Lower East Side Photographs

This series consists of negatives and 56 8 x 10 black-and-white photographs by Zagat on New York City's Lower East Side in 1931 prior to the Jewish high holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot. The photographs include images of people on a pier (probably near the East River), many of them holding what are probably prayer books and presumably waiting to perform the Tashlikh, a Rosh Hashanah custom in which celebrants gather by a body of flowing water and turn their pockets out, symbolically casting off their sins. Other photographs depict shoppers purchasing the ritual Sukkot items lulav and esrog (a palm front bound together with willow branches and a citrus fruit, respectively) from street vendors, as well as merchants selling skullcaps, shoes, and dishes at outdoor stands. Most locations are not identified. Some items in this series were published in the Jewish Daily Forward.