AJFF Wraps with Love for The Catskills

The Atlanta Jewish Film Festival (AJFF) closed out its 26th season of screenings with “We Met At Grossinger’s,” an affectionate documentary about the famous hotel and the family who built the sprawling 1,200-acre resort of 35 buildings, where the dining rooms once seated 1,300 guests. In its heyday, it was known as “the Waldorf of The Catskills.” It had its own air strip, its own post office, and two golf courses.

This nostalgic look back at an American Jewish past that many of the younger members of the closing night audience may not have experienced themselves or fully appreciated is typical of what the AJFF does so well.

In his introduction to the evening’s program, Rabbi Brad Levenberg of Temple Sinai and president of the Atlanta Rabbinic Association and a former board member of the AJFF, paid an eloquent tribute to the role that the film festival plays in the life of Atlanta’s Jewish community.

“To sit together in this theater is not escapism. It is an act of community. It says that even when the world feels fractured, we choose connection over isolation. So, as we close this year’s festival, may we allow ourselves to be present to the film and to one another. May we carry compassion for those in harm’s way, may we remain clear about our values and generous with our humanity.”

“We Met At Grossinger’s” is not just about how couples of the era fell in love with each other in the mountains, it was a place where Jews could also appreciate the richness of their Jewish heritage.

At its peak in the 1950s and 1960s, Jennie Grossinger, the daughter of the resort’s Polish immigrant founders, played host to 150,000 guests a year. They were served three kosher meals a day and a full menu of entertainment with such Jewish Borsch Belt celebrities as Mel Brooks, Jerry Lewis, Jackie Mason, and Milton Berle.

In 1955, after the sundown conclusion of Yom Kippur, Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds married at the resort in the home of Jennie’s daughter, Elaine. Several years later, Fisher brought his next wife, Elizabeth Taylor, to the hotel for a vacation weekend as well.

Its success, which mirrored the success that Jews enjoyed in the post-World War II America, led to its affectionate description in a 1954 edition of Commentary magazine, then published by the American Jewish Committee. Commentary compared it to some of the most famous brands of the era.

It was described as a resort hotel “as Bergdorf Goodman is to department stores, Cadillac to cars, minks to furs, and Tiffany’s to jewelers.” With its thousand-person banquets, seders, and bar mitzvahs, it was a way many Jewish families in midcentury America marked their move up to the good life of the era.

The resort’s relatively sudden demise, which is also chronicled in the film, can be traced to changes in American life during the later years of the 20th century. The producer of the film, Robert Friedman, in his remarks after the film, chalked up the end of the Catskills era to the three A’s — air conditioning, airplanes, and assimilation.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the cool breezes of the New York mountains were less appealing to a generation that had moved to new homes in the suburbs or high-rises in the city that were cool all summer long.

With the rise of jet travel, the islands of the Caribbean were as close as the drive to the mountains and, as affluence, education, and acceptance grew for Jews, the need to come together in a community with your own kind grew less appealing,

The story of Grossinger’s decline is as sad as its rise was exhilarating. But there are signs that all has not been lost. The Grossinger’s property was sold, yet again, last year for about $15 million to a South Florida developer, which has plans and presumably the capital to recapture some of the glory of the past.

One of the principals in the creation of the documentary has signed on for a scripted series about Jennie Grossinger and her daughter, who took over the hotel during its last years. There’s even a sequel to “Dirty Dancing,” which was set in The Catskills, in the works, that’s being produced by the film’s star, Jennifer Grey.

They are all betting that fans of the hit Amazon series, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” and the interest in escaping congested big city life that was spawned during the pandemic will breathe new life into The Catskills. And that a new generation will meet at Grossinger’s again.