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From: Liron Kopinsky <<a href="mailto:liron.kopinsky@gmail.com">liron.kopinsky@gmail.com</a>>
There is a midrash which says that each of the shevatim was born with a
twin daughter. So now you just need to figure out why those daughters were
not counted among the 70.
Kol Tuv,
Liron</tt></pre></blockquote></div>
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<div>"Benosav" could refer to daughters-in-law and grand-daughers, too. Serach bas Osher, for example.</div>
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<div>As for twins, I read somewhere that all those twin sisters died before the family went down to Egypt. There is some kind of physics like that too, maybe somebody here knows what I'm dimly remembering -- something about virtual particles and anti-particles that spontaneously arise in the cosmos and then meet and destroy each other, thus preserving the something or other of the universe. Some law of Newton, maybe, that something can't arise just out of nothing, but if it immediately destructs, it's OK then. Give Yakov some extra daughters for "benosav" then quickly take them away for "shiv'im nefesh" and all's right with the world. Yosef, well, if he's dead, his father will grieve all his life, but a bunch of girls -- who'd miss them? Ho hum. They're just virtual girls, anyway.</div>
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<div>There are, of course, non-literal ways of understanding those medrashim -- e.g., that with each shevet, his zivug was created somewhere, the woman he was destined to meet and marry. It's also possible that women just didn't count among the 70 unless they were important women, a principle we actually see throughout the Torah, especially at the beginning when generations are named, and very few women are mentioned by name -- those who are mentioned by name being the especially important women, like Noach's wife and the Imahos. And Dinah, and Tamar, and Yocheved and Miriam, and the wives of Yosef, Moshe and Aharon, and the daughters of Tzelofchad. </div>
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<div>But for ordinary women, they usually aren't named and "don't count." So maybe Yakov did have lots of daughters -- real ones, not virtual mathematical ones -- but anyone who wasn't named in the Torah, just wasn't counted among the 70. Consider, for example, the likelihood that many of Yakov's grandchildren were already married and great-grandchildren had been born -- yet none of those wives or great-grandchildren were named or counted among the 70, either.</div>
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<div>As evidence that many grandchildren must already have been married, I point you to Yehuda's first two sons, both of whom had already married before Yakov went down to Egypt. And all the shevatim had sons -- very likely, some of them were married already too. And if not, if they all married only after arriving in Egypt -- who did they all marry? Did they all marry Egyptian women? Or did they marry girls from their own family? Girls born -- how? To what mothers? Egyptian mothers?</div>
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<div>I think a lot of them must have already been married to Canaanite women and to Aramean women, cousins, and maybe to Ishmaelite women, also cousins (but partly Egyptian, come to think of it) even before they went down to Egypt. And/or there really were sisters born and they married each other's sisters, from different mothers. But the point is, none of those wives were named or counted among the 70, even though they must have existed.</div>
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<div>--Toby Katz</div>
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