[Avodah] Sometimes Chutzpah is Praiseworthy

[Chana Luntz]

I just wrote:

> I can't see why this does not apply in the case of Miriam.  If you grant
> that she was right, and that what Amram was doing in seperating from his
> wife was worse than Pharoah, then surely on the lefrushe m'isura
> principle, she had to speak up, despite him being the gadol hador.  In
> fact this case is not unanalogous to the one in Sanhedrin 82a, which is
> where Pinchas speaks up in front of Moshe Rabbanu to deal with Zimri etc.
> Yes it is slightly different, in that it is not just a matter of poskening
> wrongly or failing to posken, but of actually acting wrongly, but if
> anything that seems like a kol v'chomer.  If Amram was not just poskening
> wrongly, or failing to posken, but was actually doing an issur, and
> causing the people to thereby do an issur, how much greater a chillul
> HaShem can there be?  And the proof of the pudding would seem to be, that
> by not being together with his wife, he was holding up the geula, because
> as soon as he got back together with her, hey presto, Moshe Rabbanu.
> 
> So it seems to me reasonably pashut that despite this being a  violation
> of kavod av, and kavod rav, and kavod gadol hador, it was a praiseworthy
> act for Miriam, because it was as she identified a chillul HaShem.  And
> therefore she was correct to rebuke him, and hence that the pasuk was
> indeed praising her by referring to her as Puah.


BTW you realise of course that this case can be seen as the flip side of the
loshen hora incident with Moshe Rabbanu.  Here as there, the gadol hador had
separated from his wife.  Here as there, Miriam stands up and criticises.
But in the one case she gets praised and rewarded, and in the other she gets
criticised and punished.  It seems to me that the key difference is that
here she was right, and there she was wrong.  And that is why the first
thing that HKBH does in that case is demonstrate to her how wrong she was,
and how if you think it through she was not in fact defending His honour,
but diminishing it.  Once the chillul HaShem aspect disappears, the
justification for the chutzpah disappears, and therefore the prohibition
returns full force.

Shavuah tov

Chana