Our communal Jewish center has been preparing for festival of Jewish culture for a long time. We met every Monday in our Hesed to discuss future concert. The festival was devoted to Jewish culture and 20th anniversary of Republic Kazakhstan’s independence. The hall of Assembly of Kazakhstan People was full. Chairmen of communities, workers of various departments, employees of internal policy, creative intelligency, youth, journalists and community members came there.

The concert took place in President Noursultan Nazarbayev’s inauguration day. It was also the threshold of Pesah holiday. The concert was lead by an active member of community, the honored worker of national education Inessa Shishina. First of all she opened the festival giving a word to our chairman Evdaev Rashbil. After his words, children presented potpourri of Jewish songs (Almazov Dima, Rogatchyov Pavel, Slavutsky Xenia, Partenadze Christina, Bychkov Vitya, Bychkov Nastya and Bychkova Julia, musical head Falaleeva Tatyana). “Shalom” group presented songs on Kazakh, Yiddish and Hebrew (Bykova Nadezhda, Gatych Lydia, Razumova Nelli, Zhigarlovsky Anelya, Skobova Valentina, Mihelson Nina, Plotnikov Gennady). The children of Armenian and Tatar communities came to congratulate us. Violinists and dombra players of School of Arts presented some songs . Our teenagers pleased us by presenting Kazakh and Jewish dances in beautiful suits. The concert program was continued by great performance of Lemeshevsky family (Inna and Ilya) as they sang popular Jewish songs.

The concert was wonderfully well and ended with joint singing of the song “Kazakhstan is our Native land”. It was sang so emotionally that everybody gave the vocalists a standing ovation. The organizers thanked all participants and presented sweet gifts. We received the fine mood and came home singing Jewish motives …

Julia Soroka