Please!

Growing up in Miami Beach during the 1960s & ’70s, my best friend Susan Whitebrook spent three to four weeks every summer at the tony Concord in the Catskills, where she learned to dance the hustle and had her first kiss—an innocent peck on the lips with a young waiter working his way through college named Gary, when she was sweet 16.

(And, no, it didn’t happen at clandestine staff quarters as depicted in Dirty Dancing, although the guest-employee romance was certainly a thing, Susan recalls, adding that she also slow-danced to “The Lady in Red” with another young waiter, Teddy, at the hotel’s Night Owl Lounge. Teddy had a twin brother, Susan shared, but we didn’t press for details.)

Everyone, it seems, has a Borscht Belt story—indelible memories of their summer happy place. Overlooked and forgotten since the area’s decline in the mid-1980s, the Borscht Belt is making its big comeback—with a museum of its own, slated to open spring 2025, and an annual festival celebrating the Borscht Belt vibrant lifestyle starting this summer.

“The Borscht Belt was an incredibly important part of American culture,” says Andrew Jacobs, president of the board of directors of the new Catskills Borscht Belt Museum. “By honoring its legacy, we’re honoring Jewish culture and the many individuals who created what’s one of the nation’s most dynamic and unique eras.”

Housed in the former Home National Bank building in Ellenville, NY—a neo-Georgian, brick-and-terracotta structure from 1928 that’s on the National Register of Historic Places—the museum’s location is especially significant: The bank was one of the first to lend money to the region’s Jewish hoteliers.

Originally a resort destination for gentiles in the 19th century, the Catskills started becoming a destination for Jewish emigres and city dwellers in the 1920s. Enticed by the clean mountain air, pristine lakes and homecooked traditional meals, Jews found a safe haven where they could escape both the stifling heat and the nation’s prevailing antisemitism.

During its heyday in the 1950s and ’60s, there were nearly 1,000 hotels, boarding houses and bungalows catering to Jewish families. Dubbed “The Jewish Alps,” the Catskills boasted upscale resorts such as the Nevele, Grossinger’s, Brown’s, Laurel’s and Kutsher’s that featured amenities lavish even by today’s standards—professional golf courses, tennis courses, indoor pools, skating rinks–even a ski slope with imported snow and a fancy chalet.

The glitzy, Vegas-style hotel theaters hosted nightly performances by showbiz elite, including Judy Garland, Louis Armstrong, Johnny Mathis, Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck and Paul Anka, as well as the famed comedians who helped give the Borscht Belt its name: Don Rickles, Milton Berle, Fanny Brice, Rodney Dangerfield, Jerry Lewis (who had his own theater at Brown’s) and, of course, Henny “Take My Wife, Please” Youngman.

Massive and flashy, Catskills venues had fanciful names such as Stardust Nightclub (Kutsher’s), Starlight Room (Stevensville Hotel) and Black Magic Room (Commodore Hotel) and accommodated up to 3,000 guests.

A forerunner of the all-inclusive vacation, a stay in the Catskills guaranteed a summer full of fun and adventure—for one lump sum. The bungalow colonies, or kuchalane—Yiddish for “cook alone”—were geared to the middle class, offering a flexible option for families whose breadwinner needed to drive back to the city for the work week. “It’s fair to say that a garment worker or taxi driver could afford a few weeks at a kuchalane,” says Jacobs.

This fascinating, historically rich melting pot of Jewish society and customs will be celebrated at the upcoming Catskills Borscht

Belt Museum through visiting exhibitions as well as a core collection of photography, original hotel brochures and other memorabilia, films, audio recordings of personal recollections and educational materials. “It’s essential for future generations to understand the importance of this time,” says Jacobs.

In advance of the museum’s opening in spring 2025, organizers will be debuting the Borscht Belt Fest, an annual cultural and food event, July 29-30 in Ellenville, NY. A curated street fair will feature vendors selling tasty noshes, and Master of Simon Sez, Steve Max, will lead a group of that Borscht Belt staple. Five local bands will perform, including one that plays nothing released after 1967. The special guest of honor will be iconic Catskills painter Morris Katz. “Every Jewish family had one of his Dancing Rabbi paintings,” says Jacobs.

