Rashi writes that Kaleiv broke away from the meraglim and stopped off in Chevron in order to daven at the kever of the Avos and elicit their zechus. Where was Yehoshua? Why didn't he join Kaleiv there?
My wife suggested that Yehoshua didn't need to join him because Yehoshua had Moshe Rabeinu, a living rebbe of the highest rank. He didn't need to go to kevarim to connect with the mesorah of the past; he had a living connection to it in the present.
I would just add that this fits perfectly with the Maharal in Gur Aryeh who writes that Moshe changed Yehoshua's name and davened on his behalf more than he did for anyone else (the implication of Maharal, as R' Hartman points out, is that Moshe did daven for everyone, just not to the same degree) because Yehoshua was his talmid. If a talmid fails, it reflects back on the rebbe; when a talmid fails, it is as if the rebbe has suffered a personal failure. That special bond existed only between Moshe and Yehoshua.
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one can triangulate to Yehoshua's determinative subconscious reservations about a detour to Chevron-- a) his forefather Yosef had left Chevron (37:14) with a history of evil reports (37:2) about a small group, and brought the whole national slave stint after him; no way Yehoshua could leave Chevron in his turn without an evil account in his heart of the ten men back at base camp: the duplicate situation portended ill; b) Yehoshua was unconsciously wary of breakaway movements (here, he & Calev hiking off to Chevron), after a portion of his tribe left the group in Egypt early, and came to a bad end (with only ten members surviving war, and ten the number of turncoats in our episode = haunting resonance);
ReplyDeleteso he rationalized that his bond to Moshe was enough, but consider: tens of thousands of vaguely religious tourists (or simply the curious) visit Machpelah; would devoted Yehoshua--lacking hidden reservations--sit out that opportunity (the invite from Calev?), even if he weren't in something of a jam?? how
much more then would he seize the opening for some breathing room too, and for some additional zechus from the avos...