A Good Man

What happens when goodness no longer fits the script

By all accounts, I’m a good person.
My neighbors like me. My in-laws like me.
I get along well with people at work.

By every visible measure - I’m normal. Kind. Reliable.

But over Yom Tov we were invited out to eat, and I overheard something that hasn’t left me.

They were talking about a couple who had recently divorced.
They had kids, a nice house, a solid reputation - but apparently, he’d stopped being religious a few years ago.

It was scandalous.
Someone had seen him smoking on Shabbos.

Was he still keeping kosher? Did he even believe in God?

Their voices dripped with disgust.
He was a liar, a faker, a bad person. Maybe even mentally ill.
“How could he have fooled everyone for so long?”

And then they turned to the woman.
“Did she know? How could she have stayed with him?”
“It’s Shabbos for crying out loud! He wasn’t keeping Shabbos. Why would she stay?”
“Do you think she was okay with it? She must have been okay with it.”
“If your husband stops keeping Shabbos, you leave him. I don’t understand.”

My wife and I sat there - smiling politely, nodding when expected.

I was nibbling on some challah, but my mouth had gone dry.
I couldn’t swallow.
I asked someone to pass the water.

My wife tried interjecting - something about how hard it would be for a woman to leave a husband, even if he didn’t keep Shabbos.

The response came sharp and incredulous: “SHABBOS?!?”

Like that one word contained infidelity, abuse, and alcoholism all in one.
Like violating Shabbos was the ultimate betrayal, the thing that made a person irredeemable.

She glanced sideways at me.
A look of discomfort, confusion and pain.
Both of us wanting to drop through the floor.

All the while, my heart pounding behind my ribs.
Because one day, that conversation will be about me.

Not someday far off.
Maybe next week.
Maybe next year.

I don’t know when.
I just know it’s coming.

And I hope that my wife will remain standing next to me when it happens.

It’s a strange kind of fear - knowing that the people who love me now, who hug me at simchas and send dinner after a baby is born, might one day see me as a monster.

They’ll remember the same stories differently.
That time I came over to help put up their sukkah - was I faking the whole time?
The way I would say Good Shabbos with a smile - was that all performance?
They’ll say I seemed so sweet, so sincere.
But really I was a monster underneath.
My goodness, rewritten as deceit.

And that really hurts. Deeply.
Because I am a good person.
The same man they think I am today will be the one they condemn tomorrow.

It’s not that I’ve changed.
It’s that their framework can’t hold both truths.
That someone can be good, and also not believe.

And so they’ll make sense of it the only way they know how.
By calling it illness, rebellion, tragedy.

Anything but what it is:
a man who stopped believing, still showing up to shul,
hoping the truth stays buried long enough to figure out what comes next.