This issue of the magazine includes:

• Interview: Semion Yakerson

During the Soviet period he had already developed a burning interest in the history of early Jewish publishing. An unusual hobby for a Leningrad boy, and not very useful for a successful career in Soviet academia. Nevertheless, he successfully realized this very career. In the 1980s, Yakerson managed to publish two catalogues of incunabula from St. Petersburg and Moscow libraries—the first scholarly books on medieval Jewish history issued in the USSR for many decades. Yakerson is currently a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In this interview he recounts his personal struggle to realize his dream of becoming a Jewish book historian.

• Looking Through Russian Literary Magazines: Novels and Articles of Jewish Interest

• Survey: New Periodicals from "the Jewish Street"

Brief reviews present new periodicals that have lately begun to appear in Vitebsk, Kiev, and Dnepropetrovsk, as well as special Jewish issues of two periodicals on kraevedenie (local history) published in Tomsk and Taganrog.

• Jewish Calendar of Significant Dates: July–August 2004