October, 21-22st, the seminar "Basis of the Jewish culture», organized by Association "Mitsva" and Kostanay Hesed has taken place. In the first day in the seminar about twenty members of the Jewish community of Kostanay have taken part, in the second day there was people from Rudny’s turn.

According to heads of Kostanay communities the necessity of such seminar existed for a long time. The young generation for which, on the one hand, words «the Jewish community» it is far not an empty phrase has grown up, on the other hand – their possibilities independently to understand the Jewish culture are limited enough. Therefore Association "Mitsva" has made decision to organize series of seminars with participation of teachers of the Project "ShoReSh". The given seminar was made by the coordinator of the mentioned educational project Alexander Abramovich with the closest assistance of the Hesed director Peter Rubinshtein and the manager of a synagogue Anna Kakirova.

Seminar lectures have been devoted to three basic sections of Judaism – a complex science about the Jewish civilization: stories, religious traditions and classical texts. Though these lectures also have been calculated level of preliminary acquaintance to a subject, they nevertheless contained a lot of an interesting new material from modern sources, such as a site of is religious-cultural center "Mahanaim" (www.machanaim.org). Acquaintance to materials of this center allows studying to feel a Judaism pulse of a modern epoch of the Jewish history and to make out lines of a Judaism of tomorrow.

Except theoretical part, participants of a seminar had autumn holidays, have met Shabat and the beginning of a new annual cycle of reading of a Torah. As one would expect, chapters 1 of the book Breishit narrating about Creation of the world and the person, for many have appeared a favourite part of the Writing.

Alexander Abramovich