ABOUT US
HONORARY CO-CHAIRS
Elaine Grossinger Etess
Mark Kutsher
ARTISTIC ADVISORY BOARD
Alan Cumming
Fran Drescher
Harvey Fierstein
Chloe Fineman
Judd Hirsch
Robert Klein
Neil Sedaka
BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Andrew Jacobs, President
Andrew is a reporter for The New York Times, where he writes about global health for the Science section. He has written for the Metro, Styles and National sections, where he covered the American South, and he has reported from more than a dozen countries, including China, where he spent nearly eight years. He is also the director of “Four Seasons Lodge”, a documentary about a community of Holocaust survivors who shared a bungalow colony in Ellenville. He splits his time between Manhattan and a former dairy farm in Napanoch.
Robin Cohen Kauffman, Vice President & Secretary
Robin, a retired hospital administrator, volunteers for a number of nonprofit organizations, and has long had a hand in organizing Catskills reunions for Borscht Belt hotel staff, guests and nostalgics who are passionate about the period. Her work with the historic Touro Synagogue of Newport, R.I., the oldest synagogue in the U.S., left an indelible mark and motivated her to study the Jewish immigrant experience. As a child, Robin’s family vacationed in the Borscht Belt, and she worked at the Homowack Lodge while in college. She met her husband at the Concord Hotel.
Dr. Peter Alan Chester, Treasurer
Peter has spent much of his life working in public education, and was founding director of the Bay Academy of the Arts and Sciences in Brooklyn. Peter’s affiliation with the Borscht Belt began in 1958, when his family spent their first summer at The Grand Mountain Hotel in Greenfield Park. At 9, he was the hotel’s newspaper boy; at 11 a busboy in the children’s dining room and at 14 he became a waiter. Peter also worked at The Concord, Grossingers and the Aladdin, where he was captain and later Maitre d’Hotel from 1974 until its closure in 1991. The child of Holocaust survivors, Peter was raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and now lives in Monticello.
Allen Frishman, Archival Officer
Allen has lived his entire life in Sullivan County, where both his grandparents owned bungalow colonies. He ran a business creating architectural scale models for developers and builders, and for 24 years, he was the Town of Fallsburg as Code Enforcement Officer. The many artifacts he saved from destruction during those years form one of the most significant collections of Borscht Belt ephemera. Allen has also been involved with the Sullivan Renaissance beautification program, the county's Rails to Trails project and he is the author of two books, Tales of a Catskill Mountain Plumber and More Borscht From A Catskill Mountain Plumber.
Rachel Abrams
Rachel, an Emmy and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, is a senior producer for the documentary series "The New York Times Presents.” She is also a co-author of the New York Times bestseller "Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy." Entertainment is part of the Abrams family’s DNA; her father wrote "Undercover Blues," starring Dennis Quaid, Kathleen Turner and Stanley Tucci, and her uncle was an executive producer on "King of the Hill" and "Bob's Burgers." Rachel's early exposure to the Friars Club led her to write about financial woes at New York's temple to comedy.
Elliott Auerbach
Elliott is a former New York State Deputy Comptroller and a former three-term mayor of Ellenville who began his Borscht Belt career mucking stalls at the Nevele Hotel stables before graduating to the Fallsview Hotel dining room as a busboy. In college, Auerbach completed his Catskill Mountain education by working as a ski instructor at the Pines Hotel.
Zach Baum
Zach is an Ellenville-based cannabis entrepreneur, real estate investor and 15-year veteran of the wine and spirits industry. A specialist in rare wine and fine foods, Zach advises high net worth individuals on their collections. He is also co-founder of Hudson Valley Herbals, a cannabis cultivation and processing operation slated for Ellenville. As an early investor in several downtown properties, Zach is a key stakeholder in the town’s revitalization.
Debbie Briggs
Debbie is executive director of the Ellenville Regional Hospital Foundation, board chair at SUNY Ulster and a board member of Shadowland Stages. A 30-year Ellenville resident and a retired administrator at Ellenville Regional Hospital, Debbie is deeply involved in the community; she is treasurer of the Ellenville Fire District and a member of the Ellenville 4th of July Committee and Noonday Club. She feels a special kinship with the Borscht Belt era: her parents met playing volleyball at Grossingers, and she met her husband at the Nevele Resort while they were both volunteering for the Special Olympics.
