers, and Asher, one of Joseph’s brothers, entrusted the mystery to Serah, his daughter. “Any redeemer that comes forth and says: G-d will surely visit you (a phrase involving the letter peh, one of those five letters) should be regarded as the true deliver.” When Moses appeared before the elders of Israel performing signs and wonders, they did not believe in him or in his proclaimed mission until Serah came forth and confirmed that the words he spoke to them were, indeed, the divinely ordained message. When the Israelites prepared themselves to finally leave behind their bondage in Egypt, and Moses occupied himself with finding Joseph’s buried coffin (his deathbed request), it was Serah, alive in Joseph’s generation, who is said to have directed Moses to the spot, deep in the Nile, where it lay. “Joseph, Joseph,” Moses called out at the bank of the river, “the time has come in which the Holy One, blessed be He, swore, ‘I will deliver you.” Surface now, or we will be released from our promise.” And Joseph’s metal coffin floated up to the surface of the Nile. Serah continues to figure in Rabbinic lore. The Rabbis name her as the wise woman in the second book of Samuel 20 who intervenes in a battle against the house of David. In the later Talmudic times, Serah herself is reported to have appeared outside a house of study when R. Yohanan was teaching that the parted walls of the Red Sea looked like spouting bushes, a little voice interrupted his discourse, saying, “no, you are not correct; they looked like reflecting mirrors!” the voice belonged to an old woman who, when asked her name, said that she was none other than Serah, the daughter of Asher. When her time to die had finally came, our Rabbis teach that Serah, like other righteous individuals before her, was permitted to avoid the taste of death and to enter Paradise, the Garden of Eden, alive.