While Kyrgyzstan's President Askar Akayev was coming under international criticism for disqualification and harassment of his adversaries in parliamentary elections, First Lady Mairam Akayeva was engaged in positive and successful cultural diplomacy in Israel. At the President's House in Jerusalem, Professor Akayeva and her Israeli counterpart Reuma Weizmann introduced their joint project: a selection from the Manas epic translated in Hebrew, offering most Israelis their first encounter with the Kyrgyz national epic.

The two First Ladies met at a conference three years ago, soon after UNESCO declared "Year of the Manas Epic" to honor the 1000th anniversary of the epic, whose million or so lines form the longest such poem in the world. Their common activity in education and child welfare led to a close friendship and Mrs. Weizmann willingly supported the literary initiative suggested by her Kyrgyz colleague. "Every nation has at least one masterpiece, and for us it is the Manas," Akayeva said at the celebration of the project's completion. "To have it appear in another ancient language is especially significant".

At the presentation, parallels were noted between the Kyrgyz epic and the Bible as comprehensive portraits of their respective civilizations, including Manas's Seven Commandments in comparison with Moses's Ten. Many of the speakers and members of the audience were drawn from the "Kyrgyz" community in Israel that includes about 20,000 Jews who found refuge in the Soviet Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan during the Holocaust. Many attained prominent positions in art and culture. Most of these Jews immigrated to Israel in recent years, some of them with ethnic-Kyrgyz family members. One ethnic-Kyrgyz Israeli, a professor of architecture, moderated the event as Kyrgyzstan's honorary consul in Israel.

Other newcomers from Kyrgyzstan expressed gratitude to their former country while performing poetry and music. The show was stolen by a 13-year-old student of the Manas epic, the Manaschi Eldabar Bakchiyev, a student at Akayeva's school for gifted children who accompanied her on the visit. The new translation, published by the Israeli Foreign Ministry, was written in prose from a Russian version. It thus conveys to Hebrew readers only a glimpse of the Manas's beauty, but Eldabar provided a real taste of its authentic character. Like all the handful of storytellers who maintain and elaborate the Manas oral heritage in every generation, he was selected by divine omen. "I began talking at a very early age", he said, and his enthusiasm is infectious. Despite a high fever, he captivated the Jerusalem audience with his rendition of a tale about the Kyrgyz hero's infancy, recited from memory in the traditional lilting chant.

Gideon Remez