הָרַבָּנִים וּבַעֲלֵי תּוֹרָה נִקְרָאִים עֵינֵי הָעֵדָה וְרָאשֵׁי אַלְפֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, וּכְשֶׁהָרֹאשׁ הוּא בָּרִיא אַזַי גַּם הַגּוּף בָּרִיא.

The rabbis and the Torah scholars are called “the eyes of the community”1 and “the heads of the thousands of Israel.”2 When the head is healthy, the body is also healthy.3

To Fill In the Background

The Torah instructs us to “cleave to G‑d.”4 On this the Talmud asks,5 “But is it possible to cleave to the Divine Presence?!” and explains that the intent is that one should cleave to Torah sages. For, as the Alter Rebbe explains in Tanya,6 in every generation there are Torah sages who are connected to G‑d in perfect oneness — and cleaving to these sages enables us to bind our souls to G‑d.

The above teaching concerning the “eyes of the community” is borrowed from a letter that the Rebbe Rayatz addressed in 1930 to the rabbi of a Brooklyn shul, whose congregants had migrated to the New World from Poland. The recipient of the letter was evidently not the only rabbi of that challenging era who was losing the ardor that had fired him in the Old Home. The Rebbe Rayatz was urging him and his colleagues to fight their despair and spiritual lethargy by rekindling the warmth of the bond that they had once maintained with their respective chassidic Rebbes in Europe — for these were living models of the sages of whom the Tanya speaks.