This year the Communal Festival of the Jewish Book (CFJB) in Kostanay was devoted to the 15th anniversary of the Center of the Jewish Culture. The regional library named after L.Tolstoy has kindly offered its hall for the event and prepared an exhibition of books by the Jewish authors. During the opening ceremony, the librarian of Hesed Alla Gafurova recalled how the community was formed in a difficult 1993 year and how its first director, a musician and composer Gennady Tsipin, had managed to unite the Jewish people and to educate them about their national traditions and culture for the first time. Unfortunately, some of the people who were involved in forming the community are no longer around today.

The festival was dedicated to those writers and artists who had an anniversary in 2008. The list of people included Mikhail Svetlov, Pavel Kogan, David Oistrakh, Natalia Sats, Mark Zakharov, Arkady Arkanov, Grigory Gorin, Inna Lisnyanskaya, and many others.

One can talk for hours about each of these talented people. We only recollected the major milestones of their biographies and demonstrated their skilfully painted portraits. The employees of the library had helped to arrange an exhibition on the theme "2008 celebrants" of books by the outstanding writers. Many rare books were included in the exhibition.

Poetry was recited, everyone sang "Brigantina" and songs from Mark Zaharov's films. The story of the head of music club Anastassia Palant about David Oistrakh was accompanied by the sounds of violin, and the 95th anniversary of Natalia Sats who has done so much for the Kazakstan's culture was not forgotten.

Everyone in CIS countries knows of satirists Arkanov, Gorin, Shenderovich (mainly from telecasts), but the books of the poetry of the disgraced poet Alexander Galich have only appeared after his death. People of the "Sixties generation" remember his songs from the recordings on old tapes… Olga Kuperman read his poems, which she heard in her youth as bard songs.

Many members of the community remember Nastju Palant as a girl with curly hair and a pure beautiful voice who always performed for us. Now she organizes talented children and travels with them to different festivals. And of course she still sings. During this evening she performed a medley of songs in Hebrew in a duet with Anya Fisenko. The talented girl Anya Fisenko, who is capable of singing, dancing and playing the piano, showed a Jewish dance with Yaroslava Kim. The evening was accompanied by gentle lyrical Jewish melodies performed by our favourite musician Vadim Chashkov.

The small children presented a separate program. They read verses of remarkable poet Boris Zakhoder, whose jubilee is this year. Composer Eduard Kolmanovskiy, pianist Maria Grinberg, the producers Ì. Kozakov and A.German also were remembered.

In the end of this event, the Hesed awarded the active CFJB participants and elders of our community with prizes - books of the Jewish authors. Amongst them there were local writers and poets B.I.Rubinshtein, V.I.Gershun and V.M.Ljahovetskiy. The widow of a famous surgeon Reuben Davidovic Perepletchikov received special thanks from the community for the publication of his work "Memories and Reflections of the surgeon." The book publication was devoted to the 85th anniversary of the doctor and was introduced to the CFJB participants.

The director of Hesed Peter Rubinstein thanked all the participants of the festival and the library staff for organising an interesting program, and invited those present to a large samovar. Many reminiscences of the past fifteen years were "poured" over the afternoon tea.

Lydia Kazakevich