Today is the Seventeenth day of Tammuz, the start of a three week period that ends with the Ninth day of Av (this year, on July 22-23). During this period Jews worldwide lament the destruction of the Holy Temples in Jerusalem so many years ago.
It's hard for us to feel the sadness and desolation of the destruction because we never personally felt the joy of experiencing the celebrations and rituals that took place in the Temples.
But we have a modern counterpart of sorts that we can relate to by recognizing the desolation that has come to the hundreds of once-regal Catskills hotels that brought pleasure and recreation to American Jews in the 1960s through the 1990s.
Not that we're comparing the hotels to the Temples, but in a sense the hotels were temples of Jewish life in their heydey.
Here's a nostalgic video made up of postcards showing the facades of many of the older Catskills hotels, some of which you may remember visiting, or at least seeing the directional signs posted at highway exits. The music in the background is the Yiddish song Vus is geven, is geven, un nit do (What was, was, and can never be again.)
