Facts and Figures

On Yiddish and Yiddish Books

• Number of distinct Jewish languages: 18
• Age of Yiddish in years: 1,000
• Approximate percentage of the world’s Jews who, until 1939, spoke Yiddish as their first or only language: 75%
• Number of Yiddish speakers in the world in 1939: 11,000,000
• Percentage of all Yiddish speakers killed in the Holocaust: 50%
• Number of Yiddish speakers in the world today: ???
• Publication date of the first work of modern Yiddish literature: 1864
• Estimated number of Yiddish titles published between 1864 and 1939: 30,000
• Number of Yiddish books discarded or destroyed over the past 50 years: Unknown
• Total number of Yiddish books that experts, meeting in 1980, estimated were still extant and recoverable in all of North America: 70,000
• Total number of Yiddish books recovered by the National Yiddish Book Center in 1980 alone: 70,000
• Yiddish books we’ve collected to date: 1.5 million
• Average number of Yiddish books that continue to arrive at the Center each week: 500
• Folios of mint-condition Yiddish and Hebrew sheet music we recovered from a garage in Boro Park, Brooklyn, in 1986: 85,000
• Folios of mint-condition Yiddish and Hebrew sheet music we recovered from a warehouse beneath the Brooklyn Bridge in 1992: 75,000
• Zamlers (volunteer book collectors) currently collecting Yiddish books on our behalf throughout the United States and Canada: 222
• Significant Yiddish library collections that existed in all of North America when we opened our doors in 1980: 6
• Major university and research libraries where we’ve established or strengthened Yiddish holdings today: 455
• Yiddish library collections we’ve established in China: 2
• Yiddish books we delivered by truck to newly established schools and libraries in the Soviet Union during an expedition in 1990: 7,200
• Number of times we almost got arrested along the way: 3
• Estimated number of discrete titles among our current holdings: 15,000
• Number of titles we have preserved and made available forever through our Steven Spielberg Digital Yiddish Library: 14,000
• Number of copies of the 28-volume Complete Works of Sholem Aleichem in our collection: 439
• Of the 13-volume Complete Works of Guy de Maupassant in Yiddish translation: 611

On the National Yiddish Book Center

• Year the Yiddish Book Center was founded: 1980
• Age of its founder: 23
• Number of organizations committed to rescuing Yiddish books before we began: 0
• Number of comprehensive suppliers of Yiddish books in the world before we began: 0
• Percentage of major Jewish organizations who, when we began, told us "Yiddish is dead" and therefore declined to offer financial support: 100%
• Year we first decided to go beyond book collection and distribution by launching a pilot residential educational program for adults: 1983
• Spaces available in our first-ever Summer Program in Yiddish Culture in 1983: 45
• Number of applications: 2,000+
• Year we began summer internships for college students: 1986
• Approximate number of undergraduate students who inquired about our Internship Program last year: 800
• Percentage of our American-born student interns who are able to read Yiddish when they arrive: 0
• When they leave: 100%
• Approximate percentage of our interns who go on to further study or professional work in Yiddish-related fields: 50%
• Number of years it took us to digitize every book in our collection: 2.5
• Number of minutes it takes us to print a brand-new, on-demand reprint: 3
• Number of titles on our list of the Greatest Works of Modern Jewish Literature: 100
• Number of judges who chose them: 7
• Number of months they spent deliberating, both in person and by mail: 10
• Number of languages in which the 100 Greatest Jewish Books were written: 11
• Percent not yet translated into English: 19%
• Percent of all Yiddish titles not yet translated into English: 99.5%
• Full-time staff of the National Yiddish Book Center: 20
• Annual operating budget: $2.5 million
• Members of the National Yiddish Book Center in April, 1980: 0
• Today: 30,000
• Ranking of the National Yiddish Book Center in annual percentage growth among all national Jewish cultural organizations: 1

On the Yiddish Book Center’s Permanent Home

• Number of buildings we have borrowed or rented since 1980 (including a former silk mill, a former elementary school, a former roller rink, a former spice warehouse, a former paper factory, a defunct shopping mall and a 20-room mansion): 7
• Years it took us to plan and build a permanent home of our own: 6
• Years it took to negotiate the purchase of land from Hampshire College: 4
• Acres in a rolling apple orchard purchased by the Center: 10.3
• Ponds on the site: 2
• Purchase price of the land: $200,000
• Total building cost, including construction, land, site work and exhibits: $7,900,000
• Largest single gift (from the Estate of Mickey Ross): $3,000,000
• Smallest gift: $2
• Total contributions: 10,033
• Total building size in square feet: 37,000
• Square feet of public exhibition space: 8,500
• Approximate weight in pounds of our heaviest single artifact (a 1918-model Yiddish Linotype recovered from the Jewish Daily Forward): 4,500
• Total number of surviving Yiddish Linotype machines in the world today, including ours: 1
• Number of times The Wall Street Journal has run a headline in Yiddish (announcing our recovery of the Linotype in 1992): 1
• Number of days a week we’re open to the public: 6
• Cost of admission: $0