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Deathless: The Complete, Uncensored, Heartbreaking, and Amazing Autobiography of Serach bat Asher, the Oldest Woman in the World
She's more than 3,000 years old. Her grandfather was the patriarch Jacob. She's mentioned by name three times in the Hebrew Bible, but there are no stories told about her. She knew Moses and David, Spinoza and Einstein--and now, at long last, Serach bat Asher has written her autobiography. "I was born in a tent," Serach tells us, a woman long silenced by history. She is feisty, funny, and bitter. The stories she tells about what really happened to her and her family will make you laugh and cry and maybe even rage against her, the oldest woman in the world, now living two blocks from the beach in Los Angeles.
- GenresSpirituality
195 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 29, 2018
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96 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 12, 2018
(These notes are placed in both postings of this book on Goodreads)
In Andrew Ramer's book, "Deathless," we have a 3000-year-old woman telling us her true history of having lived back in the time of the early Jewish people, from the current Santa Monica. This is a retelling of Jewish religion, culture, and Hebrew Bible. Written in past tense with second person direct address to readers, the delightful character brings history alive. In the beginning of the book are family trees, I get confused easily by big families, but this character is so delightful none of that mattered.
On the Torah, in Chapter Seven, "Scholars and archaeologists debate all the time about what happened when, based on details they find in the Torah, as if it were a factual work of history." And, "I watched the Torah grow, a layer at a time, like a pearl. It is an exquisite text (multifaceted and actually more like a cut gemstone than a pearl) but please remember that it is the marriage of fiction, fable, gossip, and propoganda, woven together with truth, memory, distortion, and divinely inspired passages as well as entirely made up ones." In Chapter Twelve, "For as any historian or archaeologist will tell you—while only 10 percent of the names in the Tanach belong to women, 90 percent of the images from ancient Israel are of women, of priestesses and goddesses." In Chapter Eighteen, "...trusting that if you come away from reading this memoir with one insight only—that the changing narrators of our most sacred texts are unreliable—I will not have written this book in vain."
The character's name is Sarah, a derivative of Serach. She changed to Sarah when she first come to America, "where most people couldn't make a good KH sound"; she refers to her book as, "memoir, which will cover our history from the time of Joshua to the very present." She recounts her many lover relationships, most with women, a few with men. She is a so-called immortal, who was blessed by her Grandfather Jacob when she told him sang him the news that his son, her Uncle Joseph, was alive he blessed her, "If what you are telling me is true, my little one, may death never come to you." (in Chapter Five) Later in Chapter Fifteen, is this view, "To say that I'm immortal, as people do who read and write about me is both inaccurate and wrong. As I've said several times already, I am not immortal—I just haven't died yet."
She makes reference to archane references to her that are found in ancient texts; "Endor. The Witch of Endor, now sometimes called The Medium of Endor, the Sorceress of Endor, the Clairvoyant of Endor, or even the Psychic of Endor. All of them—me. (I suppose that I could have my own television show now, or run an online psychic network!) And you can imagine how utterly amused and delighted I was half a century ago when a television show appeared called Bewitched that featured a lead character named Samantha (clearly a gender-switched version of my old dear friend Samuel) who was a closeted wich with a human husband and a mother named—Endora—along with a collection of odd witchy relatives, all of them some version of immortal."
The book is comtemporary by current day standards, in Chapter Sixteen there is an apology for her gendered language, "(Pardon me for using gendered language, which is out of favor in this time, but I am old and while I favor gender-neutral words in some instances, I miss words like actress, poetess, sculptress, prophetess, and even Jewess...)"
The author brings to the forefront the art of dreaming to communicate. When Sarah connects with two other immortals, they eventually reside in separate geographical locations so they meet on the new moon in a particular garden in their dreams to stay connected.
Andrew Ramer is a religious scholar, he is mystical, he has run spiritual retreats, he has taught religious studies, he has a broad base of knowledge which he uses in this book. I'm proud to say I know him. (less)
In Andrew Ramer's book, "Deathless," we have a 3000-year-old woman telling us her true history of having lived back in the time of the early Jewish people, from the current Santa Monica. This is a retelling of Jewish religion, culture, and Hebrew Bible. Written in past tense with second person direct address to readers, the delightful character brings history alive. In the beginning of the book are family trees, I get confused easily by big families, but this character is so delightful none of that mattered.
