An army base in Ramla, in the center of the country near Ben Gurion International Airport, is in normal times the headquarters of the military rabbinate.

They hope to receive word from the rabbinate that it is a match.

He believes that the timing of his appointment and the creation of the military rabbinate reflects a shift in German attitudes towards Jews - a symbol, perhaps, of Germany's reckoning with its abhorrent past.

“Going into the rabbinate was not a way of saying, ‘I’m rejecting what you’re doing.’

“They will run into the iron wall of the rabbinate,” or religious establishment.