Rabbi Zsolt Balla was born in Budapest, but his family kept their Jewishness a secret for years. During his early childhood in Communist Hungary, his mother never mentioned that their family was Jewish. His father, a senior army officer who ran a large base, wasn’t Jewish and his mother defined herself as Jewish culturally but did not practice the faith.
At the age of 9, Rabbi Balla began developing an interest in Bible stories and, not knowing he was Jewish, told his parents he would like to go to church. “That’s when my mother said, ‘we have to talk,’” he says.
As an adult, Rabbi Balla went to study Judaism in Germany. The thought of leaving his native Hungary to study Judaism in Berlin “seemed totally crazy” to when he first considered it.
“I mean, Germany of all places?” he said.
But ultimately the country that engineered the destruction of European Jewry brought about many changes for him. Rabbi Balla became one of the first rabbis ordained there in 90 years, reports the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. And now he has made history after being appointed to be the first Jewish chaplain to serve in the German army since the Holocaust.
Rabbi Balla, 42, said the fact that the army has restored the position of Jewish military chaplain — a move that happened last year at the urging of Germany’s organized Jewish community — is a clear sign that Jews “have a future in Germany.” Even so, he said he understands why some might find it jarring that he is working for an institution that made the Holocaust possible.
Balla wants more German Jews to feel comfortable to join the army, which has no mandatory conscription, and the 300 Jews who are already serving to make Judaism a bigger part of their lives.
A large part of the job will be simply to be available, Balla said. “I want Jewish soldiers in the German armed forces to know that they have someone to approach,” he said.