The Concord and Grossinger's Are On Their Way to Reopening in the Catskills

Artist's Rendering of the New Resorts World in Kiamesha Lake

The glory days of' the Borscht Belt and the Catskill Hotels in New York came to a sad end in the 1980s. Now, 30 years later, signs of hope are beginning to appear.

Current plans don't envision the return of the Concord and Grossinger's Hotels as the kosher getaways that flourished from the 1940s to the 1980s, but activity is picking up on the site of both hotels.

Construction of a new Resorts World casino hotel on the site of The Concord in Kiamesha Lake is well underway with a planned opening in March 2018. Meanwhile, 13 miles away in Liberty, the sleeping giant of Grossinger's is stirring, crumbling buildings and all.

As Sarah Maslin Nir reported in The New York Times last week,

In the spring, Louis R. Cappelli, a Westchester-based real estate developer who has owned the complex for two decades, applied to the State Department of Environmental Conservation requesting that a portion of the property be designated a brownfield, or contaminated site. The former resort is now a hodgepodge of scores of crumbling buildings on hundreds of acres, land he says is laden with chemicals spilled by dry-cleaning and machine repair shops. Such a designation would make the property eligible for state funds to help with remediation of the soil and groundwater, a necessary first step, Mr. Cappelli says, to bring back the world-class resort.

Mr. Cappelli, who bought the place in 1999, more than a decade after the Grossinger family had ceased operations, envisions a grand future: a conference center, housing, spa and chalet-style lodging. It is a bet that piggybacks on the crowds that he hopes will come to the Resorts World Casino, a $750 million complex opening next year in another former borscht belt destination, the Concord Resort Hotel in nearby Kiamesha Lake.

Here are two videos, one depicting the high hopes of area residents when the casino license was awarded to the hotel being built on the Concord property, and another report from a local TV station on the current state of the Grossinger's property.

Here's hoping!

A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.

Remembering Eddie Fisher Singing Hava Nagila and Milk and Honey

Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds with Jennie Grossinger

With all the press coverage of the passing of Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds in late December, very little was said about Eddie Fisher, Carrie's dad and Debbie's first husband.

We remember Eddie as a giant (although he was short) of the pop music world after he was discovered by Eddie Cantor at Grossinger's in the Catskills where he was working as a bus boy. 

Fisher was born in Philadelphia in 1928 and was the fourth of seven children. He was the son of Russian-born Jewish immigrants, Gitte Winokur and Joseph Tisch. His father's surname was changed to Fisher by the time of the 1940 census.

He was not an observant Jew, but returned many times to sing at Grossinger's, and that's where he and Debbie Reynolds were married.

As Benjamin Ivry wrote in The Forward,

David E. Kaufman, a Jewish studies professor at Hofstra University, pointed out in “Jewhooing the Sixties: American Celebrity and Jewish Identity.” how during his marriage to Reynolds and earlier, Fisher had been uninvolved with his Jewish heritage.

After leaving Reynolds and his children, Fisher informed movie magazine reporters that he had suddenly discovered his roots. This mechaya was supposedly the result of Fisher’s reading Leon Uris’s 1958 novel “Exodus” and befriending Rabbi Max Nussbaum, the Hollywood religious leader who would perform the wedding ceremony for Taylor and Fisher, also presiding over Liz’s conversion.

Witnessing her ex-husband’s belated realization of his roots must have ultimately struck an absurd note in Reynold’s sensibility, as she raised her children. The fact that Fisher showed no interest in Judaism while they were together may have made Reynolds' own approach to Jewish culture all the more celebratory in later years.

Her late daughter Carrie Fisher had perhaps the closest identification with Judaism in the family, and Reynolds good-humoredly assimilated a certain amount of everyday Jewish culture. Last year, after Carrie tweeted: “From her perch high above Canter's Deli in Hollywood, your half Jewish Princess ponders the world between her bagels,” her mother retweeted the message, adding: “My daughter Carrie is beautiful as she looks down at one of LA’s favorite delis. The whitefish is strong in this one.”

Fisher, who is hardly known by today's young pop music lovers, had many top hits, including Oh My Papa, I'm Walking Behind You, Wish You Were Here, I'm Yours and I Need You Now.

There aren't many traces of Fisher singing Jewish songs, but we found two that we'll share with you. In 1961 he recorded the title song from the Broadway musical Milk and Honey starring Molly Picon. The musical is about a busload of lonely American widows hoping to catch husbands while touring Israel and is set against the backdrop of the country's struggle for recognition as an independent nation.

In 1966 he sang Hava Nagila with The Young Americans on the Hollywood Palace TV show. 

Fisher died in 2010 at the age of 82. We hope you enjoy the videos below.

