Oleg Vyshniakov - Ukraine and Israel. In my today's post, I want to tell you about the importance of support, mutual assistance, tolerance and cultural memory.

Yesterday a big conference of Limmud Ukraine ended in Lviv. Limmud is an organization that helps to hand down the tradition of Jewish culture from generation to generation.
Limmud is аn organization that introduces the Jews who live outside Israel with their own culture, as well as presents traditions of the Jewish people around the world. We can say that now Limmud is the mouthpiece of the Jewish culture.

The conference that took place in Lviv gathered together leading figures of culture and arts, scientists, journalists, businessmen, public and political figures.

The conference was attended by Eliav Belotserkovski, the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the State of Israel in Ukraine, Oleksandr Volodarskiy, an artist and playwright, Oleksandr Roytburd, an artist, Dmitriy Chekalkin, showman, radio presenter and author, as well as other people of name. All these people managed to share their experience, knowledge and ideas with young people all over Ukraine.

The history of Limmud has more than one decade. The organization was formed from a group of like-minded people and now it is banding together thousands of people all around the world. Today events aiming at uniting Jewish people are being held in more than 40 countries. Programs of Limmud gave to young people a unique platform for sharing ideas and experiences in various fields of social, public and cultural life.

Modern history of Ukraine and Israel is closely related. More than 400 thousand of people in Israel are of Ukrainian decent.

Israel has been preserving its cultural heritage for centuries. The Jews managed to preserve historical and cultural memory of their nation for centuries without changes and despite constant persecution. And now after reacquiring their state, the Israelis are gathering their brothers and sisters all over the world and care with respect to their reach traditions.

On its way to independence Ukraine also was on the verge of destruction not once. Different regimes were trying to wipe of the map Ukrainian culture and to rewrite the history. However, Ukrainians managed to save their traditions and hand down beauty and originality of the nation to their descendants as well.

I consider Limmud activities to be of great importance today, because when saving traditions and culture and transferring of knowledge, the nation lives and develops.

The concert of the famous Russian musician, poet, singer, composer and creator of the "Yiddish jazz" Andrei Makarevich became a culmination of the evening and the conference. In today's world, not many dare to speak the truth and to live in accordance with their own convictions, but not for the system’s favor. Andrei Makarevich is not afraid and does not turn backward from his own moral beliefs. As they say a friend in need is a friend indeed.

While addressing to the Prominent Artist I underlined that the Ukrainians highly appreciate his support and participation in the life of Ukraine.

I believe that only if people hold on their humanity and stand firm on what they believe, "the world will get to cave in to us".