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Interfaith forumJanuary 17, 2008
The Women’s Interfaith Forum, founded 14 years ago to celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., could have been just another setting for reliving old battles and lamenting current struggles.
But organizers of the event, held at Temple B’nai Abraham in Livingston, had another vision.
“We wanted to create a program that would be a meaningful way to bring people together from different walks of life,” said cofounder Deborah Prinz, a member of the synagogue and daughter of its famed longtime religious leader, the late Joachim Prinz. “In the area we live in there’s a huge divide between the suburbs, urban areas, and the areas in between. We wanted to do something on the occasion of Martin Luther King’s birthday, something not just service-related, but something that would create more communication and that could be an event that would include everyone on an equal basis.”
Prinz and event cofounder Natalie Mauskopf, another synagogue member who has since moved to California, envisioned a meal and conversation among women from throughout the area. Past dinners have focused on such topics as women in sports, women in the clergy, and environmental hazards.
In keeping with that spirit, this year’s forum will include a panel of nurses from different kinds of institutions, who will look at the changing nature of the work nurses do.
The 14th annual Women’s Interfaith Forum will take place at B’nai Abraham on Wednesday, Jan. 23. Congregational nurse Karen Frank will moderate the panel. The 6:45 p.m. event is free and open to the public.
“Nurses are on the front lines. They really have insight into health care that others don’t,” said Ken Bernstein of Livingston, who organized the panel. “Nursing is a very difficult job. They’re at the intersection of medicine and people in a way I think doctors aren’t.
The panelists are Pam Palmieri, a school nurse at Millburn Middle School who was recently profiled in The New York Times; Rashmi Aggarwal, a nurse at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center’s Center for Geriatric Health Care; and Joanne Williams, director of nursing for the Newark Community Health Center.
The dinner has grown significantly. From its first year, when 80 women attended, it now regularly attracts more than 200 women from 30 different houses of worship around the area. The homemade food, prepared by the women of Temple B’nai Abraham, is always a highlight. And every year, plenty of women expand their networks in unexpected ways.
“I always see phone exchanges. How it spills over into people’s lives, I don’t know. But I definitely see the exchanges,” said Prinz.
“The women’s interfaith dinner honors Martin Luther King’s spirit of inclusion,” said Bernstein. “We bring together a vastly diverse group of people with different backgrounds, socioeconomic levels, and races. But we all have similar concerns we face.”
Interfaith forum
The 14th annual Women’s Interfaith Forum, featuring a panel of nurses who will look at the changing nature of the work nurses do, will take place at Temple B’nai Abraham in Livingston on Wednesday, Jan. 23, at 6:45 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. The snow date is Thursday, Jan. 24, at 6:45 p.m.
For more information, contact the temple at 973-994-2290.