The festival is free and open to the public; the five comedy shows and panel talks will both require a ticket.

“Part of our mission is to show people the Catskills is cool again,” says Jacobs. “After 50 years, it’s ready for its second act goodnight, hello “Images of the Borscht Belt hotels in their heyday look like something out of a dream sequence,” Jeffreys says of his haunting works in the fabled New York region.

Susan Whitebrook and I will see you there in our search for Mrs. Maisel and her intoxicating brand of nostalgia mixed with humor so perfectly reflective of the magic in the mountains known as the Borscht Belt. Mazel to one and all.

Legacy

Beauty, Everywhere

Rhinebeck native Isaac Jeffreys captures the light and the magic of the Borscht Belt’s bygone golden era. And how.

BY TARA SOLOMON

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ISAAC

JEFFREYS

I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU,

but my early 20s were spent watching MTV and shopping at the mall, among other low-brow pursuits.

Unlike Isaac Jeffreys, an enthusiastic 23-year-old Rhinebeck native with a BFA from Parsons School of Design who’s built an impressive portfolio photographing abandoned hotels in New York’s famed Borscht Belt—a hobby since high school, a time when I was laser-focused on scrapbooks and braiding my hair.

Jeffreys, an old soul who enjoyed listening to his grandparents’ stories about their summers in the Catskills, spent “a good amount of time dreaming of the past.” Fascinated by the mystique and glamour of the bygone era, the atypical zillennial has documented 75 historic Borscht Belt resorts throughout Sullivan and Ulster counties where Jewish families famously vacationed en masse from the 1920s through the 1970s.

The faded facades, drained swimming pools and empty theaters of former iconic hotspots including Grossinger’s—the inspiration for the 1987 film Dirty Dancing and Kutsher’s Country Club, whose ritzy Stardust Room hosted the biggest names in the biz, from Duke Ellington to Joan Rivers, come alive in haunting detail.

“Images of the hotels in their heyday look like something out of a dream sequence,” says the young photographer, whose modern interpretations indeed serve Twilight Zone (un)realness. Dramatically staged and lit at night by Jeffreys and shot with a Hasselblad medium-format film camera, the austere images are eerily inviting, making us wistful generation wow Jeffreys’ work gives a new generation an opportunity to appreciate the architectural merit of hundreds of midcentury modern resorts which were “cultural epicenters in the Catskills, representing a peak in design and art.” for those Marvelous Mrs. Maisel days of yore, having the time of our lives while frolicking through the “Jewish Alps” in fabulous vintage getups. (Side note: Superfans of the sublime Amazon series will recall Season 2, Episode 4 “We’re Going To The Catskills!” in which Midge Maisel and her mother Rose assemble their late-1950s vacation looks from racks and racks of clothing they’ve moved into the living room—which truly is an inspired concept.)

In reviving the allure of fabled Borscht Belt destinations such as the 1901 Nevele Grande Hotel in Ellenville—with its ski slope, Swiss chalet and exotic “mural staircase”—Jeffreys gives a new generation (his generation) an opportunity to appreciate the architectural merit of hundreds of midcentury modern resorts which were “cultural epicenters in the Catskills, representing a peak in design and art.”

Of the approximately 500 hotels during the Borscht Belt’s glory days, only half remain, says Jeffreys, who plans to complete his Borscht Belt series—now hovering somewhere near 200 images—this summer.

On August 13, Jeffreys will be part of a joint show entitled “Day And Night: Return To The Borscht Belt” with photographer Marisa Scheinfeld at Grocery Store Gallery in Mountain Dale in Sullivan County. Considered one of the Borscht Belt’s oldest towns (established 1880), the hamlet will be honored with a special designation by the Historic Marker Project, for which Jeffreys serves as visual coordinator.

A gallery opening in New York City’s new art mecca, West Chelsea—and a book deal— are at the top of the Borscht Belt ambassador’s wish list. “There’s such a rich visual history in the Borscht Belt,” Jeffreys says. “My goal is to make that history come alive.” Again, much loftier goals than I had at his age. The Borscht Belt deserves nothing less.