<p>According to the Alphabet of Ben Sira, a strange and satirical medieval text composed between 700 and 1000 CE, three people in all of history were born without their parents having relations. Three. Ben Sira, Rav Papa, and Rabbi Zeira. The Talmud records that Rav Papa and Rabbi Zeira were men of astonishing piety — they never spoke idle words, never slept in the study hall, never arrived late, never gave their colleagues nasty nicknames, and never accepted gifts. They fulfilled the verse from (Proverbs 8:22): "I endow those who love me with substance; I will fill their treasuries."</p>

<p>But Ben Sira's origin story is the wildest of the three. His mother, the text tells us, was the daughter of the prophet <a href='/texts/schwartz-jeremiah-creates-a-golem.html'>Yirmiyahu (Jeremiah)</a>. One day, Yirmiyahu went to the bathhouse and found wicked men from the tribe of Ephraim engaging in sinful behavior. When he rebuked them, they turned on him. They threatened him with violence unless he did as they did. Terrified, the prophet complied under duress. He left cursing the day he was born, echoing his own words from (Jeremiah 20:14): "Accursed be the day that I was born!" He fasted 248 fasts in penance — one for every organ in the human body.</p>

<p>Here's where it gets truly strange. The seed Yirmiyahu left behind was somehow "guarded" until his own daughter came to the same bathhouse. She conceived, and seven months later gave birth to a boy who already had teeth. And could talk.</p>

<p>The newborn immediately consoled his mortified mother: "Why are you ashamed? I am the son of Sira." When she asked who Sira was, the infant explained through gematria (numerology) that "Sira" and "Yirmiyahu" have the same numerical value. He wouldn't say "I am the son of Yirmiyahu" directly — that would imply something shameful. Instead, he compared his father's situation to <a href='/texts/sefaria-bereshit-rabbah-500.html'>Lot's daughters</a>: both righteous men who acted only under extreme compulsion.</p>

<p>His mother was stunned. "How do you know these things?" Ben Sira's answer? He was simply following in his father's footsteps. Yirmiyahu himself had spoken from the womb, refusing to be born until the prophet Eliyahu arrived and told him his true name. "Just as he emerged speaking, I also emerged speaking," Ben Sira declared. "Just as he wrote an alphabetical acrostic book, I will write one too."</p>

<p>The infant then refused his mother's breast, demanding instead fine bread, fatty meat, and aged wine. He told her to sew garments and sell them, quoting (Proverbs 31:24): "She makes cloth and sells it." She did exactly that for a full year. Then Ben Sira demanded to be taken to the synagogue, where he outwitted a teacher who tried to turn him away for being too young. "The day is short, and the work is plentiful," Ben Sira shot back, quoting Pirkei Avot. "I've seen children smaller than me in the cemetery. Who knows if I'll live or die?" The teacher, defeated, finally said: "Say Aleph." And so the alphabet — and the real teaching — began.</p>