Nancy Hirsch
Nancy is a social media food influencer, public relations executive and talent booker for “The Beat with Ari Melber” at MSNBC. For 21 years, she was the principal of the Nancy Hirsch Group, which specialized in combining PR with talent management.
Seth Horwitz
Seth is an entertainment attorney representing high-profile comedians, actors, writers and directors. He is an industry leader in the world of podcasting, having brokered deals for some of the most successful podcasters in the world. As a child, Seth vacationed with his family at the Nevele. He looks forward to retiring in Woodstock in approximately 20 years.
Don Kaplan
Don is a former transactional entertainment attorney with over 40 years of experience representing record companies, entertainment personalities and industry executives, first at RCA and CBS Records, and later in private practice. On the performing side, "Donny Lewis" was a regular contributor to a syndicated radio show, and he developed and hosted a series of radio programs dedicated to the music of Broadway. Don's formative Borscht Belt experiences include stints as a camp counsellor at the Wawarsing Bungalow Colony and working at the Concord’s outdoor pool.
Jacqueline Leitzes
Jacqueline is a development professional with over two decades of fundraising experience, and since 2021 has been the director of development at Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children's in Los Angeles. Prior to that, she was at a variety of non-profit organizations in New York City. She currently serves on the board of directors of the Hackley School Alumni Association and the JDRF Southern California Chapter. Jacqueline is strongly connected to the Borscht Belt through her grandparents, who spent many summers at Four Seasons Lodge, a bungalow colony in Ellenville.
Dan Levin
Dan is a New York Times journalist who has covered China, Canada, American youth and education, among other beats. He is currently an editor at NYT Audio, a new app for audio journalism and storytelling. As a child he spent many memorable holidays at the Homowack Lodge and his father was a teenage busboy at the Pioneer Country Club hotel in Greenfield Park.
Faye Penn
Faye is a creative strategist, communication advisor and leadership coach. She has held senior roles in media as well as NYC government, as the former Executive Director of Women.NYC and the innovation industries lead at the NYC Economic Development Corporation.
Harron Zimmerman
Harron heads the marketing department of a New York City based architecture firm specializing in building restoration and historic preservation. He was a founding member of Generosity, a division of UJA that focuses on philanthropic needs for young leaders, and he is the great grandson of Jennie Grossinger and the grandson of Elaine Grossinger Etess. Harron spent much of his childhood swimming in Grossinger's indoor pool and causing a ruckus on its golf course.
Jack Godfrey, Board President Emeritus
STAFF
Sam Lurie, Collections and Programming Manager
Sam is a recent graduate of Rutgers University with a B.A. in History and Jewish Studies. His research at Rutgers included a senior seminar project on the history of the Borscht Belt, for which he was awarded the Daniel Horn prize for best research paper on a Jewish topic. He has spent time interning and working at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and the Rutgers Department of Jewish Studies.
ADVISORY BOARD
Debra Schmidt Bach is curator of Decorative Arts and Special Exhibitions at the New-York Historical Society. She has curated and collaborated on dozens of exhibitions, including Confronting Hate 1937–1952; The Art of Winold Reiss: An Immigrant Modernist; Life Cut Short: Hamilton’s Hair and the Art of Mourning Jewelry; and First Jewish Americans: Freedom and Culture in the New World. Debra's grandparents, Rose and Max Schmidt, owned and operated The Grand Hotel, a kosher-style resort in Liberty, from the 1920s to 1970.
Lily Barrish, a native of Sullivan County, is the author of a soon-to-be-released book about the Catskills that borrows from stories shared by her father and paternal grandparents and their experiences working at Borscht Belt resorts. Lily is a copy desk researcher at Bloomberg Business week and a frequent contributor to the Hurleyville Sentinel.
Jay Blotcher is a veteran community organizer who handled media for ACT UP and Queer Nation and was a co-founder of the Hudson Valley Pride March and the Hudson Valley LGBTQ Community Center. Currently, he is a film programmer at the Rosendale Theatre and board member for the Gilbert Baker Foundation. Blotcher moved full-time to Ulster County in 2001.
Phil Brown studies the Jewish experience in the Catskills and is founder and president of the Catskills Institute, host of the largest archive from the era. Phil is also the author of Catskill Culture: A Mountain Rat's Memories of the Great Jewish Resort Area, and the editor of In the Catskills: A Century of Jewish Experience in ‘The Mountains.’ He is a professor of sociology and health sciences at Northeastern University.