On the Torah, in Chapter Seven, "Scholars and archaeologists debate all the time about what happened when, based on details they find in the Torah, as if it were a factual work of history." And, "I watched the Torah grow, a layer at a time, like a pearl. It is an exquisite text (multifaceted and actually more like a cut gemstone than a pearl) but please remember that it is the marriage of fiction, fable, gossip, and propoganda, woven together with truth, memory, distortion, and divinely inspired passages as well as entirely made up ones." In Chapter Twelve, "For as any historian or archaeologist will tell you—while only 10 percent of the names in the Tanach belong to women, 90 percent of the images from ancient Israel are of women, of priestesses and goddesses." In Chapter Eighteen, "...trusting that if you come away from reading this memoir with one insight only—that the changing narrators of our most sacred texts are unreliable—I will not have written this book in vain."
The character's name is Sarah, a derivative of Serach. She changed to Sarah when she first come to America, "where most people couldn't make a good KH sound"; she refers to her book as, "memoir, which will cover our history from the time of Joshua to the very present." She recounts her many lover relationships, most with women, a few with men. She is a so-called immortal, who was blessed by her Grandfather Jacob when she told him sang him the news that his son, her Uncle Joseph, was alive he blessed her, "If what you are telling me is true, my little one, may death never come to you." (in Chapter Five) Later in Chapter Fifteen, is this view, "To say that I'm immortal, as people do who read and write about me is both inaccurate and wrong. As I've said several times already, I am not immortal—I just haven't died yet."
She makes reference to archane references to her that are found in ancient texts; "Endor. The Witch of Endor, now sometimes called The Medium of Endor, the Sorceress of Endor, the Clairvoyant of Endor, or even the Psychic of Endor. All of them—me. (I suppose that I could have my own television show now, or run an online psychic network!) And you can imagine how utterly amused and delighted I was half a century ago when a television show appeared called Bewitched that featured a lead character named Samantha (clearly a gender-switched version of my old dear friend Samuel) who was a closeted wich with a human husband and a mother named—Endora—along with a collection of odd witchy relatives, all of them some version of immortal."
The book is comtemporary by current day standards, in Chapter Sixteen there is an apology for her gendered language, "(Pardon me for using gendered language, which is out of favor in this time, but I am old and while I favor gender-neutral words in some instances, I miss words like actress, poetess, sculptress, prophetess, and even Jewess...)"
The author brings to the forefront the art of dreaming to communicate. When Sarah connects with two other immortals, they eventually reside in separate geographical locations so they meet on the new moon in a particular garden in their dreams to stay connected.
Andrew Ramer is a religious scholar, he is mystical, he has run spiritual retreats, he has taught religious studies, he has a broad base of knowledge which he uses in this book. I'm proud to say I know him. (less)
December 16, 2022
In Andrew Ramer's book, "Deathless," we have a 3000-year-old woman telling us her true history of having lived back in the time of the early Jewish people, from the current Santa Monica. This is a retelling of Jewish religion, culture, and Hebrew Bible. Written in past tense with second person direct address to readers, the delightful character brings history alive. In the beginning of the book are family trees, I get confused easily by big families, but this character is so delightful none of that mattered.
On the Torah, in Chapter Seven, "Scholars and archaeologists debate all the time about what happened when, based on details they find in the Torah, as if it were a factual work of history." And, "I watched the Torah grow, a layer at a time, like a pearl. It is an exquisite text (multifaceted and actually more like a cut gemstone than a pearl) but please remember that it is the marriage of fiction, fable, gossip, and propoganda, woven together with truth, memory, distortion, and divinely inspired passages as well as entirely made up ones." In Chapter Twelve, "For as any historian or archaeologist will tell you—while only 10 percent of the names in the Tanach belong to women, 90 percent of the images from ancient Israel are of women, of priestesses and goddesses." In Chapter Eighteen, "...trusting that if you come away from reading this memoir with one insight only—that the changing narrators of our most sacred texts are unreliable—I will not have written this book in vain."
The character's name is Sarah, a derivative of Serach. She changed to Sarah when she first come to America, "where most people couldn't make a good KH sound"; she refers to her book as, "memoir, which will cover our history from the time of Joshua to the very present." She recounts her many lover relationships, most with women, a few with men. She is a so-called immortal, who was blessed by her Grandfather Jacob when she told him sang him the news that his son, her Uncle Joseph, was alive he blessed her, "If what you are telling me is true, my little one, may death never come to you." (in Chapter Five) Later in Chapter Fifteen, is this view, "To say that I'm immortal, as people do who read and write about me is both inaccurate and wrong. As I've said several times already, I am not immortal—I just haven't died yet."
