Back in 2012, Tablet ran a lovely digital slideshow by photographer Marisa Scheinfeld about Leftover Borscht, her photographic project documenting the ruins of old Jewish resorts in the Catskills. Now, that slideshow has grown into a book calledĀ The Borscht Belt: Revisiting the Remains of Americaās Jewish Vacationland.
As you know, the area once was the Jewish equivalent of the Riviera. It teemed with bungalow colonies and fancy hotels, luring Jews of all classes with the promise of fresh air and relaxation. Many of our grandparents have fond memories of family trips to places with glamorous names like the Nevele and the Concord, the Tamarack Lodge and the Windsor Regency⦠or to others with more heimische names like Grossingerās, Lansmanās and Kutsherās. Legendary comics got their start there: Woody Allen, Milton Berle, Mel Brooks, Lenny Bruce, Sid Caesar, Billy Crystal, Phyllis Diller, Jackie Mason, Carl Reiner, Joan Rivers, and Jerry Stiller. Musical and Variety stars-to-be graced Catskills supper club stages: Sammy Davis, Jr., Benny Goodman, Joel Grey, Madeline Kahn, Barry Manilow, Bette Midler, Barbra Streisand, and Sophie Tucker. Clean-cut young Jewish men put themselves through college by washing dishes, dancing with bubbes, leading lawn games and conga lines. (Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman was a lowly young waiter there.)
But as the 1960s and ā70s progressed, the Catskillsā decline began. Jews were becoming more acculturated; fewer mainstream hotels were overtly discriminatory; air travel became cheaper; families scattered. Old hotels began to crumble. Some became meditation retreats, summer camps for Hasidim, rehab centers. Others were overtaken by nature, and those are the ones that star in Scheinfeldās photography.

The Borscht BeltĀ is full of lush, mysterious, mournful, sometimes oddly funny photos: crumbling walls, graffiti-filled pools, rusted swings and basketball hoops, stacks of webbed nylon pool lounges crabbed like spider legs; childrenās toys half-submerged in murky water, bits of bird skeleton and detritus on industrial carpet, a scattering of festive red, white and blue poker chips on scrabbled ground. There are lovely, melancholy essays by Scheinfeld herself, writer Stefan Kanfer and historian Jenna Weissman Joselit (whose meditation on the resortsā old chairs is damn near virtuosic). Tablet contributor Maya Benton, with a nod to Susan Sontagās comment that āall photographs testify to timeās relentless melt,ā praised Scheinfeldās āmelancholic images of ruins, detritus and festering vegetationā¦haunted by an unseen and undefined presence, providing a visual meditation on abandonment and absence.ā

WhileĀ doing the project, sheĀ became a professional trespasser, gaining access to places that had moldered untouched for decades. Pools lay empty and peeling; many buildings had become charred ruins; nature had begun reclaiming its territory. As she wrote back then, her project cataloged āthe growth, flowering, and exhaustion of things and their subsequent regeneration. As each image began to reveal its layers, the project became reminiscent of the life cycle itself: old structures evolving into something new, odd, and often intriguing.ā
Looking at these pictures, you can practically hear the echoes of clacking mah-jongg tiles, dinner dishes clattering, Dean Martin crooning, waves of laughter at long-dead, outraged, sputtering stand-up comics. You can practically see Baby running into Johnny Castleās muscled arms. The past is gone, and the past is always with us.
Related: Remembering the Spot Where People Filled Up on the Way to the Catskills
At a Catskills Reunion, a Bungalow Colony’s Past and Present Come Together
Click here for access to comments
COMMENTING CHARGES
Daily rate: $2
Monthly rate: $18
Yearly rate: $180
WAIT, WHY DO I HAVE TO PAY TO COMMENT?
Tablet is committed to bringing you the best, smartest, most enlightening and entertaining reporting and writing on Jewish life, all free of charge. We take pride in our community of readers, and are thrilled that you choose to engage with us in a way that is both thoughtful and thought-provoking. But the Internet, for all of its wonders, poses challenges to civilized and constructive discussion, allowing vocalāand, often, anonymousāminorities to drag it down with invective (and worse). Starting today, then, we are asking people who'd like to post comments on the site to pay a nominal feeāless a paywall than a gesture of your own commitment to the cause of great conversation. All proceeds go to helping us bring you the ambitious journalism that brought you here in the first place.
I NEED TO BE HEARD! BUT I DONT WANT TO PAY.
Readers can still interact with us free of charge via Facebook, Twitter, and our other social media channels, or write to us at letters@tabletmag.com. Each week, weāll select the best letters and publish them in a new letters to the editor feature on the Scroll.
We hope this new largely symbolic measure will help us create a more pleasant and cultivated environment for all of our readers, and, as always, we thank you deeply for your support.