Yom Kippur, East River, New York City

Robert Frank

1955

Photograph of men in hats and suits and one boy in skullcap outside with their backs turned away from the camera, looking toward the river. — Though this photograph of Orthodox Jews at the East River has long been captioned as having been taken on Yom Kippur, it is much more likely that it was taken on the first afternoon of Rosh Hashanah, when the ritual of *tashlikh* (a symbolic casting of sins into a body of water) is performed. Robert Frank took this photograph as part of his road trip across the United States in the 1950s, taking pictures of people and places that did not fit neatly into the idea of “the American dream.” In 1959, he published these photographs in a landmark book, *The Americans*.

Though this photograph of Orthodox Jews at the East River has long been captioned as having been taken on Yom Kippur, it is much more likely that it was taken on the first afternoon of Rosh Hashanah, when the ritual of tashlikh (a symbolic casting of sins into a body of water) is performed. Robert Frank took this photograph as part of his road trip across the United States in the 1950s, taking pictures of people and places that did not fit neatly into the idea of “the American dream.” In 1959, he published these photographs in a landmark book, The Americans.