A New Look for the Catskills Re "Seeking to Lure the Crowds Again. But Hold the Borscht" (news article, July 10): Was it necessary for all those would-be Catskills entrepreneurs you quoted to denigrate the long-gone but legendary borscht belt? In addition to the myriad amenities and attractions of a posh year-round holiday mecca, think about all the future successful doctors, lawyers, accountants and businessmen who worked their way through college as busboys and waiters there. Or the countless thousands of married couples who first met at a Catskill Mountains hotel, not to mention the glittering cast of celebrated performers who kicked off their careers in those colorful hills. Rebranding is fine, but one should value tradition and what went before. The writer, the public relations director at Grossinger's in the early 1970s, is the author of a book about Jennie Grossinger, who built up the resort. Your article was bittersweet. The Catskills were a destination when I was a child and a teenager going to sleepaway camp. It became a pit stop on the way to college. The attempt to rebrand the area is commendable, but raising $5 million to achieve that seems excessive. Gambling would help the area, but that process takes too long. It seems to me that the lure of the natural beauty, particularly in these austere times, should be a draw. You can't bring back the past, but you can create a future. Perhaps the expense of the Hamptons will drive people to the Catskills. As the situation improves, you'll go from the borscht belt to the Porsche belt. In the accompanying graphic, "Catskill Touchstones," you refer to The Forward, America's leading independent Jewish newspaper, as essential reading of the past. While we understand the effort at humor - of course The Forward was a Catskills mainstay for a long time - it's an unfair swipe. In these very pages in recent months, you have credited The Forward for our hard-hitting investigative work on sexual abuse in the Orthodox community, cited our report on Israel's use of its gay community in tourism promotions to burnish its human rights image, and picked up our stories on the Pakistani saviors of Brooklyn's oldest bialy shop and the economics of matzo imports. The Forward is essential reading now. You seem to think so, and our readers think so, too. SAMUEL NORICH Publisher, The Forward New York, July 10, 2012