Parsha_Push Shelach

Alongside the leadership of Moshe and Aharon, we meet in our parsha the leadership of Calev and Yehoshua. Surprisingly, despite Calev’s dominance, he won’t be the one to lead the people after Moshe’s death. Yehoshua, the more passive of the two, will be given that role. This raises the question are all leaders equal, or are some more equal than others?
Why, indeed, was Yehoshua the one chosen to lead the generation following Moshe?
Some might compare Calev’s militant tone: ” Let us by all means go up, and we shall gain possession of it, for we shall surely overcome it”, to Yehoshua’s more theological content: ” If pleased with us, Hashem will bring us into that land”. Yet, we may suggest that it is Calev’s dominance that is problematic, and that maybe it is that which raises the oppositional reaction, and causes the difficulties initially.
When spies come back from touring the land, and start describing in a business-like manner what they saw, we tend to latch on to the words “however, the people who inhabit the country are powerful”, and we can already imagine the deterioration of the description. Apparently, this is what Calev thought as he jumped and objected: “Let us by all means go up, and we shall gain possession of it, for we shall surely overcome it”. Yet, up until that moment no one dared to suggest otherwise, and only once Calev offered his interpretation of the situation, did the other spies offer theirs: “We cannot attack that people, for it is stronger than we.” What Calev may have perceived as a preventive step against expected trouble, was what caused the trouble itself.
We will hear Yehoshua only after the people start panicking, and even then he does not cancel the people’s feelings, but rather emphasizes the good that was already expressed, and adds another component – God’s help.
So, indeed, Calev represented God and His land in a dignified and passionate way, and highlighted the ability of the people to conquer the land, but via his declarations he may have forced people into choosing sides. Only those with a great self-conviction could declare: “we shall surely overcome”, leaving the rest to conclude: “we cannot”.
Good leaders do not always need to make high and mighty declarations in order to emphasize a point, sometimes forcefully and becoming controversial. Good leaders know when to be silent, not to waken bears from hibernation, and listen to the people’s qualms and worries without blowing them out of proportion.
At the end of the day, Calev will enter the land of Israel, will conquer his part of the land and deal with fierce and forceful enemies, but Yehoshua will be the one leading the people, giving them direction and encouragement. Calev will keep the title of one who was ‘imbued with a different spirit’, while Yehoshua was appointed by the God of all spirits, due to him being an inspired man, a man of spirit.