BY THE NUMBERS

The Archive in Numbers

A statistical skeleton of the Rebbe's correspondence — how many letters, when, in which language, and from where. The frame the book is built on.

11,938
letters
32
volumes · vols 1–32
1929–1977
5689–5737
86%
hebrew
01

The Arc of Correspondence

Letters per year. The flow climbs from the late 1940s to a peak of 1,056 letters in a single year — 5717 (1957) — then recedes. The 1950s are the heart of the archive.

1,056
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letters / year · civil year 1940s   1950s   1960s   1970s
02

By Era

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58% of all letters were written in one decade — the 1950s.

03

By Language

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Yiddish concentrates in personal letters and letters to women; detected heuristically, needs calibration.

04

Letter Length Over Time

Median body length (characters) per year, from 5710. Stable around 850–1,000; the dip in 1971–74 reflects the many short telegrams and blessings in vols 29–32.

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05

Where They Were Written

Almost the entire archive was written from one desk. The place field is sparse and sometimes holds a blessing instead of a city — to be cleaned in a future audit.

~8,700
Brooklyn · 770