Breaking New Ground : Faiths: A Baptist woman’s desire to read the Bible in Hebrew eventually led her to unusual leadership role in Hadassah.

Pauline Drake’s heart jumped when she met former Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kolleck, a legendary figure in Israeli politics.

And Kolleck was stunned when the elderly black woman--and devout Baptist--asked him in Hebrew to pose for a picture.

“He looked at me and told me, ‘You have your picture,’ ” Drake said. “I remember that, because I loved the expression on his face.”

The 68-year-old Drake not only speaks Hebrew, she is also president of the 150-member Matawan-Aberdeen Hadassah chapter in New Jersey. And she serves as a board member, and the Hebrew studies chair, for the Zionist organization’s southern New Jersey region.

“A lot of people tell me, ‘You’re the only black amongst a group of Jews,’ ” said Drake, an active member of Providence Baptist Church in nearby Cliffwood. “But I love everybody. I pay it no mind. I just feel that we’re all God’s children.”

Hadassah is the country’s largest women’s Zionist organization, with about 385,000 members. Members believe in the unity of the Jewish people and the centrality of Israel in Jewish life.

The organization runs two major hospitals in Israel and supports Jewish rights around the world.

“We don’t require you to be Jewish to be a member of Hadassah. We don’t require you to be anything,” said Rise Sandrowitz, president of the southern New Jersey region of Hadassah. “But with our interest in Judaism and Israel, I don’t see where a lot of non-Jews would be attracted.”

Although Hadassah has had chapter presidents who were converts to Judaism, and the non-Jewish spouses of Jewish men have held some important positions, Drake’s situation is unusual, Sandrowitz said.

But Drake has been welcomed with open arms into the organization.

“We don’t make it different for her because she’s not Jewish,” Sandrowitz said. “She fits in very comfortably.”

Drake first became interested in Judaism as she sought ways to better understand her own Christian religion. She wanted to read the Old Testament in its original form.

“I’ve always loved the Bible and I didn’t quite understand it,” she said.

She took a six-week Hebrew course taught by a local rabbi in 1968, and it left her wanting to learn more. So every Thursday afternoon for 2 1/2 years, Drake took time off from her job as a presser at a dry-cleaner to study the language.

It was while reading a Hebrew story in class that Drake first heard of the Hadassah organization. She went to a local meeting and has been an active member ever since.

“If it wasn’t for the story in the Hebrew class about the Hadassah hospital, I never would have gone,” she said. “I think it was God’s blessing.”

But it was not just her love of the Hebrew language that attracted her to the organization.

“I know that Jesus Christ was a Jew . . . and I wanted to know his holidays, how he enjoyed them, what he was about,” she said.

Drake has attended synagogue services for the Jewish holidays of Simhat Torah and Yom Kippur. Last month, she went to a fellow Hadassah member’s house for a Passover Seder.

Her activism in Hadassah led her to many of the organization’s national conventions. She has visited Israel three times and plans to go twice more in the coming months, for Hadassah’s national convention this summer and as head of a church group going next February. And she hopes to take part in Jerusalem’s 3,000-year anniversary celebration.

Drake is teaching Hebrew to about 15 members of her church who are preparing for a pilgrimage to the Jewish state. And she helped arrange a program in which members of her church visit a local synagogue for Sabbath services.

She has become a popular speaker at synagogues and Jewish organizations throughout New Jersey. Last month, she spoke before a crowd of 300 at a Holocaust commemoration in Newark, and she has represented Hadassah at local Holocaust remembrances.

And in January, she was honored by the Adath Israel Congregation in Lawrenceville as its 1994 Humanitarian of the Year.

Synagogue member Ruth Lubitz, who nominated Drake for the award, said she had spoken with Drake many times at regional Hadassah events, adding, “I just assumed she was Jewish. It just didn’t seem likely that a Baptist would be president of a Hadassah chapter.”

It was after reading a newspaper story about Drake that Lubitz decided the woman was someone very special and suggested that her synagogue honor Drake’s commitment to Jewish causes.

“You don’t find many people who would go out of their way to do the kinds of things this lady has done,” Lubitz said. “All we need is a few million more Pauline Drakes and this would be a wonderful world.”