Rav Akiva Eiger, zl, interprets “your eyes,” as alluding to the “eyes” of the nation, the spiritual leadership of Klal Yisrael. Hence, the curse is that we will be dumbfounded by the behavior and the rhetoric which will emanate from some of our people’s own leadership. The mar’ei einecha, image, presented by these “leaders” will be humiliating and degrading. They will act in a manner unbecoming a Torah Jew, let alone a spiritual leader. This is our thrice daily prayer to Hashem “Return (to us) our judges as before,” we pray to Hashem that our leaders be worthy of their role, that we will be blessed with the calibre of leadership which was the standard years ago.
This is the meaning of our daily tefillah, “And light up our eyes with your Torah,” we implore Hashem to give guidance to open the ‘eyes’ of our leaders with His Torah. Perhaps if these misguided, self proclaimed spokesmen for Orthodox Jewry would be enlightened by studying Torah, they would be more discerning when rendering baseless halachic decisions and injudicious advice.
