On December 5-7 International Conference "Verbal and Scriptual in Slavic and Jewish cultures" was held in Russian Academy of Sciences, and became the sixteenth in a series of annual conferences of the international project "The Culture of Slavs and the Culture of Jews : Dialogue, similarities, differences", held by Sefer Center and the Institute of Slavic Studies (RAS) with the support of "Joint" and in cooperation with various scientific and public organizations interested in the dialogue of cultures.
Over 40 specialists from the CIS, Poland and Israel presented their reports and researches.
The meetings were held in the following thematic sessions: "The interaction of written and verbal, literacy and folklore" ( of the morning session moderator - Arkady Kovelman, evening session moderator  - Vladimir Petrukhin), "Traditions and texts" (session moderator Alexander Panchenko), "Language and Literature" ( session moderator  Leonid Katsis), "Book stories in folklore and traditional rites" (session moderator Olga Belova), "Visualization of the words and the text" (session moderator  Victoria Mochalova).
A new edition of conferences proceedings "Old" and "New" in Slavic and Jewish cultural traditions" was presented at the opening. The publication includes materials of the international conference held in Moscow on December 7-9, 2011, and is a continuation of a series of editions of conference proceedings, published annually since1995 by Sefer and the Institute of Slavic Studies and reflects the long-term work of the project "The Culture of Slavs and the Culture of Jews : Dialogue, similarities, differences". Since1998  over 13 books was published analyzing historical, philosophical, linguistic, folklore-ethnographic, cultural mechanisms of Slavic and Jewish traditions interaction.
The new edition contains 23 articles by scientists from Russia, Israel, Finland, where ethnic, cultural, ethno-linguistic, literary, folkloric, ethnographic and comparative-typological aspects of of the traditional rituals in the Slavic and Jewish cultures are discussed,  basic mechanisms of preservation and transformation of the ceremonial code  (language imagery and ritual, ritualistika, ritual texts, etc.) and linguistic traditions in different cultural areas are analyzed.