The Alphabet of Ben Sira

Unknown

9th Century

About This Entry

The Alphabet of Ben Sira was part of a corpus of satirical texts circulating in the Middle Ages featuring Ben Sira, purported author of the Wisdom of Ben Sira, an apocryphal book from the second century BCE. The story here is premised on the idea that Ben Sira, still a toddler, wishes to begin his education and immediately outwits his teacher in a way that pokes fun at the rabbinic tradition itself. This work was popular among elite rabbinic circles, and some medieval talmudists, surprisingly, cited it as a halakhic authority. The literary sophistication and classical erudition of this work should be appreciated, as well as its more comedic elements.

Ben Sira’s mother made clothes and sold them and brought him bread, fatty meat, and aged wine, and so supported him for one year. At the year’s end, he said to her, “Take me to the synagogue.” She took him to a teacher who had seven daughters. Ben Sira sat next to him and said, “My master, teach me Torah.”

Said the teacher, “You cannot be taught, for you are still too young. Our sages of blessed memory stated, ‘At the age of five years a child begins to study Bible’ [Mishnah Avot 5:24].”

“But have you not learned,” Ben Sira asked, “‘The day is short, but the work is great’ [Mishnah Avot 2:20]? And you tell me to sit and not to study because I am too young! In the cemetery I can see children younger than I who are dead. Who knows what will be, whether I shall live or die?”

The teacher retorted, “How dare you instruct me! Our sages of blessed memory declared, ‘Whoever teaches the law in the presence of his teacher is deserving of death’ [b. Berakhot 31b].”

Ben Sira replied, “You are not yet my teacher, for so far I have learned nothing from you.”

The teacher said to him, “Say alef.”¹

Said Ben Sira, “Abstain from worrying in your heart, for worry has killed many.”

The teacher was immediately thrown into a panic. “I don’t have a worry in the world,” he said, “except for the fact that my wife is ugly.”

“Say bet,” he said to Ben Sira.

“By a beautiful woman’s countenance many have been destroyed, and numerous are all her slain ones.”

The teacher said to Ben Sira, “Are you telling me this because I revealed my secret and told you that my wife is ugly? Do you find it wrong that I told you my secret?”

“Say gimmel!”

“Give over your secrets to one in a thousand even if your friends are many.”

Again the teacher said to Ben Sira, “To you alone, to no one else, have I revealed my secret. Advise me about what I am going to tell you. I want to divorce my wife on account of an especially beautiful woman who lives in my courtyard.”

“Say dalet.”

“Defend yourself from a woman of charm as you would before flames of a burning coal.”

“But what can I do?” asked the teacher. “Every time I enter the house she flaunts herself in front of me. I can’t take my eyes off her, she is so attractive.”

“Say hey.”

“Hide your eyes from a charming woman lest you be caught in her snare.”

“My child,” the teacher said, “in what snare will I be caught? If it is some kind of witchcraft she might practice on me, I know that she will never use such craft against me. For her first husband had a thin beard, but mine is thick.”²

“Say vav.”

“Vexation will fall on the man who follows his eyes’ desire; let him know they are the children of harlotry and that nothing good will come from them.”

“Say zayin.”

“Zero be your scorn for the thin-bearded or thick-bearded man, for you know not what has been decreed for you.”

The teacher said, “I do not wish to take your advice. I plan to marry her. I have seven daughters, and she has one, and they will support me in dignity.”

“Say het.”

“Cherished by every person are male children, but woe to the father of females.”

“But I have seven daughters,” the teacher objected. “And they spin and do all the housework for me. They are like a lush olive tree in my home, like a beautiful garden. How can you say to me, ‘Woe to the father of female?!’ If there were no females, where would males come from?”

“Poor man!” Ben Sira replied. “You comfort yourself with worthless consolation. For the sages stated, ‘Happy is the man whose children are male, and woe to the father of females’ [b. Pesaḥim 65a], and accordingly I spoke to you. Furthermore, when a female comes forth from the belly of her mother into the air of this world, the heavens, the earth, the stars, and the constellations—everything that has been created in the world—mourn that this has happened. But when a son comes forth into the air of the world, the entire universe rejoices. If a man has a baby girl and you ask what the wife of that man gave birth to, he tells you with a weak voice and a heavy head and downcast eyes, ‘A baby girl.’ But if it is a baby boy, he answers brightly, ‘she gave birth to a son,’ and he speaks strongly, enunciating clearly, and with his eyes raised high.”³

Translated by Norman Bronznick with David Stern and Mark Jay Mirsky.

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Notes

In Hebrew, this proverb begins with the letter alef. Each one of the proverbs that follow begins with the subsequent letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

Apparently, the witchcraft that his fancied paramour might practice against him is for the purpose of keeping him in her sexual clutches. [ . . . ] What is not altogether clear is the teacher’s reason for his conviction that this will not occur. The implication seems to be either that witchcraft is ineffective against a thick-bearded person or that such a person is endowed with an overabundance of sexual prowess—thus, his wife need not use witchcraft to assure the full satisfaction of her sexual needs.

[T]‌he last misogynous speech of Ben Sira is a later addition to the text, missing from all manuscripts.

Credits

Unknown, “The Alphabet of Ben Sira,” trans. Norman Bronznick with David Stern and Mark Jay Mirsky, from Rabbinic Fantasies: Imaginative Narratives from Classical Hebrew Literature, ed. David Stern and Mark Jay Mirsky (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998), 172–74. Used with permission of the publisher.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 3: Encountering Christianity and Islam.