The Borscht Belt was once a well-known resort destination for hundreds of thousands of American Jews from the 1920s to the early 1970s.
Eventually, the resorts in New York's Catskill Mountains began a gradual demise due to many factors — including the growth of suburbia, inexpensive airfare and generational changes.
A new photo exhibit at the Florida Holocaust Museum tells the story of the former Jewish resorts.
WUSF's Cathy Carter recently spoke with artist and author Marisa Scheinfeld about the Borscht Belt's legacy and more.
The interview below was edited for clarity and brevity.
Marisa, for those who may not be aware, can you speak to just how big the cultural impact and the legacy of the Borscht Belt was?
The Borscht Belt was the preeminent vacation destination, but also [the] center of cultural renaissance for American Jewry, and that grew to about 535 hotels, 50,000 bungalows and over 1000 rooming houses. Actually, in many ways, it became a model for the American vacation. And the Borscht Belt predates Las Vegas and Atlantic City.
In its heyday, the venues of the Borscht Belt had such a strong influence on American culture, especially in the realm of entertainment, with folks like Mel Brooks, Joan Rivers and later, Jerry Seinfeld.
Yes, you have so many amazing people. Judy Garland performed at the Concord Hotel. You have Sammy Davis Jr, Nina Simone, and Martin Luther King giving his last official interview in the Catskills, 10 days before he was assassinated. He was at the Rabbinical conference.
It was just across the board with cultural figures; Presidents, Presidents' wives, but also the average Jewish person who was just going up there seeking community and connection.
And that connection was so important because of the exclusion of the Jewish community from existing establishments.
The roots of the Borscht Belt were born out of antisemitism. What you have in America in the early 1900s are magazines called Jew Jokes, antisemitic cartoons, and it was socially acceptable to be antisemitic towards Jews and to exclude them from business, legal opportunities, social club membership and vacation access.
And there you have the beginning of the Borscht Belt; Jews fleeing antisemitism, pogroms, genocide. They faced extreme exclusion when they came to America.
So, what happens is, I think, in a very revolutionary way, the Jewish community said, well, if you don't want us to be part of your club, we're going to make our own.
You grew up in New York's Catskills region, but by the time you moved there, the Borscht Belt’s heyday was coming to an end. So, what got you interested in the Borscht Belt and later writing a book about it, and now this photo exhibit?
My parents moved up to the Catskills in 1985. I was 5 years old. Then by 1996, I'm in high school, and I was a lifeguard at the Concord. I worked there two seasons before it closed, and most all of the hotels had folded at that point.
But I always knew that there was something special that happened there. I didn't know why it was created, or really how impactful it was, until I started working on what became a five-year endeavor, which was a book.
When I was in grad school, the project really came together when a mentor of mine said, when you don't know what to shoot, shoot what you know. Well, what do I know? Well, I know I come from this place where something magical transpired, this golden age.
But by the time I looked at that in 2008, those hotels were in full ruins and various states of decomposition, and they became like these sites of obsession for me for about five years.
So, after most of the hotels and the destinations had closed, some were demolished, others abandoned for years. That's what you have photos of in this show. But you say you never looked at these places as ugly ruins.
I did not look at the Borscht Belt ruins like eyesores, and I thought that they deserved this kind of final light shined upon them.
There's something about these places that many look at as empty, where I encourage those that go to the exhibit to look at them as full. Full of story, full of memory, full of place and full of loss and change and all of those things.
'The Borscht Belt: Revisiting the Remains of America’s Jewish Vacationland' is on view at the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg through May 31.
Catskills Throwback: Shuffleboard & Stories happens Thursday at St. Petersburg Shuffleboard Club with an illustrated lecture and Q&A with Marisa Scheinfeld.
