A book by Semen Belman, Editor's Column, has been presented at the Chernigov M. Kotsybinski Museum-Reserve. The presentation was part of the 7th Sholom-Aleichem City Festival of Jewish Culture, and took place on March 29. Semen Belman is the Chairman of the Chernihiv Oblast Union of Jewish Communities, editor-in-chief of the Thia newspaper, member of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress (EAJC) General Council, and a veteran cultural professional.
The Editor's Column is not a very usual book. This is a collection of selected articles, reports, and travel notes written by the author in 2000–2010.

The author turns his attention to topics which have been hushed up for years in the USSR, or even just unresearched, but that certainly provoke an interest in society. A large number of the book;s materials are dedicated to today's problems, in particular, to Israel, Jewish history, religion, and tradition, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. The difficult topics of the Holodomor and the Armenian genocide, of terrorism and the falsification of history are also covered in the book. When turning to the topics of our country's historic past and the fate of the peoples that live in it, Belman writes about the necessity of interreligious dialogue, of the preservation of the national unity of Ukraine.

Many articles are dedicated to our famous countrymen with interesting fates: workers, musicians, scholars. Some of the book's materials are devoted to the activity of the EAJC General Council.

In his opening speech, the author said, “I have been writing during all of the years of my community activity. I wrote about interesting people, of what caught my attention, of the events of my time, both good and bad, that I had been witness to or even had participated in. I have written and published a lot: hundreds of articles, dozens of reports and interviews. And for the last several years, since I had become the editor-in-chief of the Thia newspaper, the newspaper of the Chernihiv Jewish community, I simply had to write. This is where my book takes its title, Editor's Column, from. Not everything that I had written provoked an unambiguous reaction. I have even been taken to court – but I proved the correctness of my publications even there!”

There had been a number of important participants at the event who gave their opinion on the publicist, journalist, and educational and cultural activity of Semen Belman: the Chairman of the Chernihiv Oblast Council, PhD in Philosophy Anatoliy Melnik; Head of the Administration of Culture of the Chernihiv City Council, PhD in Art History, and a highly esteemed activist in the sphere of art Oleg Vasyuta; Chairman of the Oblast Organization of the Council of Journalists of Ukraine Irina Melnyk; Head of the Press and Information Department of the Chernihiv Oblast State Administration Olga Lugovaya; Head of the Internal Policy Department of the Chernihiv Oblast State Administration Andrei Kurdanov; and the Director of the State Archive of Chernihivska Oblast Raisa Vorobey. The author was also congratulated by the chairman of the Chernihiv Oblast Organization of the National Writer's Union of Ukraine Stanislav Repuyah.

In his closing remark, Semen Belman thanked the editor of the book, Alexander Chevan, as well as spoke about the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress and its activity, and stated his great thanks to EAJC President Alexander Mashkevich, as well as the Chairman of VAAD Ukraine, Euro-Asian Jewish Congress General Council Chairman Josef Zisels for their help in publishing the book.