Drag Weddings in the Early Borscht Belt

(This introduction was written by Aaron Castillo-White)

Today, many who remember the Borscht Belt recall their summers with family and an entire generation of comedians it produced, like Joan Rivers, Sid Caesar, Woody Allen and Jerry Seinfeld. Largely missing from this historical calculus are the rise of what journalist Rokhl Kafrissen described in Tablet Magazine as “Summer Weddings,” Jewish weddings done in drag. 

As the 19th century drew to a close, a wealthy milieu of East Coast elites were largely supplanted by the many immigrant and marginalized communities of New York City. The nearby Catskill Mountains provided nature and escape from the overcrowded and often poor living conditions for many in American cities at the turn of the century, including Jews, who established boarding houses throughout the area. 

LGBT communities also began to filter into the Catskills for reprieve. In 1899, the Photographer and social documentarian Alice Austen met her life partner Gertrude Tate at “Twilight Rest” a hotel in the Catskills. Some 50 years later, there was Casa Susanna, a safe haven in Jewett. Among its more notable and frequent visitors were Donald A. Wollheim, a Jewish science fiction author and publisher.

While the LGBT and Jewish communities existed here side by side, more complicated is the story of acceptance between them. 

The Borscht Belt of the Catskills was a microcosm of Jewish life, offering accommodations for all varieties of Jewish practice and politics. Acceptance of the LGBT community would have varied widely and even within particular communities would have changed with the politics of the times. 

Many stories of LGBT Jewish love have been buried and lost to time. But there is a rich history of Jewish drag and the rise of “Summer Weddings” in the Borscht Belt. 

There is no indication as to when these Summer Weddings began to become a more enshrined tradition in the Borscht Belt. However, digging through the Forward archives offers some clues. A timely email from Forward reader Debbi Honoroff provided the rest. 

Honoroff inherited a photo of her grandmother (now at the YIVO archives), Lena Weingast Shapiro attending a wedding with a bride and groom in drag in 1913. Honoroff reached out to Eddy Portnoy, Academic Advisor and Director of Exhibitions at YIVO, who was able to find a Forverts article, which is translated in full below, detailing the event. 

While much of the Summer Wedding tradition and its rise in popularity remains a mystery, we are sharing this translation to provide some context and shed some light on how such weddings were viewed in the Yiddish press. 

A joke "wedding" in the Catskills.

From a series of "pictures and scenes, from the summer places" - by our specially assigned reporter

15 August 1913

A group of friends, who regularly get together in the Catskills, is made up of people who hate arranging real weddings and taking on the burden of a wife, house and children... So out here by the farmhouses, they pretend to get married.

This Forverts reporter, currently traveling around the Catskills, was invited to a “mock wedding.” Of course, no one had any idea that he was a reporter. They invited him and he came as just one of the many joyous guests.

This quote-unquote “wedding” took place in a large farmhouse’s sizable dining room.

A boy dressed up as a “bride” and a girl dressed up as a “groom”; there were also ushers, in-laws, musicians, a reverend and a badchan (a wedding entertainer.)

Flora, the Galician with blonde hair, was the “groom.” She was wearing a pair of men's pants, a kapote (a long coat), a collared shirt, a tie and a stovepipe hat. And as is tradition at the farm, the farmer's son, Sam, took the best part for himself — and was the “ladies’ man”! He was the “bride!” He put on a stylish Bulgarian dress as a ton of powder was poured onto his face.

The "bride and groom" sat down at the veranda at the entrance of the house while all the arriving “in-laws” kissed the couple and wished them mazel tov. The men kissed the “groom,” and the female in-laws kissed the delicate, pale, powdered-up “bride.”

When people looked at the "bride", it seemed like a creature from hell in comparison to the “groom,” who shone like seven suns, like a beautiful soft Bar Mitzvah boy with curled payes (sidelocks).

One Mr. Bernard, a professional loudmouth from another farmhouse, together with some high-spirited girls and women, hustled and bustled around the in-laws and arranged everything necessary according to Jewish law.

The musicians were certainly real. During the summer months, Jewish musicians tour the villages of the Catskills. The musical "band" was made up of three people. One of them, a large well-built man with a cataract in one eye, was playing a flute. A second thin little man was the fiddler, and there was an elderly man with a forked beard and a curved back tottering over a cymbal.

The music played, the flute loudly shrieked, and the fiddle sawed as though it was a dulled knife on a rusty iron; and the cymbal was struck randomly without coordination. From a distance, it seemed that some Polish village somewhere was having a wedding.

