Swift as a deer. Be bold like a leopard, light as an eagle, fast as a deer, and strong as a lion to do the will of your father in heaven. Every one of these animals that we mentioned, and the trait that goes with it, is symbolic of something deeper.
Bold like a leopard. A leopard has courage, and when a person uses that boldness, that courage, to do the will of our Creator, a person shouldn’t be ashamed whatsoever or bashful or embarrassed to grow, understand, or learn more. When a person is embarrassed, he’s not going to learn, like we learned earlier on in the Masechet (tractate).
Light like an eagle: an eagle has the ability to travel very far, giving a person the ability, when talking about Limud HaTorah, Torah learning, to review and do Chazara (review) many times without getting tired. Ratz K'tzvi: when somebody has the opportunity to do a Mitzvah (commandment), they should run to it like a deer acts very swiftly. And Gibor ka'ari, strong like a lion. A lion is very strong and doesn’t give up whatsoever, and the same applies to a person when he comes to fighting his Yetzer Hara, fighting his evil inclination. A person has to be strong and fight it off.
All this is when it comes to fulfilling the will of God. All of these character traits are not necessarily always good, but when it comes to fulfilling the will of Hashem, they are positive traits. He would also teach us—we just mentioned the idea of being as a positive thing—that’s only when it comes to serving our Creator. But a person who is brash is negative when it comes to anything else. When it comes to going against the will of God, he can’t be brash. You have to be somebody who has humility and is extremely hesitant to violate the will of a creator.
And when it comes to Boshet Panim, somebody who’s embarrassed, that type of embarrassed person, the bashful individual, when it comes to general things, is embarrassed. He won’t take the initiative, of course, to do any Averot; he’ll feel hesitant to do something wrong.
May it be your will, a little bit of a tefillah (prayer), Hashem our God, that you rebuild your city of Yerushalayim (Jerusalem) quickly in our days and grant us a share in Torah.
Right after we mentioned the idea of Boshet Panim, somebody who’s bashful, somebody who is a little bit embarrassed, the Bayshan (bashful), which we say is one of the character traits of the offspring of Avraham Avinu (Abraham our father), of Israel: they’re merciful, they’re Boshet Panim, they’re bashful, and they’re Gomlei Chasadim, they do acts of Chesed (kindness). We mentioned that we identify the Jewish people. It’s a promise that Hashem has with the Jewish people. We say, “Hashem, just as you blessed us to have these beautiful traits, also bless us to rebuild the city of Yerushalayim.”