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.