Borscht Belt
Jewish resort region
The Borscht Belt was a cluster of resort hotels in the Catskill Mountains of New York, popular with Jewish vacationers from the 1920s through the 1960s.
Named for the Eastern European beet soup, it became a legendary training ground for comedians—Mel Brooks, Joan Rivers, Jerry Lewis—who honed their acts for predominantly Jewish audiences.
The style of comedy that emerged there, heavy on timing, self-deprecation, and kvetch, influenced American humor broadly.
The resorts declined by the 1970s, but Borscht Belt comedy remains shorthand for a particular Jewish-American comedic tradition.
- CatskillsAppalachian range in New York
- JewishOf a Semitic people
- resortsLeisure travel destinations
- vacationLeisure time away
- comedyWork meant to amuse
Liberty · old country · bungalow · Joan Rivers · vaudeville · Jerry Lewis · Mel Brooks · Dirty Dancing · Yiddish theater · shtick · Monticello · stand-up comedy · heckler · hotel · summer camp · nightclub · mountains · honeymoon
- American Jewrysynagogues, rabbis, kosher, Yiddish, Hebrew
- AshkenaziYiddish, shtetl, klezmer, gefilte fish, challah
- Jewish Americanabagels, lox, challah, matzo ball soup, brisket
- Jewish comedyJerry Seinfeld, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Larry David, Joan Rivers
- CatskillsCatskills, Catskill, Hunter, Windham, Phoenicia
- Jewish cultureTorah, synagogue, synagogues, rabbi, rabbis
Borscht BeltBroadway
Manhattan theatrical district
Las Vegas Strip · Hollywood · Carnegie Hall · West End · Lincoln Center
Borscht BeltBlack Belt
Southern agricultural zone
Hamptons · Newport · Palm Beach · Bible Belt · Sun Belt
belt, belts, belted, belting, borscht, beltway, beltless, beltways, beltline