Like most people who experience Yad Vashem for the first time, the Rev. DeeDee Coleman felt overwhelmed by her visit to Israel’s Holocaust memorial last month.
For the Baptist minister, though, the experience had extra meaning.
“From an African American perspective, it tied everything together,” she says. “There is such a history with the Jewish and African American communities that goes back to slavery, to discrimination, to being able to be who you are.”
Coleman serves as pastor for a large black Baptist congregation in Detroit, Mich. But she is also a member of the national council of AIPAC, and just returned from an AIPAC mission to Israel with 40 of her fellow black pastors.
She will be one of the featured speakers at the 2010 AIPAC membership dinner, which takes place Dec. 14, at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. It is one of four such events taking place around Northern California that week.
You can expect Coleman’s speech to be a real barnburner for Israel.
“We want to connect the African American community with the Jewish community,” Coleman says. “AIPAC has never had a voice lifted from an African American perspective to let people know it’s OK to love your brothers and sisters where Israel is concerned.”
Coleman’s recently completed mission marked her second visit to Israel. The first in 2008 didn’t just connect her to the Jewish state — it also reinforced her deeply held Christian faith, which is rooted in the Land of Israel.
“To go to Israel and put my feet on the ground was more than a connection: It is who I am,” Coleman says. “From my perspective, God gave Israel the land. That is what I believe and what I stand by.”
Coleman is no recent convert to the pro-Israel camp. While growing up in New Orleans she learned from her mother that “the Jewish people were God’s chosen, and we will be blessed if we blessed them,” she says.
She was ordained as a deacon in the Baptist Church in 1988, receiving her full ordination in 1993. She is the mother of two, grandmother of three and a great-grandmother as well.
In 1999, she became the first female head pastor at Russell Street Missionary Baptist Church in the Detroit. It’s an inner city church, but she has made sure to foster strong ties with the areas Jewish community.
She is also close to the Detroit’s Muslim community — one of the nation’s largest — which has many black members.
“We’ve been doing a lot of outreach, working to promote peace,” she says. “It’s not without a struggle and people asking difficult questions basing their opinions on what they don’t understand. Sometimes our Muslim brothers and sisters will come in to voice their opinion. We don’t argue.”
That doesn’t mean she avoids choosing sides. When it comes to the Middle East conflict, this AIPAC supporter is 100 percent with Israel.
“I want peace for the Middle East,” she adds, “but it’s difficult when those who say they are peacemakers won’t come to the table and talk. It’s difficult if you want to annihilate me. How am I supposed to feel behind that?”
Coleman has worked hard to make sure her fellow Christians, including colleagues in the clergy, understand more about Israel and the conflict.
She hosted an Israel education meeting this past October, drawing more than 200 pastors. “It’s been an interesting journey to see how the African American community is now listening,” Coleman says, referring to the pro-Israel perspective.
That doesn’t mean she hasn’t taken flak for her pro-Israel stand. She has had her car egged, and received some hate mail. Still, she refuses to back down, as her very public work with AIPAC attests.
“We channel through all that and still stand up for Israel,” Coleman says. “We need the relationship. Israel needs the United States but the U.S. needs Israel too. We need each other.”
Bay Area AIPAC membership events will take place 11 a.m. Dec. 12 in Sacramento; 6 p.m. Dec. 12 in San Jose; 6 p.m. Dec. 13 in Oakland; and 5 p.m. Dec. 14 in San Francisco.
For more information, e-mail [email protected].