Downtown Ellenville hosted thousands of visitors during last weekend's second annual Borscht Belt Festival, a two-day celebration of the area's Jewish history and comedy heritage. The event was put on by the Borscht Belt Museum and featured comedy shows, lectures, and a photo gallery in the Hunt Memorial Building.

Street vendors sold borscht and other Jewish-American treats like knishes and egg creams – alongside delicious empanadas and ox-tail that might have surprised the original Borscht Belt hoteliers. Local shops up and down Canal Street opened their doors to sell records, books, clothes, and jewelry.

The Borscht Belt Museum’s Andrew Jacobs who chaired the event, said it was powered by over 80 volunteers, "was really a beautiful coming together of the town and the village, everyone pitched in to make this work.” Volunteers came from as far away as California and Arizona to bring the event to life.

Jacobs said that over the two days about 8,000 people attended. “It was non-stop in the museum, a few thousand visited there.”

While the comedians were generating laughs at the Shadowland Second Stage on Market Street, the festival’s concluding act came from Isaac Jeffreys with a fab show of his photos taken in the ruins of old resorts like the Nevele.

As the curtain came down on exhausted volunteers and visitors at the closing party at the Hunt Building, the sense of having participated in something new, something different was alive in the crowd.

The Shawangunk Journal was there too, of course, with a booth outside our Canal Street office saying hello to all passersby.

The Borscht Belt Museum also announced that they will now be open on Wednesdays, starting July 31. Museum staff say the change is “due to the popularity of exhibits.”

Their current featured exhibit is And Such Small Portions!! – Food and Comedy in the Catskills Resort Era. Previously, they only allowed visitors from Thursday to Sunday, so this extension gives then a full five-day week of open hours. Be sure to check out the giant bowl of borscht!

The museum is located at 90 Canal Street in downtown Ellenville. They can be visited from 12 noon to 5 p.m., Wednesday to Sunday.