Searching for historic photographs of Rosh Hashanah and blowing the shofar (ram’s horn), we discovered a poster showing Jewish pictures of Jewish festivals. Starring in the 1879 photo gallery was a man named Max Rossvally.
He appeared as a pious man even though, judging by the photos, he didn’t seem to know laws of tefillin (phylacteries) or lulav (a grouping of flora, including a palm branch, used in Sukkot prayers.)
Who was Rossvally? A Jewish man originally from Germany named Mordechai Rosenthal, a Civil War veteran who claimed he was a surgeon, a convict, and a evangelical convert to Christianity.
Here are the poster and his pictures with a lulav and tfillin:
Rossvally’s gallery of pictures
Rossvally and misplaced tfillin
Rossvally with a few extra branches and misplaced tfillin, usually not worn on Sukkot (Tabernacles)
Here’s what we know about Rossvally:
(From a description of Jewish converts to Christianity and Rossvally in “United States Jewry, 1776-1985,” by Jacob Rader Marcus)
A description of a meeting of an American anti-Semitic group attended by Rossvally who converted while serving a sentence in prison (American Jewish Archives, 1964)
Today, shofar-blowers are known for their piety and observance of Jewish commandments.