Israel Zolli

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Israel Anton Zoller (b. September 27, 1881, Brody, Galicia - d. March 2, 1956) was an Italian Jewish Rabbi, who converted to Roman Catholicism.

Zoller was born to a family of dynastic rabbis. In 1920 he was appointed as rabbi of the city of Trieste, which had just been transferred from Austria-Hungary to Italy. The family Italianized their surname (to "Zolli").

In 1940, Zolli became the Chief Rabbi of Rome. According to biographer Judith Cabaud, in 1944, while conducting a Yom Kippur service, Zolli experienced a mystical encounter with Jesus Christ^{[citation needed]}.

Shortly after the end of World War II, partly rejected by the Roman Jewish community, he and his wife (but not their daughter) converted to Roman Catholicism. Israel Zolli took Eugenio Maria as his baptismal name (Eugenio was the birthname of Pope Pius XII).

Employed afterwards at the Pontifical Biblical Institute, Zolli died in Rome, aged 74.

[edit] Memoir

His 1954 memoir Before the Dawn gives details of his conversion.

[edit] External links

• My Father Never Stopped Being a Jew A conversation with Israel Zolli's daughter, Miriam
• Before the Dawn: the Mysterious Conversion of Rome's Chief Rabbi
• The Chief Rabbi, the Pope, and the Holocaust: An Era in Vatican-Jewish Relations by Robert G Weisbord, available online from Google Print
• Eugenio Zolli's conversion story, from a Catholic point of view.
• Why Did the Chief Rabbi of Rome Convert to Catholicism?, from a Jewish point of view.