Shlomo Hamelech speaks of an eis lisno— a time to hate, and we Jews are now in ours— to hate Amalek
“If there is one overriding emotion gripping Ukraine right now, it is hate,” the New York Times reports. “It is a deep, seething bitterness for President Vladimir V. Putin, his military and his government…. The hatred is vented by mothers in bomb shelters, by volunteers preparing to fight on the front lines, by intellectuals, and by artists.”
The piece continues: “Olha Koba, a psychologist in Kyiv, said that ‘anger and hate in this situation is a normal reaction and important to validate.’ But it is important to channel it into something useful, she said, such as making incendiary bombs out of empty bottles.”
Shlomo Hamelech speaks of an eis lisno — a time to hate, and we Jews are now in ours — to hate Amalek. Then again, from the words of the Rambam it would seem that it’s always in season to feel hate for Amalek, which we then “channel into something useful” by having it motivate us to fulfill the mitzvah to eradicate Amalek. Discussing the mitzvah of zechiras maaseh Amalek — to remember that which Amalek did to us, he writes (Sefer Hamitzvos, Mitzvas Asei 189) that its goal is to “awaken the souls with words to fight him and to spur the nation to hate him so that the mitzvah won’t be forgotten and the hatred of him won’t weaken and deplete over time.”
Nowadays, when we can’t literally fulfill the mitzvah to eradicate Amalek by, for example, making bombs out of empty bottles, we are still encouraged to hate him. But this very week, Jews the world over have had an opportunity to channel that hatred into something useful, by making empty bottles out of full ones.
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