All the in-laws sat down on the chairs and benches until finally the badchan came. The badchan, a member of a New York drama club, was a boarder at a nearby farm. The young guy might have looked like a dry lulav, but he knew how to do the job.

The badchan began to speak like a toothless rabbi — “nu, nu, the bride is seated.”

Two of the spirited boarders grabbed the "bride," Sam’leh, and sat her down on a chair. The groom said "Darling bride, my bride my crown, you vill be a nice nothing, a tomcat will eat you up,” and then just like this, the badchan came up with curses in rhyme upon the "bride's" head, that is to say, on Sam'keh’s head.

The young men doubled over with laughter, then made serious faces and pinched the "bride's" cheeks. The old boarders choked with laughter.

When the “bridegroom” was brought in, that is Flora the Galician girl, the badchan poured down a stream of blessings in rhyme, as sweet as sweet potatoes, onto the bridegroom Mordetchke’s head. With a pious air, the “Reverend” (a Jewish variety actor) laid his hands on the “groom’s” head. He blessed “him,” and with glowing eyes, pressed a kiss to the “groom’s” head.

Then the musicians played a sad Jewish tune, so sad that stones could move. The old women brought their handkerchiefs up to their eyes.

The bride and groom were led under the chuppah. A ketubah was read, saying that the bride needs to be buried alive. Then the reverend, mercilessly cursing Sam, that is the “bride,” read out a series of foods that the bride should expect from the groom for the ketubah, that is from the breadwinner — which was horrifying. The bride’s father (a thin cloak-designer) promised two years of room and board. The lodging was to be in a rocky region in the Catskills, where people drink water  squeezed out of bathing suits after someone goes bathing in the lake.

People sat down for the chuppah-dinner. Everyone was given food in a tiny cup and the now-married bride and groom kissed. During the Chuppah dinner, people read telegrams sent in to congratulate the “young couple.”

A telegram came from New York Eggs — eagerly devoured in the Catskills, and a telegram from Rancid Cereals, from Essex Street Cucumbers and from Uptown Dairy Traders; and congratulations came from five-year-old Spring Chickens, from twenty-year-old Veal Meat and other such personalities.

After dinner, the dancing began. At the dance, however, the hilarity turned into seriousness. You could see profound tragedies and painful spiritual woes.

In these farmhouses, there were more women than men. So today, when it came to the dance, you can already, dear reader, surmise how "independent" these boys were. Each brat had a choice of girls for himself, like a housewife with a year’s worth of cheap wild apples.

Additionally, there was another issue in the Catskills — the comely girls... the musicians were playing, all the girls were dancing, but not everyone had a knight in shining armor... the beautiful, lively girls and women were cheerfully carried off in the arms of the gentlemen, and the unlucky ones stuck in the corner with longing hearts and pursed lips. In protest, a pair of girls would take each by the  hand and dance amongst themselves, but can bread paired with bread have a taste?

One girl stood ready to dance, but she had no one to go with. This girl was not pretty, but she was not ugly either. Her appearance however was one of someone who has lost courage; while she laughed the whole evening, her grimaces were mournful, though she looked around flirtatiously. Her clothing appeared old and patchy, although she was very stylish in her short skirt. Her head looked like that of an old woman, though she combed her hair like a thirteen-year-old girl. The young lady licked her lower lip as often as possible. (She thought it to be attractive).

When a boy approached her, she looked at him sweetly and tenderly. She babbled, smiling dumbly at every worthless guy who beared with her. But everyone wanted to dance with others. In the end, one guy took her to dance — he vigorously pulled her to the dancing, and her tight short skirt bound her heavy legs and she fell. He let her go and didn't pick her up. She got up ashamedly while smiling submissively…

This writer felt great pity for the girl. But he didn't want to ask her to dance, because her submissiveness was detestable. It could be that this is why she was really unlucky with boys... She lacked the pride and caprice that makes a woman charming and interesting...

At the end of the mock wedding, the musicians played a “clap dance,” a joyful Jewish song. Everyone danced and clapped. Young and old, ugly and pretty, dancers and non-dancers, everyone kicked up their legs and clapped their hands to the beat. There were old women in bonnets and young graceful figures with torn dresses who went round in a circle dance.

Everyone's faces were beaming and shining. Gosele and Yetele, the two most charming boarders of one popular farmhouse were like two angels, floating in the air.

At the end, the "bride and groom" were escorted to the orchard, where the hammocks hang, and when everyone went along the different dark roads to the farmhouses, a song was heard in the quiet, dark night, a loud woman's voice was heartily singing: “hop hop, a little more, lift a foot, hop hop.”