A Great Conversion Story!!!

John Janaro, Associate Professor Emeritus of Theology at Christendom College

Magnificat.com; September 2022, Vol. 24, No. 7

On February 17, 1945, the Chief Rabbi in Rome was baptized into the Catholic Church and chose Eugenio as his Christian name. He wished to honor Eugenio Pacelli (Pope Pius XII) whose efforts to protect the Jews of Rome had won the Rabbi's gratitude and esteem. The conversion of Rabbi Israel Zolli, however, was the fruition of many years of attention to another Jewish Rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth. It began in childhood, and grew into an inner companionship, an increasing conviction, and finally a response to a call to follow Jesus from the "Promise of the Synagogue" to fulfillment in the Church.

Israel Zolli was born in 1881 in the town of Brody in Galicia (currently Western Ukraine but then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). He was the youngest of 5 in a devout Jewish family, where he received much formation for his soul from his prayerful and intelligent father and his mother's special love and dedication to caring for the poor. Christians and Jews lived together in Brody, enduring many hardships and respecting one another. Israel vividly remembered seeing a crucifix on the wall in the house of his childhood friend Stanislas and his widowed mother in their particularly trying circumstances. Israel Zolli grew up with an awareness of the fragility of things, and of love, suffering, and the mystery of God.

A gifted student, he entered university first in Vienna and then in Florence, while also studying at the Italian Rabbinical College. He was put off by the many disputations on the particulars of Jewish legal observance, however, and was drawn instead to the Psalms, the Prophets, and especially the Suffering Servant texts in Isaiah. One day around the beginning of 1918, he was mysteriously led to call upon the name of Jesus, and he sensed the nearness of his fellow Israelite who preached and suffered for the "law of love." From that moment he recognized Jesus as a vital source of his religious life and allowed himself to be nourished by the Gospels and the New Testament--without, however, perceiving a distinct "calling" to become a Christian. Rather, what he experienced was an interior encounter that unfolded with time. With Jesus, Zolli's awareness grew slowly even as he was immersed in his work as a professor, biblical scholar, and rabbi in Trieste and then Rome over the next two decades.

During this time, Zolli heard many accounts and watched firsthand the rise of racist antisemitism and the Nazi movement in Germany, and saw the growing peril the Jews faced. When the Germans invaded Rome in 1943, Zolli's advice that the Roman Jewish Community go underground was not heeded by the lay synagogue administration. But Pius XII quietly called on convents, monasteries, and homes of the Catholic faithful to shelter Jews who wished to hide. Wanted by the Gestapo, Zolli was forced to take refuge with several Catholic families. He emerged when Allied Forces liberated the city in 1944, and observed Yom Kippur in October 1944 in the synagogue of Rome with those who remained of the Jewish Community. During this service, Zolli had something like a visionary experience, and Jesus seemed to be saying to him that this was his last day in the synagogue. Zolli recognized that he was being called to follow Jesus in a new way, the way of fulfillment. After this, he resigned his rabbinical office and began preparing for Baptism.