Ultra-Orthodox camps in Sullivan county contribute up to $25 million per year to local economy

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BROOKLYN – The owners of ultra-Orthodox Jewish summer camps know how some locals feel about them.
They know year-round residents say they jam their empty roads, litter their pristine countryside and destroy their silent nights.
But where would the Sullivan County economy be without the up to 100 ultra-Orthodox camps, asked Meir Frischman, director of the Association of Jewish Camp Operators in Sullivan County.
His two Town of Liberty camps alone – Agudah and Bnos - spend up to $2.5 million per year in Sullivan, he said. He estimated that all of the ultra-Orthodox camps in Sullivan contribute up to $25 million per year – buying everything from plumbing and pool supplies to fuel and lumber – even if many don’t pay sales or property taxes.
“More than $500,000 per year alone, year-round,” at Wyde Lumber Supply in Monticello, said owner Alan Madnick.
Frischman noted that he was at a recent Liberty Planning Board meeting where all six agenda items were Jewish camps or bungalows.

“On the one hand it’s a good thing; on the other, we’re hated more,” he said at Wednesday’s Jewish Camp Expo at the Palace catering hall in Brooklyn.
That’s where about 1,100 camp representatives from some 425 Catskills, New Jersey and Pennsylvania camps checked out more than 100 vendors selling everything a camp – or camper – could dream of, from Kosher karate to Kosher Chinese food. The Expo not only provided a glimpse into the rarely seen world of ultra-Orthodox camps, but it also offered insight into the often-strained relations of the thousands of summer visitors and their hosts - and how to bridge that divide.
A couple of the exhibitors were even selling – or trying to give away – improved summer relations.
Take Sullivan Renaissance, which shared a booth with Sullivan County Cornell Cooperative Extension and Thompson Sanitation of Rock Hill.
“We’re trying to get the camps in the community to clean it up and look nice,” said South Fallsburg’s Albert Braun, at a table offering such Renaissance beautification programs as a $10,000 community Mitzvah award and matching appearance improvement grants of up to $2,500.
The exhibit featured free squash and flower seeds, as well as representatives from Cornell Cooperative to teach folks how to plant and grow them.

 all of which is a good thing, said Rabbi Ronnie Greenwald, whose Camp Sternburg has been in the Delaware River hamlet of Narrowsburg for more than 50 years.
“We don’t want to be intrusive,” said Greenwald, standing across from the preserved lions and lambs of the Living Torah exhibit of Woobourne and across from Apple’s Small Engine Repair of Liberty, which paid $4,000 for its booth and was featuring a Bob-Cat Pro Commercial Mower for $9,000.
Camp Sternberg and other local Jewish camps account for some 15 percent of Lander’s River Trips canoe business – or about $100,000 per summer - said owner Rick Lander.
And even though the setting of the Camp Expo - in a concrete, car-honking neighborhood beneath the clanking elevated F train subway line - couldn’t be farther from the green calm of the Catskills, the exhibit reflected a world most locals in Sullivan, Orange and Ulster counties never enter.
It’s a world that seems refreshingly familiar to anyone who’s ever gone to summer camp and seen a magician like “Master Illusionist” Elliot Zimet pull a bird out of the air, only Zimet makes sure he never touches a girl in his act. It’s also a world where Kosher karate master Mordechai Genut teaches kids to “punch, kick and defend” – but observes religious practices by making sure they don’t bow to each other or to him.
Even though the camps know that locals may resent their annual invasion, they do share one thing in common with their often reluctant summer hosts: a passion for the fresh air, green grass and open space of “the mountains.”
That's why Sullivan County Visitors Association President Roberta Byron Lockwood said the ultra-Orthodox Jewish camps make "a huge impact" on the county's summer attractions.
"A good 20-25 percent of their business," she said. "They're a very vital part of who we are."
“Camping in the Catskills is the best thing in the world,” said Yosef Feferkorn, head counselor at Camp Pupa in Swan Lake. “It makes people appreciate the beauty of the natural resources.”
Some of the summer visitors even sympathize with the locals who resent their invasion.
Take Aron Goldman, whose Fireproof LLC serves countless Sullivan summer camps, including Camp Simcha in Glan Spey. He’s been coming to Sullivan for 44 years; he learned to drive there.
“I love Sullivan, “he said. “I’ve always wanted the Catskills to survive. But I can see where the tension comes from. If there’s two cars ahead of me in the summer, that’s traffic.”