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A Father's Sleepless Worry

Apocrypha & Pseudepigrapha Alphabet of Ben Sira, Letter Tet

Curated by The Jewish Mythology Team · Published March 15, 2026

<p>The letter Tet continues the theme of fatherhood and daughters with a proverb that's as bleak as it is brief:</p>

<p>"A daughter is a false image to her father. Out of fear of her, he does not sleep at night."</p>

<p>A false image. The Hebrew carries a sense of illusion, of something that appears one way but conceals a deeper anxiety underneath. In the Alphabet of Ben Sira, composed between 700 and 1000 CE, the proverb captures an ancient father's worst fear — not that his daughter will fail, but that the world will harm her, and he'll be powerless to stop it.</p>

<p>The worry that steals a father's sleep isn't spelled out here, but the <a href='/texts/sefaria-alphabet-ben-sira-11.html'>next letter in the sequence</a> will fill in the details with painful specificity. For now, Ben Sira leaves the proverb hanging, a single heavy sentence. The teacher doesn't respond to it at all. He just says, "Say Yud."</p>

<p>It's worth noting that this exact sentiment appears in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 100b), where a similar saying about daughters and sleepless fathers is attributed to Ben Sira. The medieval author of the Alphabet was drawing on material that had been circulating in rabbinic circles for centuries, weaving together proverbs that resonated with lived experience. Any parent who's stared at the ceiling at 2 a.m. worrying about a child knows this feeling isn't limited to any particular era or culture. The fear is timeless. The sleeplessness is universal.</p>

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