Metro

Building Bridges

Black-Jewish national summit revolves around support for Israel.

Keri Guten Cohen
Story Development Editor
and Don Cohen
Special to the Jewish News

ews and African
Americans joined in
prayer, dialogue and
plenty of music during the
Fellowship of Israel and Black
America's first national summit
on black-Jewish relations Sept.
14-b in Detroit.
United by their love and sup-
port of Israel, the almost 80
participants spent time getting to
know each other, learning about
similarities, discussing their
differences, and brainstorming
about how to keep the momen-
tum going on their goal of work-
ing together to support Israel.
The event attracted mostly
a hometown audience, with
African Americans outnumber-
ing Jewish participants about two
to one. Representation at confer-
ence sessions came mostly from
Detroit-area evangelical Christian
churches and Jewish synagogue
and organizational leadership. A
rousing gala concert at Orchestra
Hall the evening of Sept. 14 drew
nearly 2,000 people.
Pastor Glenn R. Plummer of
Ambassadors of Christ Church
in Redford founded FIBA to
nurture, develop and expand
the goodwill and working
relationship between African
Americans and Jews. Plummer
developed FIBA in partnership
with Rabbi Yechiel Z. Eckstein of
Chicago, founder and president
of the International Fellowship
of Christians and Jews, which
promotes understanding and
cooperation between Jews and
Christians and works to build
broad support for Israel and
other shared concerns.
Pastor Plummer is becom-
ing a well-known figure in the
Jewish community because of
his passionate addresses at two
recent pro-Israel rallies and
a Shabbat evening service at

Pastor Glenn Plummer and Rabbi

Yechiel Eckstein hosted the evening.

Temple Israel in West Bloomfield.
His unabashed support for
Israel, delivered dramatically and
emphatically, wowed all three
audiences. He exhibited the same
enthusiasm and commanding
presence at the summit.
"This is a national summit
on black and Jewish relations,"
Rev. Plummer said at the outset.
"We need to make a statement.
Leaders have to talk and come
out with substantial decisions to
impact this country and other
nations as well."
Speakers included New Yorker
Peter Geffen, who marched with

and was mentored by great civil
rights leader Rabbi Abraham
Joshua Heschel; Israeli Linda
Olmert, a daughter of Holocaust
survivors who serves on the
board of Yad VaShem and is a
sister-in-law of Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert; Rev.
Kenneth Flowers of Greater New
Mt. Moriah Missionary Baptist
Church in Detroit, known for his
interfaith work; Jeff Mendelson,
national outreach director for the
American Israel Public Affairs
Committee; and Nonie Darwish
of Los Angeles, founder of Arabs
for Israel.

Pastors Patricia and P.L. Pearson Peter Geffen

ness of poverty and educational
disadvantage inside our inner
7„- communities. We must be
engaged in eliminating inequal-
-:;-; ity, and resurrecting the time
when awareness and knowledge
were front and center as in
Martin Luther King and Rabbi
Heschel's time.
"We're here to talk about a
relationship that is being built
among the black community
toward Israel," Geffen said. "We
must start with honesty or we
won't get far."
During lunch, participants
brainstormed ways to support
Israel together, including garner-
ing support from elected officials
and traveling to Israel.
"Don't wait to go to ISrael until
they stop fighting," urged Georgia
Elliot of Detroit. "They never stop
fighting."
"We do have similarities — we
both experienced slavery and
have to exist with ex-slave own-
ers," said Pastor Patricia Pearson
of Break Through Christian
Ministries in Sterling Heights,
who admitted that all she knows
about Jews she learned from
movies.
"And we're both minorities.
We're larger but we have a little
voice; and the Jews are smaller,
but have a greater voice. We need
to learn that."
Olmert gave a heartfelt and
moving talk following a tour of
the Holocaust Memorial Center
in Farmington Hills.
"I was raised by parents who
were slaves," Olmert said. "Slaves
who had no value — they weren't
bought; they weren't sold; they
were suppOsed to die."
Dismissing the idea that some-
how blacks and Jews were in a
competition for who suffered
more, she preferred to see it as "a
common legacy of suffering," but
also a common legacy of surviv-
al. She spoke of her admiration
as a young girl for Dr. King and
her desire to be involved in the

-8

Common Bonds

In their own ways, each speaker
emphasized commonalities
between African Americans and
Jews that only solidified reasons
why the two groups should work
together.
Geffen told the group, "Don't
pretend things are smooth and
glorious, without wrinkles,
between us. We have them ...
We've lost this consciousness
[from the 19605] for many rea-
sons and we won't get it back by
pretending issues of separation
don't exist.
"We haven't finished the bu8i-

Linda Olmert

Georgia Elliot

Building Bridges on page 29

September 21 < 2006

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