She makes reference to archane references to her that are found in ancient texts; "Endor. The Witch of Endor, now sometimes called The Medium of Endor, the Sorceress of Endor, the Clairvoyant of Endor, or even the Psychic of Endor. All of them—me. (I suppose that I could have my own television show now, or run an online psychic network!) And you can imagine how utterly amused and delighted I was half a century ago when a television show appeared called Bewitched that featured a lead character named Samantha (clearly a gender-switched version of my old dear friend Samuel) who was a closeted wich with a human husband and a mother named—Endora—along with a collection of odd witchy relatives, all of them some version of immortal."
The book is comtemporary by current day standards, in Chapter Sixteen there is an apology for her gendered language, "(Pardon me for using gendered language, which is out of favor in this time, but I am old and while I favor gender-neutral words in some instances, I miss words like actress, poetess, sculptress, prophetess, and even Jewess...)"
The author brings to the forefront the art of dreaming to communicate. When Sarah connects with two other immortals, they eventually reside in separate geographical locations so they meet on the new moon in a particular garden in their dreams to stay connected.
Andrew Ramer is a religious scholar, he is mystical, he has run spiritual retreats, he has taught religious studies, he has a broad base of knowledge which he uses in this book. I'm proud to say I know him.
On the Torah, in Chapter Seven, "Scholars and archaeologists debate all the time about what happened when, based on details they find in the Torah, as if it were a factual work of history." And, "I watched the Torah grow, a layer at a time, like a pearl. It is an exquisite text (multifaceted and actually more like a cut gemstone than a pearl) but please remember that it is the marriage of fiction, fable, gossip, and propoganda, woven together with truth, memory, distortion, and divinely inspired passages as well as entirely made up ones." In Chapter Twelve, "For as any historian or archaeologist will tell you—while only 10 percent of the names in the Tanach belong to women, 90 percent of the images from ancient Israel are of women, of priestesses and goddesses." In Chapter Eighteen, "...trusting that if you come away from reading this memoir with one insight only—that the changing narrators of our most sacred texts are unreliable—I will not have written this book in vain."
The character's name is Sarah, a derivative of Serach. She changed to Sarah when she first come to America, "where most people couldn't make a good KH sound"; she refers to her book as, "memoir, which will cover our history from the time of Joshua to the very present." She recounts her many lover relationships, most with women, a few with men. She is a so-called immortal, who was blessed by her Grandfather Jacob when she told him sang him the news that his son, her Uncle Joseph, was alive he blessed her, "If what you are telling me is true, my little one, may death never come to you." (in Chapter Five) Later in Chapter Fifteen, is this view, "To say that I'm immortal, as people do who read and write about me is both inaccurate and wrong. As I've said several times already, I am not immortal—I just haven't died yet."
She makes reference to archane references to her that are found in ancient texts; "Endor. The Witch of Endor, now sometimes called The Medium of Endor, the Sorceress of Endor, the Clairvoyant of Endor, or even the Psychic of Endor. All of them—me. (I suppose that I could have my own television show now, or run an online psychic network!) And you can imagine how utterly amused and delighted I was half a century ago when a television show appeared called Bewitched that featured a lead character named Samantha (clearly a gender-switched version of my old dear friend Samuel) who was a closeted wich with a human husband and a mother named—Endora—along with a collection of odd witchy relatives, all of them some version of immortal."
The book is comtemporary by current day standards, in Chapter Sixteen there is an apology for her gendered language, "(Pardon me for using gendered language, which is out of favor in this time, but I am old and while I favor gender-neutral words in some instances, I miss words like actress, poetess, sculptress, prophetess, and even Jewess...)"
The author brings to the forefront the art of dreaming to communicate. When Sarah connects with two other immortals, they eventually reside in separate geographical locations so they meet on the new moon in a particular garden in their dreams to stay connected.
Andrew Ramer is a religious scholar, he is mystical, he has run spiritual retreats, he has taught religious studies, he has a broad base of knowledge which he uses in this book. I'm proud to say I know him.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews