(This biography is from a monthly letter from Abbaye St.
Joseph de Clairval, Flavigny, France, and is used with permission.
Their website, www.clairval.com, contains many other
inspirational biographies as well as information on the
monastery, how to receive their monthly letter, and the Ignation
retreats which they offer.)
Israel, a young Jew, got along well at school with Stanislas, a young
Christian. Invited to his friend's house, Israel saw a crucifix hanging
on the wall. He had never seen one before. When he went home, he asked
his family about this man hanging on a cross. They replied, 'This is
something that concerns Christians, not us.' Much later, he read in the
prophet Isaiah the songs of the servant of the Lord, in which is
presented the purest and most innocent man, beaten, humiliated, and put
to death for our sins. The nagging question then sprang to his mind:
'Isn't the crucified man I saw this servant of Yahweh?'
Young Israel Zoller was born on September 17, 1881, in Brody, in
Galicia, now a region in southeast Poland, but at that time part of the
Austro-Hungarian empire. He was the youngest of five children. Members
of the Jewish faith, the family was relatively well-off, as the father
was the owner of a silk factory in Lodz, then in Russian territory. In
1888, the Czar decided to nationalize every business owned by
foreigners. Mr. Zoller's factory in
Lodz was confiscated without financial compensation. The family's way
of
life was considerably reduced, and the eldest sons were forced to move
away
to look for work.
At the age of seven, Israel attended the Jewish primary school, where
the children learned passages from the Bible by heart. But his taste
for religious learning came primarily from his father. For her part,
his mother taught him to help the needy. Moved by her neighbor's
poverty, she redoubled her good works, appealing when necessary to the
other ladies in her neighborhood, Jewish or Catholic. In the Brody
area, there was no scorn or mistrust between Jews and Christians. A
bond, in fact, 'spiritually ties the people of the New Covenant to
Abraham's stock. Thus the Church of Christ acknowledges that, according
to God's saving design, the beginnings of her faith and her election
are found already among the Patriarchs, Moses and the prophets. She
professes that all who believe in Christ—Abraham's sons
according to
faith—are included in the same Patriarch's call, and likewise
that the
salvation
of the Church is mysteriously foreshadowed by the chosen people's
exodus
from the land of bondage. The Church, therefore, cannot forget that she
received the revelation of the Old Testament through the people with
whom
God in His inexpressible mercy concluded the Ancient Covenant' (Vatican
II, Nostra Aetate, 4).
In 1904, Israel left his family, whom he would never see again. His
mother, who had always wished to see him become a rabbi, had just died.
While giving lessons to provide for his family's needs, he studied
philosophy at the University of Vienna, then at the University of
Florence, where
he completed his doctorate. At the same time, he pursued rabbinical
studies. Named vice-rabbi of Trieste in 1913, which at that time was an
Austrian
port, he married Adele Litwak, a Galician Jew, from which union a
daughter,
Dora, was born. During the first World War, Israel was hounded by the
Austrian police as an Italian partisan, because he had studied in that
country.
At the end of the conflict, Trieste was united with Italy, and Israel
Zoller was named Chief Rabbi of the city.
Wasn't Jesus a Son of my
people?
In 1917, he suffered the
profound pain of losing his wife. At the
time, he had a mystical experience—one afternoon, 'all of a
sudden and
without knowing why, as if I were in an ecstasy, I called upon the name
of Jesus... I saw Him as in a large painting... I gazed at Him for a
long
time, without restlessness, feeling, rather, perfect serenity of
mind...
I said to myself, ‘Wasn't Jesus a Son of my people?' ' Nothing
premeditated,
nothing prepared. It was a first quiet call from Christ.
Zoller married again in 1920, to Emma Majonica, who would give him a
second daughter, Miriam. From 1918 to 1938, living all the while in
Trieste, he taught Hebrew and ancient Semitic languages at the
University of Padua. Surprisingly, he studied the New Testament as well
as the Old Testament. In this way he became familiar with the person of
Jesus Christ and His
teaching. He could not keep himself from comparing the Old Testament to
the New: 'In the Old Testament, Justice is carried out by one man
towards another... We do good for good received; we do harm for harm we
have suffered at the hands of another. Not to do injury for injury is,
in a certain fashion, to fall short of justice.' What a contrast with
the Gospel: Love your enemies... pray for them, or even Jesus' last
words on the cross: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they
are doing! 'All this stupefied me,' Zoller wrote. 'The New Testament
is, in fact, an altogether new Testament.' And he clarified, 'Here a
new earth, a new heaven begin... The rich who are attached to the earth
are poor, and the poor who have been able to detach themselves from the
earth are truly rich, because they possess a kingdom that belongs to
the afflicted, to the silent, and to the persecuted, who have
themselves never persecuted, but have only loved.' Little by little,
Zoller discovered the bond that links the two Testaments. Indeed, 'God,
the inspirer and author of both Testaments, wisely arranged that the
New Testament be hidden in
the Old and the Old be made manifest in the New. ... [T]he books of the
Old Testament ... acquire and show forth their full meaning in the New
Testament' (Vatican II, Dei Verbum, 16).
The Nazarene
In addition, Zoller noted
with
sadness that, among his co-religionists, 'love of the Law is often more
important than the law of Love.' The petty details of rabbinical
casuistry eclipsed the great commandment of the
law revealed by God to Moses: You shall love the Lord, your God, with
all your heart, and with all your soul... (Dt. 6:5). As a specialist in
ancient languages, he discovered that the name 'Nazarene' first of all
referred to the little town where Jesus lived during His first thirty
years.
But the name also meant that Jesus of Nazareth was the Nazir (the
Consecrated
One) announced by the prophet Isaiah: A shoot shall sprout from the
stump
of Jesse, and from his roots a bud (in Hebrew: nazer) shall blossom.
The
spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him (Is. 11:1-2a). He expounded on
this
discovery in his most significant work of the twenty years he spent in
Trieste, The Nazarene (1938).
The striking agreement between the story of Christ's Passion in the
Gospel and the Suffering Servant described by the prophet Isaiah eight
centuries before His coming left Zoller convinced that this prophesy
was
fulfilled in Jesus: He was spurned and avoided by men, a man of
suffering,
accustomed to infirmity... we held him in no esteem. Yet it was our
infirmities
that he bore, our sufferings that he endured... He was pierced for our
offenses, crushed for our sins...; by his stripes we were healed
(Isaiah 53, 3-5). In addition, examining Jesus' declarations on His
divinity led him to write, 'Christ is the Messiah; the Messiah is God;
therefore Christ is God.' Zoller was intellectually convinced, but he
did not yet have faith. Faith was a grace that he would receive seven
years later.
The rapprochement between Mussolini and Hitler's Germany at the end of
the 1930s brought with it anti-Semitic campaigns in Italy, particularly
in areas close to borders with the Third Reich. In Trieste, where there
were many Jews, a Catholic historian organized a series of anti-Semitic
conferences. A large audience was expected. Zoller decided to intercede
with a Jesuit, a friend of the speaker's. The religious arranged a
meeting between the rabbi and the orator. With gentleness and kindness,
Zoller exhorted his listener, in the name of Christian principles and
especially in the name of the forgiveness that Jesus Christ granted on
the Cross, to cancel his conferences. The
professor raised the difficulty of his situation as an
objection—everything
had already been organized. The rabbi shrugged his shoulders and
advised
him only to read the Gospel, as he often did himself. He predicted,
'The
time is near when we will become good friends.' The following Sunday,
in
front of a packed auditorium, the lecturer announced that a
high-ranking Jew had enlightened his conscience. He no longer wanted to
continue on the path he had strayed down until then, and canceled the
scheduled conferences.
But already discriminatory laws had been enacted against the Jews.
Israel Zoller Italianized his name to 'Zolli.' Nevertheless, he was
soon stripped of his Italian nationality, but he was not particularly
worried. In 1940, the Jewish community in Rome offered him the post of
Chief Rabbi. He accepted the position, with the goal of protecting his
brothers in the
persecution that was anticipated, and of making peace among the
divisions within the Jewish community, whose members he exhorted to set
politics aside
and turn their attention to prayer, teaching, and mutual aid. But this
appeal met with almost no response.
A solidarity that saves
In September 1943, after
the
fall of Mussolini and the armistice signed by the king of Italy, Victor
Emmanuel III, with the Americans, Hitler
sent thirty German divisions to occupy northern and central Italy.
Himmler,
commander of the SS, determined that the time had come to apply the
policy
of extermination of the Jewish race in Italy. He ordered the head of
the
SS in Rome, Lieutenant Colonel Kappler, to gather all the Jews
together,
men and women, children and the elderly, for deportation to Germany.
Lieutenant
Colonel Kappler took advantage of the deportation order that he had
received
for extortion. He summoned the two men presiding over the Jewish
community
in Rome, and demanded they deliver 50 kilos of gold to him in
twenty-four
hours, or else all the men in the Jewish population in the city would
be
deported immediately. In fact, it was a matter of a list of three
hundred
hostages, at the top of which Zolli appeared. The next day, the Jewish
community
had been able to collect only 35 kilos of gold. They asked the Chief
Rabbi
to go to the Vatican to try to borrow what was missing. He succeeded in
entering
the Vatican, all the exits of which were monitored by the Gestapo, by a
hidden
door in the back of the City, and explained his request for a loan of
15
kilos of gold to Pius XII's Secretary of State, Cardinal Maglione. He
gave
his own person as a security. The prelate consulted with the Holy
Father,
then asked Zolli to return before one o'clock in the afternoon. But
shortly
thereafter, Zolli learned that the quantity of gold required had
already
been collected, thanks to contributions from priests and numerous
Catholic
organizations.
However, this was only a respite. The Chief Rabbi made every effort to
convince the Jews of Rome to disperse to avoid deportation. Soon the
German ambassador to the Holy See, von Weizsäcker, who
was
secretly hostile to Nazi policy, warned the Pope that Himmler had
ordered the deportation of all Jews in Italy. Pius XII immediately
ordered the Roman clergy to open their sanctuaries so as to receive the
Jews who would come to hide there. Zolli, who had a price on his head,
lived in hiding for the next nine months and, finally, with Christian
friends of his daughter, Dora. He
thus succeeded in escaping from the Gestapo. But despite the
precautions taken, in the night of October 15-16, a thousand Roman Jews
(out of about 8000) were arrested and deported. Most would not return.
'From now on you will follow
Me'
On June 4, 1944, the city
of
Rome was liberated by the American forces. By government decree of
September 21, 1944, Israel Zolli, who had been
relieved of his duties seven months earlier by leaders of the Jewish
community, became Chief Rabbi of Rome again. During the feast of Yom
Kippur (the Day of Atonement) in October 1944, he presided over the
prayers of Great Pardon in the synagogue in Rome. 'Suddenly,' he wrote,
'I saw, with the eyes
of the mind, a large prairie, and standing in the middle of the green
grass was Jesus, dressed in a white robe... At the sight of this, I
felt a great interior peace, and, from the depths of my heart, I heard
these words: 'You are here for the last time. From now on, you will
follow Me.' I
received them in the greatest serenity, and my heart immediately
responded, 'As
it shall be, so it must be.'... An hour later, after supper, in my
room,
my wife declared to me, 'Today, while you were standing before the Ark
of the Torah, it seemed to me that the white figure of Jesus was laying
His hands on you, as if He were blessing you.' I was stupefied... At
that very moment, our younger daughter, Miriam, who had gone to her
room and hadn't heard anything, called for me to tell me, 'You are in
the middle of
talking about Jesus Christ. You know, Papa, this evening I saw a big
Jesus,
all white, in a dream.' I wished them both a good night and, without
feeling
at all ill at ease, I continued to think about the extraordinary
sequence
of events.'
A few days later, the Chief Rabbi relinquished his duties, and went to
find a priest in order to complete his instruction in the truths of
the faith. On February 13, 1945, Archbishop Traglia conferred the
sacrament of Baptism on Israel Zolli, who chose 'Eugenio' as his
Christian name, in gratitude to Pope Pius XII for his decisive action
on behalf of the Jews during the war. Zolli's wife, Emma, received
Baptism with her husband, and added the name 'Maria' to her first name.
Their daughter Miriam would follow her parents after a year of personal
reflection. Eugenio Zolli's baptism was the result of a long spiritual
evolution: 'This event in my soul was like the arrival of a beloved
guest. I began only to hear the voice of Christ expressed most clearly
and most strongly in the Gospels. In my soul, God did not reveal
Himself at all by means of tempest or fire, but through a gentle
murmur... I became aware of a God Whom I loved, a God Who wants to be
loved, and who Himself loves... The convert, like the man miraculously
cured, is the object (the one who receives) and not the subject (the
perpetrator) of the miracle. It is false to speak of someone who has
converted as if he has acted from personal initiative. No one says of
the miraculously cured that he has cured himself, but that he has been
cured. We must say the same of the convert.'
All men and women are His
children
Zolli was often asked if
he had
converted out of gratitude towards Pope Pius XII. He always answered in
the negative, adding, however: 'You could say of the reign of Pius XII
that it was inspired by the words of the prophet Isaiah: 'Peace is
harmony, peace is salvation for those who are near as for those who are
far, I wish to heal all' (cf. Is. 57:19). The Catholic Church loves all
souls. She suffers with all and for all. She
waits with love for all her children on Peter's holy threshold, and her
children are all mankind... There is no place of suffering that Pius
XII's
spirit of love did not reach... In the course of history, no hero
commanded
such an army. No military force was more fighting, none was more fought
against, none was more heroic than that led by Pius XII in the name of
Christian
charity.' According to the Jewish historian Pinchas Lapide, the
Catholic
Church, through its charitable action, was able to save from certain
death
approximately 850,000 Jews living in areas occupied by the Third Reich
(Cf. Pius XII and the Second World War, by Father Pierre Blet
S.J., Paulist Press, 1999).
