Borscht Belt

Borscht Belt, colloquial term that refers to a string of summer camps, resorts, hotels, and bungalows, predominantly in the Catskill Mountains and Adirondack Mountains in New York state, that catered specifically to American Jewish guests and were popular in the 20th century as year-round vacation destinations. At its height, the Borscht Belt boasted as many as a thousand such vacation establishments. The term Borscht Belt is said to have been coined by Variety editor Abel Green in reference to borscht, the cold beet soup popular among Jews of eastern European descent. Aside from the Borscht Belt’s importance in American Jewish history, the style of comedy developed among comedians working there had a significant impact on the development of modern stand-up comedy.

Origins

The Catskill and Adirondack mountains have a long history of Jewish presence prior to becoming a vacation destination. The region’s first Jewish landowner, known in the historical record only as “Jacob the Jew,” can be traced to 1773. Various unsuccessful attempts to create Jewish agricultural settlements took place over the next hundred years. Having failed at farming in the unforgiving mountain soil, many Jews began to open kosher boardinghouses catering to Jewish travelers.

The Borscht Belt’s hospitality industry is largely understood to have developed in response to exclusionary anti-Jewish policies governing other New York state hotels. The first such hotel in New York to openly advertise its ban on serving Jews did so in 1877 in Saratoga Springs, and the first listing for a specifically Jewish Catskills resort dates to 1899.

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In the early 1900s the population of Jews immigrating to the United States vastly increased as they fled antisemitism and pogroms in eastern Europe. Meanwhile, the expansion of kosher boardinghouses and sanatoriums in the Catskills was partially caused by a dramatic increase in cases of tuberculosis in Jewish and other immigrant communities in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, for which doctors often prescribed fresh air. As the demand for these vacation spots grew, they also included places in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania and the Berkshire Hills in New England.

The Borscht Belt experienced a surge in popularity in the interwar period. As the area became a vacation destination for those in good health, some Jewish establishments, competing with the luxury accommodations of nearby hotels that would not admit Jews, began to raise their price point, hiring musical entertainment and later investing in fancy ballrooms, golf courses, and Olympic-sized swimming pools to attract wealthy and upwardly mobile families.

Heyday

At the Borscht Belt’s height in the 1950s, more than a million Jewish visitors flocked each year to the region’s more than 1,000 establishments, which ranged from camps and bungalow colonies to rented rooms with shared kosher kitchens (called kuchalayns) to hotels and grand resorts. One of the best-known of these venues was Grossinger’s, which boasted 35 buildings—including its own post office and airstrip—on 1,200 acres (about 500 hectares) and was the first resort in the world to use artificial snow for skiing. Other establishments included the Concord Resort Hotel, with its dining and entertainment hall that could seat 3,000, and Kutsher’s Hotel, which was the longest-running of the area’s resorts and was known to be a preferred destination of sports stars such as Leon Spinks, Muhammad Ali, and Red Auerbach.

Often men would send their wives and children to these resorts in the Catskills for weeks each summer and travel up from New York City to visit them on the weekends. For the unmarried, these resorts also became prime locations to meet and court a potential spouse.

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Entertainment

Much emphasis in Borscht Belt accommodations was placed on providing entertainment for guests, which included sports facilities, childcare, all-inclusive meals and snacks, card games, and bingo. A boisterous, jack-of-all-trades social director called a tummler (from the Yiddish tumler, literally, “one who makes a racket”) would lead games such as Simon Says, tell occasional jokes, and act as the resident master of ceremonies. There was also a steady stream of popular performers, both family-friendly and more adult-oriented.

Yiddish theater performers, such as Fanny Brice and Molly Picon, performed throughout the Borscht Belt, as did musicians, including the Barry Sisters, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Dean Martin.

