In 1684, a group of Spanish and Portuguese Jews who fled the Inquisition (see "Today in Jewish History" for Tevet 22) held a Rosh Hashanah service in New Amsterdam, thereby founding congregation Shearith Israel ("Remnant of Israel"). On this 17th of Tevet in 1728, the congregation purchased a lot in Lower Manhattan to erect the first synagogue in New York.
Rabbi Aaron Zelig ben Joel Feivush of Ostrog, Russia, author of Toldot Aaron, passed away on Tevet 17 of the year in 5515 from creation (1754).
Tevet 17 is also the yahrtzeit of Rabbi Yaakov Wolf Krantz (1740-1804), the Maggid (preacher) of Dubna, particularly known for the parables (meshalim) he employed in his sermons and writings.
If He loathes evil, then why does He allow it in His world? How can He breathe life into a world while all that is good and beautiful is ravaged by that which He hates?
It must be that His hatred of evil is not like the hatred of a mortal being for those who oppose him. Nothing can oppose Him, none of His creatures can cause Him harm. To Him, darkness is light and light is darkness, the wicked and the righteous are equal in their insignificance.
He rejects evil not for any reason, but only because He has chosen to reject these things, and that very rejection is what brings evil into being.
So too, He has chosen that those who vanquish evil will be called good. This, too, is a decision from His very essence, one that defines the very reality of things.
At the very core of reality lies the freedom of choice.