Adopt a Yiddish Book

Dear member:

I’m writing to offer you a chance to “adopt” a priceless Yiddish book in your family’s name – and to help us realize our dream of making Yiddish the safest and most fully accessible literature in history.

As you know, we’ve long hoped that one day we’d be able to place the full content of our books online. Now there’s finally a practical way to do so: by joining the country’s leading libraries in a cutting-edge, nonprofit venture called the Open Content Alliance (OCA). The plan is to put millions of books online in easily accessed, familiar formats, all without advertising and free of charge. For students and scholars, it promises a revolution in research. For readers, it means access to the world’s great libraries right in your own living room. And for the Yiddish Book Center, it means the culmination of everything you and I set out to accomplish – saving a great literature from extinction, and making it available to everyone forever.

Thanks to your generosity, we already have a huge head start. Twelve years ago, when digital technology was in its infancy, you helped us scan most of our Yiddish titles to create the groundbreaking Steven Spielberg Digital Yiddish Library. Since most of these books are in the public domain, we’re now in a unique position to place them at the fingertips of anyone with a computer and an internet connection, anywhere in the world.

And that’s not all. As soon as we can, we’ll make our books – the record of 1,000 years of Jewish history – not only readable and printable but searchable as well. You’ll be able to type key words, including places and family names, into your computer and instantly search through millions of pages of Yiddish literature. Research that might otherwise take years will be completed in a matter of seconds!

It was you who helped us save Yiddish books: from attics and basements, demolition sites and Dumpsters. Now, you and I have a chance to make them safe in a way earlier generations could not have dreamed. Once online, Yiddish books will be infinitely reproducible and freely readable – which means they can never again be burned, vandalized, suppressed, censored or destroyed. What a nes min hashomayim – a 21st-century miracle for the Jewish people!

Even if you don’t read Yiddish yourself, you’ll benefit from our online library: along with more than 10,000 Yiddish titles we’ll include great translations of Yiddish literature and other out-of-print Jewish titles in English, stirring sound recordings in Yiddish and English (ready for free download to your iPod), fascinating film clips, photographs, archival objects, and thousands of vintage Jewish records.

OCA will assume responsibility for most of the “heavy lifting”: they’ll convert and host our files for free, back them up on a daily basis, and keep them current. We, of course, will continue to maintain backup files of our own, stored safely in a former top-secret Strategic Air Command base deep inside Bare Mountain, one mile from the Book Center.

Once our online library is up and running, the ongoing cost to the Center will be zero! In fact, we’ll actually save $50,000 a year – the fee we now pay to a private vendor to maintain our electronic catalog.

What’s more, this project will create a new model of collaboration: we’ll encourage other libraries to follow our lead, adding Yiddish titles we don’t have in our own collection, plus Jewish titles in English, Hebrew and other languages.

As you know, I’ve written to ask you to help us launch exciting projects before, but never one with such vast, permanent impact. We literally have a chance to make history together, to secure, once and for all, the oft-threatened books of the People of the Book and make them safe and available forever.

But first we need to complete two crucial tasks.

In order to make the online library readily accessible, we need to create a user-friendly “portal.” That will require tying into the lightning-fast fiber-optic network of the nearby Five College consortium, and completely redesigning our seven-year-old website. The same critical upgrades will allow us to introduce our own online courses, interactive educational activities, and an inclusive “virtual community” for our members.

Second, we need to complete the Herculean task of digitization by scanning an additional 3,451 volumes: books that were either too rare, too large or too fragile to scan using earlier technology. Among the waiting treasures are art books by Saul Raskin; pamphlets from the displaced persons camps of postwar Europe; a Yiddish version of Tom Sawyer, published in the Soviet Union in 1938; and A rayze tsu der levone – A Trip to the Moon, a Yiddish science-fiction story for children complete with full-color illustrations.

I’m writing today to ask you to personally adopt one or more of the 3,000+ endangered books still on our shelves. You will be underwriting the painstaking work of scanning, digitizing and posting online every single word on every single page of an enduring treasure of the Jewish people. What you do today – your vision and foresight – will earn you the gratitude of students and readers for all time to come.

There’s not a moment to lose. A team of OCA specialists has already assembled a lab in the basement of the Boston Public Library, where they’re ready to begin scanning our titles as soon as the funds are in hand. Two programmers and a library expert are standing by, ready to begin the overhaul of our website. If we raise the necessary funds in time, Yiddish literature will be online, safe and universally accessible within a matter of months – and fully searchable within a year.

But we can’t do it alone. Which is why I’m hoping that you and other long-standing members will decide to help us seize the day.

Given the incredible potential of our online library I truly hope you’ll decide to adopt a book or add your name to the Honor Roll. But whatever you can afford, I want to assure you that your tax-deductible contribution will make a difference.

You can make a secure donation online. You can also make a contribution or adopt a book by phone, at 413-256-4900 x124; or by mailing your donation to the below address.

Who could have imagined three decades ago, when we first set out to rescue Yiddish books, that one day Yiddish would lead the way as the first universally accessible literature in history? You’ve helped bring us this far. Please – won’t you help us complete the task by sending your most generous, tax-deductible contribution today, while it’s still on your mind?

Mit a hartsikn dank – With heartfelt thanks,

Aaron Lansky
President

P.S. Safeguarding Yiddish literature and making it accessible to all is the culmination of everything you and I set out to accomplish so many years ago. Can I count on you again now, when we’re so close to realizing our dream? A hartsikn dank – my personal thanks!