As other journals of the time confirm, between 1901 and 1918 the Jewish community of New York City annually gathered on the Lower East Side for a fashion spectacle and celebration that came to be known as the Passover Parade.
Yet this early 20th-century extravaganza, which likely began with crowds pouring out of synagogues in their holiday best, is nowhere to be found in the history books.
“The Most Beautiful Pesach Ever Since the District Became Jewish,” exclaimed the front-page Forverts headline of a piece about this holiday spectacle in April 1902, which noted that hundreds of Americans hit the streets to observe “the spruced-up masses.”
That same year, The Brooklyn Times, a daily New York paper, described the big business done by clothing and dry goods stores in the run-up to Passover and the Parade. Jewish charities, the article noted, helped “purchase new outfits for the deserving poor, who were barely able to earn enough money to feed themselves.” The paper reported that the Parade began at 4 in the afternoon, and “The Ghetto was lively with the bright costumes of men, women, and children.”
Apparently, the Parade served as a kind of matchmaking event, in addition to a chance for the Jewish community to show off its finery. A 1910 piece from the New York World explained that shadchans, or matchmakers, attended in great numbers and “gleefully rubbed their hands” — because, as the paper noted, among the parade’s participants were “many pretty girls and prosperous bachelors.”
Some accounts suggest that the Passover Parade was even more glamorous than its famous counterpart, the Easter Parade. The American Israelite of Cincinnati, Ohio, reported that 1904’s parade was “ever more gorgeous than that seen in the city’s chief holiday promenade. It was estimated that the diamonds worn in Grand Street… were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
The Passover Parade was not without its detractors, some of whom believed that the emphasis on new clothing and jewelry was unseemly for the Jews. Leo Wise, editor of The American Israelite, acknowledged that only grudgingly had he reprinted a report of the parade. “It turned out just as I had expected,” he wrote. “The public prints were full of the manner in which the Passover was celebrated by the Jews. They had outlandish pictures of Jews… and outlandish statements about how Passover is observed.”
Wise was particularly irked by the $5,000 diamond necklace worn by Barbara Porges, wife of the prominent former alderman, Max Porges — a gift from her husband commemorating her campaign work on his behalf. (Barbara Porges, became one of the leading female political figures in New York City in her own right.)