In addition, Scheinfeld will speak and conduct a Q&A Thursday at the St. Petersburg Shuffleboard Club.<\/p>\n
WUSF recently spoke with the artist and author about the Borscht Belt\u2019s legacy and more.<\/p>\n
The interview was edited for clarity and brevity.<\/p>\n
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WUSF: For those who may not be aware, can you speak to just how big the cultural impact and the legacy of the Borscht Belt was?<\/p>\n
Marisa Scheinfeld: The Borscht Belt was the preeminent vacation destination, but also [the] center of cultural renaissance for American Jewry, and that grew to about 535 hotels, 50,000 bungalows and over 1000 rooming houses. Actually, in many ways, it became a model for the American vacation. And the Borscht Belt predates Las Vegas and Atlantic City.<\/p>\n
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In its heyday, the venues of the Borscht Belt had such a strong influence on American culture, especially in the realm of entertainment, with folks like Mel Brooks, Joan Rivers and later, Jerry Seinfeld.<\/p>\n
Yes, you have so many amazing people. Judy Garland performed at the Concord Hotel. You have Sammy Davis Jr, Nina Simone, and Martin Luther King giving his last official interview in the Catskills, 10 days before he was assassinated. He was at the Rabbinical conference.<\/p>\n
It was just across the board with cultural figures; Presidents, Presidents\u2019 wives, but also the average Jewish person who was just going up there seeking community and connection.<\/p>\n
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And that connection was so important because of the exclusion of the Jewish community from existing establishments.<\/p>\n
The roots of the Borscht Belt were born out of antisemitism. What you have in America in the early 1900s are magazines called Jew Jokes, antisemitic cartoons, and it was socially acceptable to be antisemitic towards Jews and to exclude them from business, legal opportunities, social club membership and vacation access.<\/p>\n
And there you have the beginning of the Borscht Belt; Jews fleeing antisemitism, pogroms, genocide. They faced extreme exclusion when they came to America.<\/p>\n
So, what happens is, I think, in a very revolutionary way, the Jewish community said, well, if you don\u2019t want us to be part of your club, we\u2019re going to make our own.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Borscht-Belt-1-300x185.jpg\")
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You grew up in New York\u2019s Catskills region, but by the time you moved there, the Borscht Belt\u2019s heyday was coming to an end. So, what got you interested in the Borscht Belt and later writing a book about it, and now this photo exhibit?<\/p>\n
My parents moved up to the Catskills in 1985. I was 5 years old. Then by 1996, I\u2019m in high school, and I was a lifeguard at the Concord. I worked there two seasons before it closed, and most all of the hotels had folded at that point.<\/p>\n
But I always knew that there was something special that happened there. I didn\u2019t know why it was created, or really how impactful it was, until I started working on what became a five-year endeavor, which was a book.<\/p>\n
When I was in grad school, the project really came together when a mentor of mine said, when you don\u2019t know what to shoot, shoot what you know. Well, what do I know? Well, I know I come from this place where something magical transpired, this golden age.<\/p>\n
But by the time I looked at that in 2008, those hotels were in full ruins and various states of decomposition, and they became like these sites of obsession for me for about five years.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Borscht-Belt-2-300x185.jpg\")
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So, after most of the hotels and the destinations had closed, some were demolished, others abandoned for years. That\u2019s what you have photos of in this show. But you say you never looked at these places as ugly ruins.<\/p>\n
I did not look at the Borscht Belt ruins like eyesores, and I thought that they deserved this kind of final light shined upon them.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s something about these places that many look at as empty, where I encourage those that go to the exhibit to look at them as full. Full of story, full of memory, full of place and full of loss and change and all of those things.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Marissa-Scheinfeld-300x200.jpg\")
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