Borscht Belt

By Deane Barker • • tags: judaism, idiom, geography •
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A series of mountain resorts in the Catskills of Upstate New York which catered largely to Jewish families. They were popular because they were within train distance from New York City at a time when air travel was new and expensive, and antisemitism was sill prevalent, which caused Jewish families to self-segregate to Jewish-friendly environments.

While they thrived from the 20s to the 60s, travel patterns and the social acceptance of Jews began to change, and the resorts went into decline, with most of them closing by the 70s.

Borscht is a beet soup, imported by the Jewish immigrants of Eastern Europe.

Why I Looked It Up

David Steinberg uses the term several times in his book Inside Comedy to refer to the resort/vacation circuit where a lot of famous stand-up comics of the 60s and 70s got their start.

Update

Added on

The phrase is mentioned several times in this article about a hotel fire: Catskills Hotel That Inspired “Dirty Dancing” Suffers Devastating Fire

Grossinger’s Catskill Resort Hotel was once the gem of the borscht belt, a bucolic mountain hideaway whose summertime community welcomed generations of New Yorkers and inspired the 1987 film “Dirty Dancing.”

Links to this – The Greedy Jewish Moneylender Stereotype October 16, 2021
There seems to be several reasons for this, all inter-related. First, throughout history, Jewish people have, on average, been wealthier than non-Jewish people. The most obvious and likely explanation is that the Jewish culture traditionally emphasizes education and hard work. From a book about...
Links from this – Inside Comedy: The Soul, Wit, and Bite of Comedy and Comedians of the Last Five Decades October 17, 2021
To appreciate this book, I think you need to know who David Steinberg is. I didn’t know who he was. The whole thing didn’t make a lot of sense until I did some research on Steinberg. He’s a Canadian comedian. I was born in 1971, so I didn’t know him because his heyday was the 60s and 70s. He was...