Dear all,

Last week I joined a group from Leo Baeck College at Jewish Christian Muslim week near Koblenz, an interfaith conference that’s been going strong for decades. It is one of multiple similar events in Germany. While I am a Germanophile, long since comfortable in the country, for several of my colleagues it was a cathartic experience: a chance to represent the Jewish community, alongside Germans and other faith groups, in a region scarred by its association with the Holocaust and the Rheinland Massacres.

In this week’s parashah of Korach, the eponymous antagonist rebels against the leadership of Moses and Aaron. He and his 250 allies say that Moses’s leadership is haughty and remote. In response, God tells Moses and Korach to bring incense offerings in fire-pans, as a test of which side God favours. God sides with Moses, and Korach is swallowed up in fire, along with his co-conspirators Datan and Aviram.

However, God commands that the fire-pans they used should be saved from the wreckage; for they have become holy. What is more, they are to be hammered into metal sheets to provide plating for the altar at the centre of the Mishkan. The same material used in Korach’s doomed offerings becomes part of the altar – the holiest of all places.

I believe the Torah speaks to the same potential for transformation that we met in Germany. A country that committed both ancient and modern atrocities against Jews is now a site for reconciliation and mutual understanding. It is a source of optimism, just like Korach’s fire-pans: that which was manipulated, and used for evil, can quickly be transformed into something that brings holiness.

Shabbat shalom.

Tim