Timeless Torah

Moses, the leader of the Jewish people had given his marching orders to the twelve assembled scouts. “Head north...to the hill country,” he told them, and “find out, if the people who live there are strong or weak?...Are the cities where they live open or fortified? Is the soil rich or weak?”...And he added, “Make a special effort to bring back some of the land's fruits.”
One can imagine the excitement in the camp before the spies left on their mission. The anticipation of actually seeing the Promised Land and touching its legendary, gigantic fruits must have surely filled the chosen group with pride at having been picked from amongst all their brethren.
And why should they not have been conscious of their moment of glory? Hand-picked by Moses, approved by G-d, they were the best that Israel had to offer. As Rashi, the medieval French commentator, points out, "They were 100% kosher." Indeed, one of the men chosen was Joshua, who would later succeed Moses as the leader of the Jewish nation: Which is why the following Rashi is so troublesome.
In a Biblical verse several sentences later we read, “Moses gave Hoshea the son of Nun the new name Joshua (Yehoshua in Hebrew).”And why exactly did Moses feel a name change was necessary? Well according to Rashi, Moses added the Hebrew letter Yood (י) to the existing Heh (ה), so that his disciple's name would start with the same letters as G-d's Name. The new nomenclature, Yehoshua, means in Hebrew that G-d would be there to aid Joshua. And why would Joshua need special aid? To save him from the evil slander of his fellow spies.
What seems to be lacking between these two Rashis is consistency. On the one hand, Rashi calls the spies righteous people. However, in the very next breath, he intimates that they are not to be trusted. In order to understand these conflicting messages, let me pose another question: If Moses felt that a simple name change would guard Joshua, why didn't Moses do the same for the other scouts?
Our explanation lies in an episode that took place in last week's Parsha. Two young men, Eldad and Medad, had prophesied that Moses would die before the Jews entered the Holy Land and that Joshua would be his successor. Can you imagine the difficult choice now facing Joshua? No more devoted servant and loyal disciple could any master hope to find. As the Torah itself attests in Exodus 33:11, "But his aide, Joshua the son of Nun, did not leave the tent (of Moses)." Nevertheless, he had been given a mission of quite some importance.
So, while Joshua personally wished nothing more than to enter the land flowing with Milk & Honey, he knew that if he returned with a report that the land was conquerable and waiting for its new masters, he would in effect be signing the death warrant for his own teacher. How many of his fellow colleagues would believe that his interests were totally altruistic and that his judgment was not tinged with personal bias? And how many of the nation that he would in the future be leading would wonder what little white lies he had construed in order to gain his "leader" status. Without question, even before Joshua had crossed the Jordan river, that ugly thought had crossed his mind.
Who knows how all of this weighed heavily on Joshua's mind? Maybe informing the Jews of the powerful giants that inhabited the country and the fortified cities, would buy his teacher precious time. Perhaps delaying for a short period of time the entry into Israel would not have seemed so wrong to Joshua. Hence, Moses blessed his student and gave him the added encouragement to do what was right. By adding the letters of G-d's Name to Joshua's, he hoped to constantly remind him that the mission counts, not the opinions of those who not knowing, would judge nonetheless. In modern terms what Moses said was, "May the Force be with you."