The night of his Baptism, Zolli did not even have enough to eat dinner.
Archbishop Traglia gave him 50 lira. At the age of sixty-five, Zolli
found himself suddenly confronted with grave financial problems,
starting with that of supporting his family. Up until that time, he had
always lived
from his fees as a Rabbi and a professor. He accepted this new
situation
with the greatest detachment: 'I am asking for the water of Baptism and
nothing else. I am poor and I will live poor. I have trust in
Providence.'
The news of the Chief Rabbi of Rome being baptized launched a chorus of
slanders. He was accused, among other calumnies, of having apostatized
out
of self-interest. It was easy for him to answer: 'The Jews who convert
today, as in Saint Paul's time, have everything to lose in terms of
material
life, and have everything to gain in the life of grace.' He responded
to
the reproach of treason with indignation: 'The God of Jesus Christ, of
Paul, is He not the same God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?'
In our time, certain Catholics think it is pointless for a Jew to
convert to become Christian. This opinion is contradicted by the
teaching
of the Second Vatican Council: 'Christ, present to us in His Body,
which
is the Church, is the one Mediator and the unique way of salvation. In
explicit terms He Himself affirmed the necessity of faith and baptism
(cf. Mk 16:16) and thereby affirmed also the necessity of the Church,
for through baptism as through a door men enter the Church. Whosoever,
therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by
Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved'
(Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, 14).
At three o'clock in the
afternoon,
just like Jesus
Through the Holy Father's intervention, Eugenio Zolli was named a
professor at the Pontifical Biblical Institute. In October 1946, he
entered
the Third Order of Saint Francis, the distinguishing feature of which
is evangelical poverty practiced by lay people in the world. Zolli, a
faithful parishioner at Stella Matutina, discreetly attended talks on
the Gospel given by his parish priest. During Christmas 1955, he
himself
gave a conference on the announcement of the Redeemer in the Old
Testament.
But in January 1956, he came down with pneumonia. His wife Emma was
also
sick and elderly. Their younger daughter, Miriam, who was married and
had
given birth to a little girl, Maura Brigida, stayed at her father's
bedside
in this final illness. A week before his death, Eugenio confided to a
nun
who was caring for him, 'I will die the first Friday of the month, at
three
o'clock in the afternoon, just like Our Lord.' On Friday, March 2, in
the
morning, he received Holy Communion. Having fallen into a coma at noon,
at three o'clock in the afternoon Eugenio Zolli committed his soul to
God.
He had written at the end of his memoirs: 'We can trust in nothing save
the mercy of God, save the compassion of Christ, Whom humanity put to
death
because it did not know how to live in Him. We can rely on nothing but
the
intercession of Her whose Heart was pierced through by the lance that
pierced
Her Son's side.'
Through his spiritual journey, Eugenio Zolli shows the continuity
between the old Covenant and the New:
"'Do not think that I have come to
abolish the law and the prophets. I have come, not to abolish them, but
to fulfill them' Jesus had said (Mt. 5:17). God has visited his
people.
He has fulfilled the promise he made to Abraham and his descendents. He
acted far beyond all expectation -- He has sent His own 'beloved Son.'
...
'In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the
prophets,
but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son' (Heb. 1:1-2).
Christ,
the Son of God made man, is the Father's one, perfect, and
unsurpassable
Word. In Him He has said everything; there will be no other word than
this
one... 'In giving us His Son, His only Word,' wrote Saint John of the
Cross, 'He has no more to say... Any person questioning God or desiring
some
vision
or revelation would be guilty not only of foolish behavior but also of
offending
Him, by not fixing his eyes entirely upon Christ and by living with the
desire
for some other novelty' ' (Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 422
and
65).
For Zolli, the demands that this truth brought with it were not
easy
to implement. At the end of his life, he said, 'Those of you who are
born
into the Catholic faith do not realize the opportunity you have, to
have
received the grace of Christ since your childhood. But those who, like
me,
have come to the threshold of faith after long work continued over the
course
of many years, appreciate the grandeur of the gift of Faith and feel
all
the joy there is to be Christian.'
Let us thank God for the gift of Faith that He has granted us
undeservedly. Let us preserve this treasure through a holy life, and
let us pray that all men and women might know the Messiah, believe in
Him, and obtain eternal Life.
Bibliography: Judith Cabaud: Eugenio Zolli,
Prophet of a New World
(de Guibert, Paris 2000).
