Jewish Community pays a lot of attention to developing young leaders. Active part of our young members participated in the tender for allocating grants to leadership reserves for CIS Jewish communities. Based on tender results, two our leaders were invited to Israel by the Program Nahshonim to participate in the seminar. Zlata Alon received a grant for organizing virtual meetings with famous writers. The project purpose is to introduce Kazakhstanis to Jewish culture, unite people of art with their far away audience.

Zlata says: "The Project financing is not big but I receive help from the Jewish Community. I am grateful to the President of Mitsva |Association Alexander Baron, Director of Jewish library Galina Korobkina, Galina Chelokhsayeva, volunteers, and everybody who support the project. I am grateful to my Coordinator in Israel Marina Kontseva, who helps me to communicate with interesting people."

On May 13th, in the Jewish library we had a virtual meeting with a famous Jewish writer Dina Rubina. It was the first meeting out of four planned. Internet linked cities, countries, and continents. It became possible to have a discussion with readers located thousand kilometers away from each other.

Dina Rubina sat at her computer at her home in an Israeli city Maale-Adumim while her readers were in Almaty in the exhibition center of Hesed Polina. The audience was well prepared. Just recently we had a literary salon devoted to works of Dina Rubina. Director of the Republican Jewish library Galina Korobkina addressed the writer: "Dina, we have all your works in our library. When I see your new book in a book store, I immediately buy it for our library. "It Hurts Only When I am Laughing" has just recently appeared but it attracted a lot of readers’ interest in all generations. I hope that in a year or two we will be able to meet in person.".

Dina Rubina told readers that she is currently working on a big novel "White Dove from Kordova" Two thirds of it is completed already. It is about a genius painter who counterfeits paintings. The writer beautifully recited an excerpt from her book "Here is Messiah Coming". We can say that she did not read it but acted it out. Listeners were greatly pleased.

We asked all different questions. Dina answered easily with a great sense of humor. At the end of the meeting she chose the most interesting question about High Water of Venetians asked by Emilia Slivko and gave her a prize book of Dina Rubina stories.

We were able to have a meeting with Dina Rubina thanks to Virtual Bridges Project. For further information on the meeting, please visit the website: www.bridges.kz