This portrait of a Hasidic Jew relates to the most productive years of Ruth Light Braun's career (1926-33), when her interests centred on portraying the Jewish subjects she encountered in New York City, and later, in Palestine, where she travelled extensively between 1931 and 1933. The work is signed 'Palestine' and the subject of this work and the background vignettes are consistent with those she executed in Jerusalem. The drawing was exhibited as a work in the permanent collection in 1946 but miscatalogued as 'Ruth Licht'.