John Conway is the Sullivan County Historian and a founder and president of The Delaware Company, a not-for-profit that promotes and supports the history and historic landmarks of the Upper Delaware River Valley and beyond. He is the author of nine books and has written weekly newspaper columns on local history since 1987. John is also editor-in chief of the Hurleyville Sentinel.
Mike Dalewitz is a lawyer, standup comic, serial entrepreneur and owner of The Borscht Belt Delicatessen. Mike has deep roots in the Catskills, having spent his childhood here with his family, who ran the iconic Red Apple Rest and Hotel Irvington. Other family members also managed The Pines and The Concord.
Lenny Dave is a Florida-based comedy historian and speaker whose notable appearances include the Red Skelton Entertainment Series and the Oliver Hardy Festival. Lenny is past president of the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor, an international organization that serves as a
community of professionals who study, practice and promote healthy humor and laughter.
Jane Fragner is a museum educator with experience in exhibition and program development for adult, school, and family audiences. Her museum work includes audience diversification and community collaboration along with docent training and program evaluation. She has worked at a variety of art museums and historic sites, including The Jewish Museum, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art and the Greenwich Historical Society.
Drew Friedman is an illustrator and cartoonist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, MAD and many more publications. Fifteen collections of his work have been published, including three volumes of “Old Jewish Comedians.” A documentary about Friedman’s life and work, “Vermeer of the Borscht Belt” is in the works.
Lex Gillespie has won Peabody Awards for Whole Lotta Shakin’ and Let the Good Times Roll, his series on American music history. Lex is the producer of the film The Mamboniks, which explores and celebrates the love of Latin music among Jews during the exciting mambo era of the 1950s and early ‘60s.
Steve Gold, a Catskills native, is a serial entrepreneur with successful endeavors involving music, entertainment, food innovation and nostalgia. He is the co-founder of Peace of Stage, which connects younger generations to Woodstock’s magic, spirit and social activism.
Vicki Gold Levi, an expert on Latin dance in America, is the co-author of six books, including “Live and Be Well, A Celebration of Yiddish Culture in America” and “Cuba Style.” Vicki has been a consultant for HBO's "Boardwalk Empire" and a board member of the Wolfsonian Museum in Miami Beach, where she presented four exhibitions on Cuba. She was also a curator of the Atlantic City Experience in Boardwalk Hall.
Bob Greenberg is a stand-up comedian and actor who performs regularly at the Friars Club, the Metropolitan Room and the Gotham Comedy Club. He recently toured as “Morty” in Old Jews Telling Jokes and has been featured on nationally syndicated shows such as Saturday Night Live, David Letterman, Conan O’Brien and Primetime Live.
Ellyn Hament has been a marketing and editorial manager at Bay Area public media station KQED, an editorial director at the Exploratorium museum and an entrepreneur behind a rugelach business based on an old family recipe. Her grandfather knew Jenny Grossinger and worked at her hotel, prompting frequent family visits and a lifelong love for the Borscht Belt.
Barbara Hoff is an Ellenville native who owns the vintage store Top Shelf Jewelry. Barbara is a member of the Coalition of Forward-Facing Ellenville, a nonprofit that promotes the village as a destination and bridges the gap between longtime residents and recent arrivals.
Wayne Hoffman is a journalist, author and executive editor of Tablet magazine. His cultural reporting has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post among other publications. His most recent book, The End of Her: Racing Against Alzheimer's to Solve a Murder, is published by Heliotrope Books.
Alan Katz is the founder and chief executive of The Mountains Media, whose newest venture is the The Mountains: From the Catskills to the Berkshires. Alan is the former publisher of Cargo, Vanity Fair, Interview and New York magazines, and he grew up experiencing the bungalows, sleep-away camp and many hotels of the Catskills.
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is an American folklorist with five decades of experience in Jewish culture, museums, heritage, and tourism. She is currently chief curator of the core exhibition and advisor to the director at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. She was a professor at several American universities and retired in 2014 from New York University.
Vicki Kossover is an attorney who grew up in the Catskills and whose family owned and operated the Pines Hotel from 1945 to 1998. As it happens, her New Paltz law office partner and husband, Andy Kossover, worked at the Concord Hotel for many summers and holidays.
