For the past two years, Barry Wolfensen has been afflicted with what he jokingly calls "Habititis," an infectious desire to travel to Newark from his home in Florham Park and volunteer his newly learned construction skills to Habitat for Humanity.

Currently, he is trying to make that condition contagious, spreading it to fellow members of the Jewish community, as the Habitat's Newark affiliate embarks on an energetic project to finance and build a special dwelling called Abraham House.

The goal is to unite Christians, Muslims, and Jews in devoting both money and hands-on labor to build a one-family home near the corner of South Orange Avenue and South Sixth Street.

Slated for construction on land donated anonymously by a member of Ahavas Sholom, the century-old Conservative congregation in Newark, the home will be dedicated in the name of the patriarch who inspired all three faiths.

The effort is one small part of an international organization founded by a Georgia couple in 1976 as a "nonprofit, ecumenical Christian" endeavor to create affordable housing stock. Its own Web site refers to it as a "housing ministry" and many of its projects in the United States and overseas have been funded by church groups.

In Newark, the outreach goes beyond Christianity.

"I suggested we get the children of Abraham — Jews, Christians, and Muslims — to join in building this house for a family now living in substandard housing," said Margaret Prentice of Maplewood, chair of the Newark Habitat faith committee. "One of the benefits is, while we are building a house, we will also be building community."

But before work can begin, the Habitat chapter must raise approximately one half of the $90,000 it will cost to construct.

Members of Ahavas Sholom and three South Orange synagogues — the Conservative Congregation Beth El and Oheb Shalom Congregation and Reform Temple Sharey Tefilo-Israel — are already donating their time and money to the project.

Seed money has come from congregants of Prospect Presbyterian Church in Maplewood.

"Prospect provided a grant to get this one started," said its pastor, Rick Boyer, "and we have challenged the other faith communities in the area to come together and provide the remainder of the funds."

"We are building homes, building interfaith bridges, building our communities, and making peace," he said.

Prentice envisioned a wide multifaith effort.

"We will have members of congregations from Irvington, Newark, Millburn, Maplewood, and South Orange working together to build this house," Prentice said. "It will be Jews, Christians, and Muslims. The Buddhists want to participate. The Ethical Culture Society wants to participate. We are describing this as the coming together of spiritual and ethically based organizations to promote peace."

Wolfensen said the mission should have special resonance among Jews. "We want people in the Jewish community to know that synagogues — Reform, Orthodox, Conservative, or whatever — can put all their fights aside for once. They can join together and say, ‘We don't have to fight about ritual or holidays or any of the stuff. Let us do something for the greater good.'"

As she took time out from construction work on another Habitat house two blocks away, Carol Paster agreed.

The Maplewood resident is director of the Sharey Tefilo-Israel preschool program, where she has made the Habitat philosophy part of the curriculum.

"We bring the children down every spring, and we donate money through the tzedaka at our school. For me personally, it is giving back to the community. It is what we teach our kids — that it is not all about you. It is all about other people. Once you meet the families here and work side-by-side with them it is very hard not to show up again."

Wolfensen got that message when he joined the Habitat Carpenter's Club two years ago so he could "bang nails every Wednesday." As his business of selling picture frames to camera stores began fading in the era of digital photography, he decided it was "a great time to learn how to be an architect or a carpenter. So I went down to Habitat in Newark and said, ‘I'm here. I've got no skills. What can I do?'"

The one-family, three-bedroom Habitat homes he has helped build have a set of specifications some might consider austere: narrow plots, one-and-a-half baths, and no air-conditioning or garage.

Like others who have received Habitat homes, the family that moves into Abraham House will be first-time homeowners with not enough income to afford property at market rates.

The adults in the family are required to dedicate at least 400 hours to working on other Habitat construction sites as well as their own home, said Hendricks Davis, the Newark chapter's executive director.

"They also have to demonstrate their need for affordable housing and their ability to pay the interest-free mortgage," he explained. "Habitat doesn't give handouts. We enable people to make a place for themselves in the world that provides comfort, nurturing, goodness and allows them to grow in positive ways."

Since the chapter began in 1986, Habitat volunteers have built 63 homes in Newark, and, according to Davis, dramatically changed a neighborhood just a few blocks from Springfield Avenue and the epicenter of the 1967 riots. Five more homes, including Abraham House, are currently in progress.

Wolfensen has had a hand in building nine of those homes.

"I get a glow that you can't possibly imagine until you've done it," he said. "You start with a barren piece of dirt and then you give a key to a family that no way on the face of this earth would be homeowners. No way."