Some historians describe the Borscht Belt as the birthplace of modern stand-up comedy. As vaudeville waned in the 1930s, many comedians were searching for venues at which they could ply their craft; at the same time, Jewish resorts were proliferating in the Catskills and needed performers to entertain their guests. This provided a unique opportunity for comedians to develop their material and check out their competition while performing multiple shows a night. Comedians who played the Borscht Belt include such notable funny people as Woody Allen, Milton Berle, Mel Brooks, Lenny Bruce, George Burns, Sid Caesar, Jean Carroll, Rodney Dangerfield, Phyllis Diller, Buddy Hackett, Danny Kaye, Jerry Lewis, Jackie Mason, Carl Reiner, Don Rickles, Joan Rivers, Jerry Seinfeld, Jerry Stiller, and, last but not least, Henny Youngman.

Borscht Belt humor comes in a variety of flavors, but in general it consists of observational humor that pokes fun at the Jewish experience, marital issues, health concerns, and food; it is all served between slices of wry insults and complaining, seasoned with wordplay and turns of phrase, and held together with a pointy toothpick of self-deprecation. Despite the laughter, the jokes often seem pickled in sadness.

Perhaps the signature dish of Borscht Belt comedy is the one-liner. As Borscht Belt comedians migrated to television and movies, and as stand-up comedy spread from the Catskills circuit to HBO and Netflix specials, the influence of this style of humor on comedy, television, and film, and popular culture in turn, have since proven indelible.

Decline

In the latter half of the 20th century, the conditions that had fostered the success of so many Catskills resorts began to change. Antisemitism appeared to wane, more Jews assimilated into American culture and moved from New York, air travel became affordable for middle-class families, and the cruise ship industry set sail. The Borscht Belt began to decline in the mid-1960s, experiencing its steepest decrease between the 1970s and 1990s. Some resorts, such as Kutsher’s, managed to stay open into the 21st century, but they were outliers. Many of the empty hotel and resort structures of the Borscht Belt still exist, and their decay has been documented by historians and photographers such as Marisa Scheinfeld in her 2016 book The Borscht Belt: Revisiting the Remains of America’s Jewish Vacationland. A Borscht Belt museum opened in the Catskills in 2023 to commemorate the region’s history and impact on American history.

In popular culture

Two of the best-known representations of the Borscht Belt in its heyday are the romantic comedy Dirty Dancing (1987) and the Amazon series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017–23). Dirty Dancing takes place at a fictional Catskills resort called Kellerman’s that is said to have been inspired by Grossinger’s, although stripped of most of its overtly Jewish characteristics. Still, critics concur that it captures the aesthetic and energy of the Borscht Belt before its precipitous decline. In The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’s second season Midge Maisel tries her hand at performing on a Borscht Belt stage while vacationing with her family at a Catskills resort. Her character is said to be based on the comedian Jean Carroll. The depictions of the Borscht Belt in the show in many ways typify Jewish experience of this vacation getaway in its heyday.

Jokes

What, you’re still here? The article’s over. Go click on a link.

Okay, for you, a few more Borscht Belt jokes:

• “On her last safari to a garage sale, my wife bought an old encyclopedia with four volumes missing. I said, ‘How could you buy an encyclopedia with books missing?’ She said, ‘I don’t have to know everything!’ ” —Milton Berle

• “I just got back from a pleasure trip. I took my mother-in-law to the airport.” —Henny Youngman

• “My grandfather always said, ‘Don’t watch your money, watch your health.’ So one day while I was watching my health, someone stole my money. It was my grandfather.” —Jackie Mason

• “I tell ya, my whole life, all I know is rejection. When I was a kid, my yo-yo, it never came back.” —Rodney Dangerfield

• “Today I give my daughter what I really didn’t have as a kid. All the silly, dumb, extravagant, frilly, nonfunctional toys I can force on her. She probably wants an encyclopedia.” —Lenny Bruce

• “People say that money is not the key to happiness, but I always figured if you have enough money, you can have a key made.” —Joan Rivers

• “While you’re alive, you can laugh. When you’re dead, the laughter is so difficult. So difficult.” —Carl Reiner

• “I told the doctor I broke my leg in two places. He told me to quit going to those places.” —Henny Youngman

• “The police arrested me for stealing a complete set of the Encyclopædia Britannica. I said, ‘Wait, I can explain everything!’ ” —Unknown