Annual Community Festival of the Jewish Book (OFEK) is an important event for the Jews of Pavlodar. OFEK strengthens the sense of belonging to Jewish people, unites the interest to culture with the desire to popularize Jewish legacy, and helps perceive its unique character.

The distinguishing feature of the OFEK is the fact that it is organized not only for the community but also conveys information about Jewish cultural legacy to the outside world. This promotes cross-cultural interaction, understanding among ethnical groups, strengthening of inter-ethnical relations, and combats anti-Semitism. For these reasons, we expand OFEC events beyond our community and conduct them at museums and libraries of our city.

In Pavlodar, in the Shafer House, on August 20, the Community Festival of the Jewish Book opened with a showing of a TV feature movie "Jewish Happiness" based on the book by Sholom Aleikhem "Out of Luck". This work is presented by letters of Menakhem Mendl to his wife Shena-Sheindl "a special reference book of letters, samples of various kinds of letters to people of different action", says the author. Author Sholom Aleikhem is a special writer for the Jews. It is his 150th anniversary this year.

"Jewish Happiness" is a black and white mute movie created in 1925, while the beautiful music and titles were added in 2000. The plot is understandable for the modern viewer; the topic is still relevant today. The humor of the hero’s situation when he is seeking happiness cannot conceal all difficulties and disappointments that he has to deal with. The movie was watched with pleasure. Some young people became aware of Sholom Aleikhem’s works for the first time.

Within the OFEK festival, several meetings were held in the literary salon. Hanna Meerovna Lobchenko prepared an interesting presentation about Dina Rubina’s works, in particular about her novel "Leonardo’s Handwriting". Everybody was glad to talk about Dina Rubina’s books. Unfortunately there is no this novel in our library, but we hope that we will have it soon. We have a lot of people looking forward to reading it.

At the meeting of the clients under the "Club" program, Hana Meerovna shared her knowledge about life and works of Alexander Solovyov, author of "Buhenvald Alarm Bell". This song brought to life recollections of those hard times. Club participants told about themselves, about their concerns, and voiced their hope that their children and grandchildren will never experience such horror.

Within the OFEK, a holiday for schoolchildren was held "Shalom, School!". The book is first of all a resource of knowledge! All our schoolchildren must receive good education and learn a lot of new and useful things. That’s why our library is waiting for young readers.

A student of the highly respected late member of the community Felix Aaronovich Tarasulo told about writers and poets of our area. Nadezhda Zagorskaya conducted this vent devoted to the history of our region for young people. There were a lot of music and poems. Children learned a lot about people living in our area and were amazed at the fact that there are so many talents in our area!

There are many more interesting meetings and events to take place within the OFEK-2009. We will certainly tell you about them!

Elena Petrova