The Borscht Belt is burning: In the Catskills, abandoned resorts keep catching fire
For longtime Catskills residents, the fires are resurfacing grief over a fading chapter in American Jewish history
For longtime Catskills residents, the fires are resurfacing grief over a fading chapter in American Jewish history
A new trail of historical markers pays tribute to a Jewish vacation hub — and could spur Catskills tourism
All About Me!: My Remarkable Life in Show Business By Mel Brooks Ballantine Books, 480 pages, $25 Mel Brooks’ memoir begins with a promise. In a preface, the 95-year-old actor-writer-director vows to make an intimate confession to his reader — one not to be shared with anyone. Then, he thinks a bit more about the…
Rodney Dangerfield has my respect — and continues to inspire my sandwiches. The comedian, who would have turned 100 today, and made a career playing a lovable schlub in films like “Caddyshack” (and once an animated dog version of himself) is not always my cup of tea. His signature jokes about his wife — a…
Half a century after their heyday, the Catskills are having a moment. “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” recently devoted the bulk of a season to the Jewish Alps’ tummling past. The passing of comedian Jackie Mason recalled a bygone era, when families fled urban sprawls to get some mountain air and kibbitz with their coreligionists in…
Jackie Mason, who died on Saturday at age 93, will forever hold a storied place in American comedy for helping introduce to the mainstream a brand of humor that was fearlessly, unapologetically Jewish. But the late comedian’s brazen style of commentary also carries a dark legacy in his history of racist remarks. In 1989, Jewish…
In the middle of the last century, American stand-up comedy became a subsidiary of the Jewish cultural-industrial complex. But the secret of its extraordinary success was that while its practitioners were obviously Jewish, their material was never too overtly Jewish. Except for Jackie Mason. The great names of the stand-up scene — Joan Rivers, Woody…
More than three decades after it shuttered, Catskills resort Grossinger’s could reopen as a hotel, spa and conference center. Louis Cappelli, who owns the property, is applying for it to be designated a “brownfield,” a first step to securing funds to rehabilitate the property as a glamorous getaway, he told The New York Times. Cappelli…