William B. Helmreich

William Helmreich (August 25, 1945 – March 28, 2020) was a Swiss-born American professor of sociology at the City College of New York Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He was also a published author.

Helmreich was a distinguished professor at the City University of New York who specialized in race and ethnic relations, religion, immigration, risk behavior, the sociology of New York City, urban sociology, consumer behavior, and market research.

Helmreich was born in 1945 in Zürich, Switzerland, the son of Holocaust survivor parents. In 1946, he was brought to the US as an infant, and grew up in New York City on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. He studied in the Ner Yisroel and Kamenitz Yeshivas.

Helmreich wrote about his early years in a book he named "Wake Up, Wake Up, to Do the Work of the Creator" (a phrase spoken in Yiddish by those who went house-to-house to awaken worshippers for daily prayer).

When asked about recordings of "many of the famous roshei yeshiva of yesteryear" whom he interviewed, "Do you still have the recordings?" he replied "At one time I thought I did, but it seems that all I have are the transcripts." These he donated to his alma mater, Yeshiva University.

• The Black Crusaders (1973)
• The things they say behind your back (1982)
• The World of the Yeshiva (1982)
• Flight Path (1989)
• Against All Odds (1992)
• The Enduring Community (1998)
• What Was I Thinking (2010)
• The New York Nobody Knows, Walking 6,000 Miles in the City (2013)
• The Brooklyn Nobody Knows: An Urban Walking Guide (2016)
• The Manhattan Nobody Knows: An Urban Walking Guide (2018)
• The Queens Nobody Knows: An Urban Walking Guide (2020)
• The Bronx Nobody Knows: An Urban Walking Guide (2023)

Helmreich revised his 1982 The World of the Yeshiva 18 years later by comparing sociological changes "among the strictly Orthodox" since his 1980 research. Two areas about the new edition highlighted by The New York Times are the doubling in those doing full-time "collegiate and graduate"-level religious studies and population growth.

Helmreich died March 28, 2020, at age 74 of COVID-19 in Great Neck, New York.