“Everything must have a beginning; and the beginning is necessarily imperfect. Errors,
no doubt, abound in this volume and omissions are numerous. It is natural that these
findings will at once attract attention. Future ones can be made more accurate, and
hence more serviceable, if readers will be good enough to send to the Editor notice of
any omissions or errors which may come to their attention.”1
Thus wrote Cyrus Adler,
the first editor of the American Jewish Year Book, which appeared at the end of the
nineteenth century in 1899, as the preface to this new undertaking.
These words are just as appropriate at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first
century as we launch Current Jewish Population Reports as the successor to the
population articles which appeared in the American Jewish Year Book for 108 years.
The Mandell L. Berman Institute—North American Jewish Data Bank (NAJDB), the
central repository of quantitative data on North American Jewry, is pleased to accept the
responsibility of continuing to provide these vital statistics on the Jewish population of
the United States along with those for world Jewry.
Even as Adler noted “the spread of Jews all over our vast country,” we observe this
phenomenon even more so today. Basic research and policy planning require that the
population statistics which have been a standard feature of the Year Book since 1899
be continued.
The NAJDB was established in 1986 through the generosity of Mandell L. (Bill) Berman.
It was first administered by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York with
the support of the Council of Jewish Federations and its successors, the United Jewish
Communities and the Jewish Federations of North America. In addition, it was originally
co-sponsored by Brandeis University and the Avraham Harman Institute of
Contemporary Jewry of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Later, the NAJDB moved
from the City University of New York to Brandeis University and since 2004 is located at
the University of Connecticut.
While the divine promise that the Jewish people “will multiply . . . as the stars of heaven,
and as the sand by the seashore” (Genesis 22.17) has not been actualized, we do not
feel free to desist from the task of enumerating them. This is our legacy and this is our
mandate.
We would like to express our appreciation to Mandell L. (Bill) Berman for his strong
support of this initiative.