Congregation Ahavas Achim of Highland Park will resume its Women’s Shabbat Afternoon Lecture Series on Saturday, October 9 at 5 p.m. The kickoff lecture will be given by Merri Ukraincik on the topic “Embracing the Silence of Cheshvan” at the home of Rabbi and Gila Miodownik, 248 Lawrence Avenue.

Ukraincik is an accomplished writer whose essays have appeared in multiple publications, among them Tablet, Lilith, Hevria, Kveller, The New Jersey Jewish News and The New York Jewish Week. Her “tiny little story” about an encounter with a medium, first printed in 1996, later made it into the book “Metropolitan Diary: The Best of the New York Times Column.”

She has lived in Israel, Croatia and Hungary. During her 13 years with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), she traveled from Cuba to Albania, even to remote corners of Central and Eastern Europe. Her first book, “I Live. Send Help: 100 Years of Jewish History in Images from the JDC Archives,” was published by JDC in 2014.

All women and teen girls are invited to attend the October 9 talk. For more information, please contact Women’s Shabbat Afternoon Lecture Series program co-chairs Samara Moritz: [email protected] or Michal Shapiro: [email protected].

By Harry Glazer