The Brooklyn high school I attended was officially Orthodox, but in practice, the student body ranged from traditional to Modern Orthodox.

Entering school as a ninth-grade freshman from a Modern Orthodox home, I fit into this environment perfectly. I had little patience for religious requirements that I considered “petty,” and I found the holidays burdensome. Rationalizing that I could be faithful to the land of Israel whether I was religious or not, I told myself that it wasn’t worth bothering with the “Jewish thing.” I felt marked hostility toward ultra-Orthodox people, and often wondered whether G-d really existed.

Like the other boys in my class, I spaced out during Gemara class, and numbed my brain with social media, pop culture, and loud music. We’d gossip about our classmates behind their backs, to the extent that I was often reluctant to walk away from a group of my friends, for fear that I would become their next topic of conversation.

Like the rest of my friends, I regularly posted photos, video clips, and updates about myself on social media. At times, I posted things I wasn’t really comfortable publicizing, out of fear that if I didn’t, I’d be considered a nerd. To boost my popularity, I became the person who always made everyone else laugh, whether by pulling pranks, cracking jokes, or sending out funny photos and videos on Instagram and Snapchat.

My mouth had no filter. I said whatever I wanted to whomever I wanted, giving no heed to the possible consequences. Until one day, at the beginning of ninth grade, my mouth got me into serious trouble.

That September day, we had a substitute teacher; I’ll call him Mr. Lindberg. Mr. Lindberg was a no-nonsense, law-and-order-type teacher, quite the opposite of my friends and me, and by the time he entered our classroom for the second-to-last period of the day, we were already feeling rowdy. The first thing he did after walking into the room was start straightening the desks into perfectly neat rows, moving one desk an inch to the left and another half an inch to the right.

“Hey,” I called out. “Why don’t we plot this with a ruler?”

The class erupted in laughter, which prompted me to let it all out and continue mouthing off.

At first, Mr. Lindberg ignored me and valiantly tried to begin his prepared lesson. After several minutes, however, he lost it.

“Jeremy, you are a disgrace to your family!” he bellowed. “I don’t understand how you turned out like this!”

He didn’t stop there. Instead, he went on, uttering the most callous, biting comments I had ever heard in my life. And he spoke these words with such conviction and disdain that they pierced right through my heart.

I stared up at the ceiling, hoping that no one would notice how hot and flushed my face was. But even with my face beet-red, Mr. Lindberg would not be stopped. “Look at the despicable way you talk,” he spat out. “Look how disrespectful you are to your teachers. Look how you treat your friends. Why would anyone want to associate with you?”

As he spoke, I began feeling intense physical pain, as through needles were pricking my entire body. But at the same time, a voice inside me whispered, He’s right. My behavior is disgraceful.

And then came a moment of enlightenment. You can be more than this, Jeremy.

Finally, Mr. Lindberg’s diatribe came to an end, and, with the class shocked into attentive silence, he resumed his lesson.

When the bell rang, mercifully ending that nightmarish class, my friends rallied to my side. “We must get him fired!” they declared. “Tell your parents to complain to the principal. He can’t get away with this! You should sue him!”

“Yeah,” I muttered. “Whatever.”

I couldn’t tell this to my friends, but while Mr. Lindberg’s tirade had been inexcusable, he had given me a lot to think about.

When I came home, I fled to my bedroom, where I sat with my head buried in my hands for hours.

(Excerpted from Mishpacha, Issue 744)