A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.

Eddie Fisher Sings Milk and Honey



Eddie Fisher Sings Hava Nagila

Revisiting the Borscht Belt - A Nostalgic Return to the Cradle of Jewish Humor

(A note to our readers: We were invited to submit a guest post about the Borscht Belt on the website of the Israel Forever Foundation. It's an engagement organization that develops and promotes experiential learning opportunities to celebrate and strengthen the personal connection to Israel as an integral part of Jewish life and identity. Here's the complete article, including two video clips, that was posted yesterday at Israel Forever.) 
 

Have You Ever Visited the Borscht Belt?

by Al Kustanowitz

Just as Israel has been called the cradle of world civilization, Sullivan County, a quiet rural area in upstate New York, has earned its reputation as the cradle of Jewish humor.

Sullivan County (and part of Ulster County) are the location of the Catskill Mountains, in whose rolling hills and valleys scores of resort hotels were built in the first half of the twentieth century.

These hotels, catering to Northeastern Jews hungry for fresh, cool air and bountiful portions of traditional Jewish cuisine, flocked to the hotels for recreation, entertainment, comedy, and unlimited portions of brisket, kugel, herring, gefilte fish, and borscht. This classic soup, served hot or cold, with sour cream at dairy meals or with meatballs at meat meals, is the source of the name that describes the summer scene in the mountains – The Borscht Belt.

The names of the hotels are now legendary – Grossingers, The Concord, Kutsher’s, The Granit, The Pines, Homowack Lodge, The Nevele, Brickman’s, Brown’s, The Fallsview, and others too numerous to mention. Kutsher’s was the longest lasting of the group, succumbing to a lack of interest by a younger generation more inclined to travel abroad. It lasted until its 100th anniversary year, and was the subject of a nostalgic film about it and its peers. Welcome to Kutsher’s was released last year. Here is the trailer for the film, which is still being shown at Jewish film festivals:


 
The food served at all of the Catskills hotels was legendary. At breakfast, lunch, dinner, and between meals in the tea room, guests would order everything on the menu and the waiters would accommodate every request. Guests, sometimes embarrassed at ordering so many portions of food would ask for multiple main courses as “a side of stuffed cabbage” or “a side of brisket” and the waiter would bring trays loaded with full main courses for each of the “sides” requested. Since all food was included in the cost of the room, the cost of each dish was never a concern.

Here are breakfast, lunch, and dinner menus from The Concord, Grossinger’s, and Kutsher’s to give you an idea of how many dishes were consumed on a typical day. Just note the five different types of herring and two types of sardines offered as breakfast appetizers.

Most of the hotels are gone now, along with most of the generation that clogged the highways all summer long en route to the resort hotels. But what remains is the comedy and the comedians who started out as waiters, busboys, and tummlers (slapstick entertainers) and made their way to become the most famous funny men and women of films and television. Almost all of them were Jewish.

The list is very long: Milton Berle, George Burns, Sid Caesar, Red Buttons, Danny Kaye, Jerry Lewis, Joey Adams, Shelley Berman, Joey Bishop, Fanny Brice, Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Eddie Cantor, Jack Carter, Myron Cohen, Irwin Corey, Billy Crystal, Bill Dana, Rodney Dangerfield, Phyllis Diller, Totie Fields, Buddy Hackett, Mickey Katz, George Jessel, Alan King, Alan Sherman, Phil Silvers, Henny Youngman, Jonathan Winters, Freddie Roman, etc, etc, etc.

The rise and fall of the Borscht Belt hotels was chronicled in a CBS Sunday morning segment that you can watch below:


 
The Catskills are trying to make a comeback as a resort destination with the old hotel sites being rebuilt as spas, golf clubs, and casino resorts, but without the kosher food and amenities that attracted a generation of Jewish guests.

If you visit the Borscht Belt today, you’ll find two of the old hotels that have been converted to corporate retreats, a few spas under construction, and many bungalow colonies populated by Orthodox and Haredi families.

But if you’re nostalgic for an all-inclusive vacation with unlimited food, you’ll find it in the hotels all over Israel. Instead of ordering lots of “side dishes” from a menu and being served by a waiter, you’ll have to serve yourself from the bountiful buffets served around the clock. It may not be the Borscht Belt, but the Shakshuka Belt can be just as delightful.

Al Kustanowitz founded Jewish Humor Central in 2009, to bring a daily dose of fun and merriment to readers who would otherwise start the day reading news that is often drab, dreary, and depressing. In 2012, Al wrote a series of seven interactive books with the series title Jewish Humor on Your Desktop. Israel is a Funny Country, now in an expanded second edition, is one of the books in the series. For more info, click HERE or send an email by clicking HERE.