INTERFAITH GROUP WORKS TO PREVENT HUNGER

Rizwana Khalid chalks her chance encounter with Christian and Jewish women up to fate.

You may even call it an answer to prayer.

The Muslim woman decided to go to a North

Palm Beach mosque with her husband the same night a group from Oceanview Methodist Church visited the mosque. It was a last-minute decision that has led to lasting friendships.

The Juno Beach Methodist church group’s reason for visiting was twofold: They heard about vandalism that had taken place at the mosque, and they were finishing a book about Islam.

For the next two weeks, Khalid and her husband went to the Methodist church in return, impressed that the church group would devote the time to studying the history of Islam.

The seeds were beginning to sprout to fulfill Khalid’s years-long dream of starting a Daughters of Abraham group. The nationwide interfaith groups bring together women from Islam, Judaism and Christianity, all of which identify the prophet Abraham as their forefather.

The groups gained steam in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks to create authentic friendships and respect in the face of discrimination and xenophobia. The women discuss each other’s religious practices and holidays.

“It has to be fate. I was thinking of doing something like this ever since I came back to West Palm Beach from Texas,” Khalid said.

“It was just by a fluke that I decided to go that evening. It was meant to be.”

The Jewish friends that Khalid made while working at a bank years ago had since moved on, so the Palm Beach Gardens woman was in search of new ones to round out the group. They ended up coming to her instead.

Khalid and a group from the Muslim Community of Palm Beach County were volunteering next to women from Temple Judea at Feed Palm Beach County Day at this time last year. They worked side-by-side but at separate tables to help pack 120,000 meals for the hungry at Gaines Park in West Palm Beach.

Susan Wolf-Schwartz, of Temple Judea, walked up to the Muslim women in the parking lot and greeted them.

“I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could work together next year?’” the Jupiter woman remembered.

They invited her to the Daughters of Abraham group that meets once a month at the Gardens Branch of the Palm Beach County Library. Some women from the Palm Beach Gardens synagogue started to attend last April, Wolf-Schwartz said.

“I was raised with a story from my family, as a child of Holocaust survivors, that there were people who crossed the street when my mother was on the sidewalk in Germany in the 1930s. I can’t let that happen to another group of people,” she said. “I just walked up to them.”

Women from the faith communities plan to serve again at this year’s Feed

Palm Beach County Day on Saturday. Volunteers work in two shifts, 8:30 to 11 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., to measure and package meals of rice and beans.

All of the food will be donated to the Palm Beach County Food Bank and distributed to local pantries to give to the hungry in Palm Beach County.

After the women met last year, the Jewish women visited a mosque for the first time, and Khalid and her husband went to Shabbat services at Temple Judea.

As the women continued meeting together, they realized how much they had in common.

“It’s the same philosophy — love thy neighbor,” Khalid said. “If you get to know the faith, you realize there’s not that much that divides us. There’s more that unites us.”