BACKGROUND OF THE BORSCHT BELT

Marisa Scheinfeld is a photographer and author who was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1980 and raised in the Catskills. She received her B.A. from the State University at Albany in 2002, and her MFA from San Diego State University in 2011. 

Her work is motivated by an interest in the landscape and its embedded histories, both apparent and hidden. 

Marisa's photographic projects and books are among the collections of the Library of Congress, The New York Public Library, Yeshiva University Museum, The National Yiddish Book Center, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art & Life at UC Berkeley and The Edmund and Nancy K. Dubois Library at the Museum of Photographic Arts. She is a frequent guest lecturer and her photographs have been exhibited widely throughout the United States and in the UK. Her work has appeared in publications such as  National Geographic, The New York Times, National Geographic, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Village Voice, American Photography and Tablet Magazine. 

In 2016, Cornell University Press released her first book entitled The Borscht Belt: Revisiting the Remains of America's Jewish Vacationland. Marisa is currently an Adjunct Professor of Photography at SUNY Purchase and working on her second book. 

Louis Inghilterra is an avid Borscht Belt historian and  recently graduated from Colorado State University (CSU) where he earned a B.S. in Interior Design, Architecture and a focus area of Historic Preservation. Louis was born in 1999 and has lived in Chappaqua, NY, Katonah, NY, Harrisburg, PA and Fort Collins, CO. He currently resides in Denver, CO.

Starting from a very young age, Louis always had a passion for antiques, historic objects, and historic places. At the age of 11 while researching an abandoned hospital in his hometown of Katonah, NY, Louis discovered the abandoned resorts of the Borscht Belt. Since then, Louis has explored and photographed nearly all of the abandoned ruins that once made up the Borscht Belt. In addition, he has amassed a substantial collection over 200 postcards, brochures, and various forms of ephemera from the Borscht belt era.  

Recently, Louis has applied his passion for the Borscht Belt by doing a series of Independent Study projects within the Interior Architecture and Design Program at CSU. By utilizing an architectural modeling software called Revit, Louis recreated a digital model of the famous Indoor Pool building at Grossinger’s Resort in Liberty, NY. With the Indoor Pool and entire hotel demolished in 2018, Louis recreated a model of the pool by tracing existing floor plans, architectural renderings and interpreting photographs to digitally reconstruct the historic building. The project was featured at two research fairs at the University and was featured on an episode of the Borscht Belt Tattler podcast.  

Acting as one of the historic interpreters for this project, Louis additionally provides assistance with helping to locate sites for marker placement, the selection of images for historical markers and will be creating both a physical and digital map to accommodate a self-guided driving tour of the historical marker system. 

Jerry Klinger is the president and founder of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation (www.JASHP.org). The Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation is a non-profit, volunteer organization. The purpose of the Society is to identify and recognize sites of American Jewish Historical interest. The Society sponsors and promotes programs of local and national historic interest. 

Jerry is the son of Survivors of Buchenwald and Bergen Belsen. A former Yeshivah student, Jerry served with the IDF in the Sinai and is the author of over 100 articles and publications ranging from the Jerusalem Post to the Prairie Connection to the San Diego Jewish World. 

Jerry is frequently interviewed on T.V. and on Radio about the American Jewish experience. To date, the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation has completed projects in 40 US. States and in 6 countries. Over 7,000,000 people annually benefit from one of JASHP's efforts. JASHP has also completed 18 projects in Israel. On November 29, 2022, JASHP completed the first-ever historical memorial to the central birthing event for the modern state of Israel - the U.N. Partition Resolution. 

Isaac Jeffreys is a photographer who lives and works in and around New York, NY. Isaac grew up in the tranquil and historic Hudson Valley/Catskills region, and returns to the area to create work as much as he can. 

Drawn to artistic mediums from a young age, Isaac earned a Photography BFA from Parsons School of Design (The New School) in 2022. The architecture and atmosphere at many of the Borscht Belt's resorts seemed like the perfect marriage of Jeffreys’ interests ranging from architecture, set design, culture/entertainment, tourism history, and the vivid sentimentality of what we now define as the 'past'. 

Working with a variety of mediums within film, ranging from medium to large format photography, Isaac’s work is a communication with the past, and oftentimes he photographs at night to achieve surreal effects within his imagery. He sees the Borscht Belt as a cultural renaissance, and creates work that serve as a reflection and response to the poignant era.

Isaac is currently working on a photo book that will showcase the vibrance of the Borscht Belt through his lens. He's been featured on The Borscht Belt Tattler Podcast, Merch Motel Radio, and designed a collaborative collection of Borscht Belt merchandise with Merch Motel in 2022.