Address to the World Community

The Faina Petryakova Scientific Center for Judaica and Jewish Art, including the Petryakova Memorial Apartment-Museum is committed to the cause of preserving the past and promoting the future of the Jewish culture. We are interested in building new partnerships and working together with like-minded individuals and institutions in order to strengthen our common commitment and help us make our exhibitions, collections, educational programs, events, archives and library better and more effective. Let me take a minute of your time to outline some of the key points about our activities.

The Faina Petryakova Scientific Center for Judaica and Jewish Art is an independent educational and cultural NGO. We are based in the former home of Doctor Faina Petryakova, a distinguished professor and renowned scholar of Ukrainian glass, porcelain, ceramics and Ukrainian Judaica, located in the city of Lviv, Ukraine. In our daily work we seek to promote peace, understanding, tolerance, and friendship in the Ukrainian-Jewish relations, and to protect the Ukrainian Jewish cultural heritage and memory of Ukrainian Jews, particularly Jews of Galicia, at the regional, national, and international levels.

The vibrant Jewish culture and the spiritual life of the Ukrainian Jewish community in Lviv, much like elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, had been ruthlessly suppressed by the Nazi and Communist totalitarian dictatorships for many years. At present, there are only a handful of institutions doing what we do – preserving and sharing the wonderful examples of the Ukrainian Jewish culture. That is why it is so important that we carry on this important work and partner with similar institutions in other countries.

Today we are in the middle of developing a separate exhibition to tell the story of Dr. Faina Petryakova's life and work, and showcase her private collections of Ukrainian Judaica, glass, porcelain and ceramics.The museum’s library houses over 5000 publications, encompassing various areas of art, religion, history, and Jewish culture.

The Petryakova Center is committed to preserving local Jewish heritage, promoting awareness of and appreciation for the Jewish culture, including historic properties, locations, and artefacts. We want to draw public attention to the problems affecting destroyed synagogues, lost Jewish cemeteries and mass graves of Holocaust victims, which need to be appropriately identified, honored, and memorialized. Our day-to-day efforts are also a way of paying tribute to the remnants of a centuries-old culture of the local Ukrainian Jewish community.

Through field and archival research, exhibitions, lectures, gatherings, conferences and workshops touching upon the various aspects of the Jewish culture, history, and life, we seek to reach out to the wider public in order to highlight the richness and complexity of the Ukrainian Jewish legacy, to rediscover the forgotten local Jewish heritage and to preserve the lasting memory of it.

We welcome your support and invite you to contact us without hesitation so that together we can work on exciting projects for the sake of preserving and promoting the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity.

With very best wishes,

Meylakh Sheykhet

Director