'We have a lot of enemies, but the accepted name for Amalek today is Hamas,' says Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh.
Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, dean of the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva in Yitzhar, spoke at a special gathering about the war with Hamas.
"According to the simple explanation, there is no longer this nation, Amalek. But halakha (Jewish law - ed. says that anyone who hates Israel and wants to destroy the Jewish nation is considered Amalek," Rabbi Ginsburgh said. "This is how the Brisker Rav ruled."
Amalek, he said, "changes its name. In the previous generation, it was not called Amalek, it was called, 'Nazi.' Now, with us, we have a lot of enemies, but the accepted name for Amalek today is really Hamas."
He added in that in gematriya - a system which gives numeric value to each Hebrew letter - the word, "Hamas," is equal to the words, "v'ani evtach bach," which translate to, "I will trust in You."
"Therefore, now, we will sing this even more powerfully than before - 'v'ani evtach bach,' and each person who says these words eliminates one Hamas terrorist," he said.
"From everything we have said now, we can create an operation - especially for the soldiers, who will sing, 'v'ani evtach bach,' with the simple intention - they can fulfill it while singing."
Rabbi Ginsburgh added, "If you are a yeshiva dean or give Torah classes, when you say, 'v'ani evtach bach,' you need to kill one of the leaders of Hamas. But sometimes it's just luck that even a simple person will score a direct hit on the leader of Hamas, of the snake."
Eli I hate to burst your bubble but it was more than 240. According to my calculations based on a news report I saw a short time ago, including the ones whose bodies were recovered, it was more like 248, which is the number of positive mitzvot in the Torah.... however I'm not sure if it was even more than 248 so I didn't mention it. We can't really be sure how many hostages they took as quite a lot of them have died HY"D.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the number they were saying initially and most is also significant, even if it turns out to be incorrect. TC
ReplyDeleteWhat's beyond my ken, is why Jewish people would name children "Hagar" and other such kinds of names...
ReplyDeleteM.M.
Just saw this and your comment, M.M. I agree and it irks me that Jews give names of our enemies and/or bad guys, in general. There are quite a # of Jewish women by the name of Isabel (Izevel) or men with names like Nimrod. Secular Jews think any name from the 'bible' is so honorable that it doesn't matter if it's a name of a wicked person. It might be that they don't know the difference between the bad ones and l'havdil, the righteous.
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