Barry Lewis is former editor of the Times Herald-Record, where he worked for 20 years and wrote a weekly column about his life growing up in the Catskills, which includes stints as a busboy, waiter and pool manager at various hotels. Barry also chronicles local history on Classic Catskills and is the publisher of From Brooklyn to Bucolic, a collection of his columns.
Ron MacCloskey is a writer, producer, performer with 40 years of experience in stand up comedy. He is writer and presenter of the long-running TV show "Classic Movies with Ronald MacCloskey" and creator and host of "Remembering The Catskills" on Jewish Life Television. He is currently working on a documentary about Jerry Lewis.
Eileen Pollack grew up in Liberty, NY, where her grandparents operated a small hotel. One of the first two women to graduate from Yale with a BS in physics, she’s also the author of five novels and two collections of short fiction, including The Bible of Dirty Jokes, The Rabbi in the Attic, In the Mouth, and Paradise, New York, which are set in the Catskills. Her work has been selected for Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays, and Best American Travel Writing.
Eddy Portnoy is an expert on Jewish popular culture who holds the position of senior researcher and exhibition curator at YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, as well as YIVO’s academic advisor for the Max Weinreich Center. He is the author of Bad Rabbi, And other Strange But True Stories from the Yiddish Press, an underground history of downwardly mobile Jews.
Alex Prizgintas is a historian, musician and lecturer who focuses on neglected history of the Catskills and Hudson Valley region. Alex is president of the Woodbury Historical Society in Orange County, and he has been published Hudson River Valley Review and the New York Archives Magazine. A preservationist, Alex stewards the Richard L. Benjamin Collection of Borscht Belt Tourism History, which contains hundreds of documents, postcards and ephemera from the Borscht Belt era.
Jessica Rosen Klein is a public relations professional with a passion for restaurants and food-and-tech related consumer-facing brands. She has represented Michelin-starred restaurants like Sushi Nakazawa, the Prohibition-era speakeasy Chumley's and has worked for renowned chefs like Bobby Flay, Wolfgang Puck and Alain Ducasse. She has fond childhood memories of skating at the Nevele -- and especially its cavernous dining room.
Robin Schwartzman is an award-winning artist in Minneapolis who is the digital fabrication technician at the University of Minnesota Department of Art, where she is also a lecturer.. One of her large-scale projects includes Last Resort, an exhibition installation that includes a series of works inspired by the bygone era of the Borscht Belt.
Lacey Schwartz Delgado is an attorney and award-winning writer, director, producer, storyteller, and outreach strategist who uses the power of narratives to build community and impact change on personal, familial, institutional, and societal levels. A Catskills native, Lacey lives in Rhinebeck with her husband, Antonio Delgado, the Lieutenant Governor of New York.
Lea Sigiel-Wolinetz is a former New York City public school administrator. The daughter of Holocaust survivors, Lea served as coordinator for the Jews of Czestochowa Exhibit and Outreach Manager for the Polin Museum in Warsaw, and she is executive director of the Worldwide Czestochowa Jews and their Descendants. Lea spent many happy years of her childhood in the Catskills.
Jennifer Rebecca Stewart is the creator of Urban Yenta, a Canadian lifestyle blog and and host of the popular podcast Borscht Belt Tattler, which launched in May 2021.
Marc Stier is executive director of the Pennsylvania Policy Center, a leading progressive policy and advocacy organization. He is the author of Grassroots Advocacy and Health Care Reform, about the campaign for the ACA in Pennsylvania, which he led. For 53 years, Marc's family owned Stier’s Hotel in Ferndale, NY and he has many wonderful memories of the time he spent there.
Larry Strickler is a former Borscht Belt tummler, band singer, MC and activities director with decades of experience at Kutsher's, where he worked for 25 years, and the Brickman (21 years) plus stints at the Flagler, Gilberts and The Grand Mountain Hotel. Larry is featured in the award-winning documentary Welcome to Kutsher's: The Last Catskills Resort.
Pedro Tweed is a gymnastic and martial arts coach, author, actor and inspirational speaker. He moved to Catskills in 1974 and worked as a poolside entertainer doing martial arts and gymnastics at The Brickman.
Jeffrey Yoskowitz is a Brooklyn-based food entrepreneur, a thought leader in Jewish food, and an award-winning cookbook author whose book The Gefilte Manifesto: New Recipes for Old World Jewish Foods, was named a National Jewish Book Award finalist. Jeffrey writes and speaks to audiences about food and culture around the world.