The Free Library's Yiddish Sheet Music Collection was started in 1987 with the purchase of the Mel and Shifra Gold Yiddish Music Project, assembled at the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst Massachusetts. We were the only public library in the country to purchase this entire collection, with over 650 titles.

A year later, Morry Helzner, longtime musical director of the Philadelphia Workmen's Circle Chorus, donated his entire collection of more than 3,600 Yiddish songs and arrangements to the library.

These two wonderful collections, along with the individual Yiddish sheet music already in the collection, have made ours the largest Yiddish sheet music collection in any public library.