The Borscht Belt Was a Haven for Generations of Jewish Americans | Travel

Around the turn of 20th century, with literal boatloads of Eastern European immigrants arriving regularly through Ellis Island, Jewish aid societies established programs to encourage these new arrivals to earn their livelihood through farming. In New York, this meant supporting Jewish communities in the state’s Catskills region.

While the region could cater well to dairy farming, its rocky terrain wasn’t as suitable for agriculture. “They quickly discovered that the land was really bad,” explains Andrew Jacobs, a reporter with the New York Times. Jacobs read accounts suggesting that these families were ill-equipped for these and other challenges, which included long winters and isolation from others.

These hardscrabble farmers and other Jews who relocated to the country adapted to a more hospitable solution to make ends meet: taking in boarders during the summertime.

Early advertising played a role in developing the burgeoning restoration spot, as visitors originally came up to the Catskills by railroad. The New York & Ontario Railway published a guidebook series called “Summer Homes” that promoted stays within the Catskills; one Jewish farmer named Yana “John” Gerson listed one of the publication’s first advertisements for a Jewish boarding house in the 1890s.

These boarding houses would evolve into a network of accommodations, both luxurious and inexpensive enough so that even the working classes could head up to the Catskills—first by train, then later by car—to get some fresh air.

In realizing that could make more money taking in boarders than running farms, Jacobs adds, “they started adding to their buildings and developing resorts.”

Brothers Max and Louis Kutsher relocated to Sullivan County from New York City in 1907, and they got their start in the hospitality business by hosting summer boarders within their farmhouse. They would later establish Kutsher’s Hotel and Country Club, a long-running grand Catskills resort. The famed Grossinger’s has a similar story. Its Austrian immigrant founders, Asher and Malke Grossinger, first rented out rooms within their farmhouse, with Malke making kosher meals for their guests.