News

Announcements

World premiere of new documentary "Welcome to Kutsher's: The Last Catskills Resort," a documentary about the Catskills experience by Caroline Laskow and Ian Rosenberg is the Closing Night film of the New York Jewish Film Festival on 1/26/2012. Tickets have already sold out, but find more information on Facebook, the website, and youtube.

kutshersdoc@gmail.com to get on the mailing list for upcoming screenings (next up the Miami Jewish Film Festival, 1/29/2012) and DVD release dates.

See also the Op-Ed, "Why the Catskills Experience Matters," on NYC public television's MetroFocus. More Announcements more

Local News

Welcome

Welcome to the new Catskills Institute website. We are very grateful to Brown University for its wonderful support through the Scholarly Technology Group and the Center for Digital Scholarship. Elli Mylonas, Ann Caldwell, Robin Ness, and Kerri Hicks spent countless hours developing this new archive and its website. Thousands of items from the Catskills Institute Archives have been scanned in at high resolution, and accompanying metadata provides much useful background information. You can now search for all sort of materials by hotel or bungalow colony name, by type of object (e.g. menu, postcard, stationery), or by thumbnail. We are proud to now feature a whole section devoted to the beautiful postcard artistry of Alfred Landis. The bulletin board has an automatic posting mechanism for your queries. Please spend some time and enjoy this new archive/website that preserves the glorious legacy of the Jewish Catskills.

The Conference

Since 1995, the Catskills Institute has sponsored an annual conference to discuss developments in scholarly research on the topic of Catskills culture.

Reports/Papers
Schedules
Order tapes

The Catskills Institute

History of the Catskills

Research and relive the Catskills experience through literature, the arts, memoirs, interviews, and more.

Do You Remember?

Do you have a research query? Want to share a memory? Participate here.

Links

Hotel & Bungalow Listing

Browse or search Catskills accommodations throughout the years.

A century ago, the celebrated Borscht Belt started in the Sullivan and Ulster County Catskills. New Yorkers hungry for mountain air, good food, and the American way of leisure came to the mountains by the thousands, and by the 1950s, more than a million people inhabited the summer world of bungalow colonies, summer camps, and small hotels. These institutions shaped American Jewish culture, enabling Jews to become more American while at the same time introducing the American public to immigrant Jewish culture. For more information, please contact us at catskills@brown.edu

An Organization to Promote Research and Education on the Significance of the Catskill Mountains for American Jewish Life