A man in need entrusted his entire savings to a neighbor who was famous for piety. The neighbor wore his observance on his sleeve; his neighbors spoke of him with admiration. The man thought his money was safer there than in any strongbox.
When the time came to collect, the pious neighbor looked him in the eye and swore he had never received the money. Not a single coin. He was a righteous man, he said, and he would not steal. The depositor had no witnesses. He walked away stunned.
Elijah appeared to him on the road.
The prophet told him to go to the pious neighbor's wife. "Tell her," Elijah said, "that you know she and her husband ate leavened bread on Pesach and swine on Yom Kippur. She will know you speak the truth. That will be your proof" (Gaster, Exempla No. 123).
The man did as instructed. The wife, when she heard the accusation, went white. The couple were proselytes who had outwardly accepted Judaism but secretly kept their old heathen practices the whole time. The pious husband was an elaborate performance. The wife, shocked that their hidden life was known, confessed everything. She returned the stolen money.
The story ends grimly: the couple did not repent. Exposed, they dropped the Jewish pretense altogether and returned openly to their old ways.
The Ma'aseh Book uses this tale to warn us twice. First, that hypocrisy is not merely a moral failure — it is a structural lie that will eventually collapse. And second, that Elijah the Prophet still walks the roads, and knows who ate what on Pesach and Kippur in every house.