Let Them Eat Meat

Faced with an extortionate rise in the price of kosher meat, Jewish women in New York’s Lower East Side employed protest tactics borrowed from the radical political movements that prospered in their neighbourhood. 

Street Types of New York City: Emigrant and Pretzel Vendor, Alice Austen, c.1896. Courtesy Library of CongressBetween 1881 and 1924 over 2.5 million Jews emigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe. Over a third of them settled in New York’s Lower East Side, dubbed the ‘Jewish Plymouth Rock’. For this community, the United States represented economic opportunity and the founding principle of religious freedom. Even in the New World, Jews could still maintain ancient traditions, which included the purchase and consumption of kosher meat.

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