Cigar workers in a factory loft in lower Manhattan, 1918.  The cigar industry was one place where Cuban and Puerto Rican immigrant workers were welcome, and where men and women worked side by side.

As a youth in Budapest, David Jacobowitz studied to be a rabbi.  This photograph was taken soon after he arrived in this country, by an itinerant photographer who made a print of it for anyone in the shop who could afford the steep purchase price.

Image from the private collection of Mel and Shirley Small (Jacobowitz’s daughter).

See this image in the Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives exhibit.