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…
I grew up in the “mountains,” or as others called it “the country.” Throughout my entire life, family, friends and neighbors uttered these words as if no other mountains or country existed anywhere else in the wide world. Five years ago when I began working on “The Borscht Belt: Revisiting the Remains of America’s Jewish…
Shofar-dick fights aside (yes, that’s crossing shofars held at crotch-level), there’s nothing really new about “Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp.” But that’s why it works so well! Of course, the jokes are new, with gems like an incoherent “Starlight Express”-like musical, a token Israeli counselor who’s into threesomes and yurt-living, and a…
Nobody puts Kutsher’s in a corner. After closing in 2013, the former Borscht Belt hotel — famed as the inspiration for the fictional “Dirty Dancing” resort — is to be reincarnated as a $250-million yoga center. Indian billionaire Subhash Chandra plans to turn the defunct resort into a yoga and wellness center. His vision edged…
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