This program originally aired on Thursday, October 22, 2026, at 12:30pm Eastern.
Julie Salamon, New York Times best-selling author, sits down with author and Tulane University professor Joel Dinerstein to discuss his latest book, The Last of the Ellis Island Jews: A Brooklyn Memoir.
Joel found through many conversations with his students that the topic of an American Jewish identity had become centered around a relationship to Israel and the Holocaust. He personally has a Jewish diasporic identity, as the child of Jewish immigrants who arrived in New York City as children in 1923. Joel was inspired to write his memoir as a means of bringing his diasporic experience into conversations with new generations. Joel grew up in Flatbush, Brooklyn, in the late 1950s and 1960s, a working-class neighborhood with a prominent Jewish population living alongside Irish and Black Americans. Joel experienced a thriving, vibrant community where he felt that, as a Jewish person, he was one of the “insiders.” Joel’s memoir is rich in stories of humor, Jewish religious tradition, friends, and complex family dynamics.
Joel is a scholar of race, Black culture, and the concept of “cool,” largely through the lens of music. Growing up, Joel attended majority-Black public schools, and observing interpersonal dynamics between students of different identities introduced him to questions about race and racism that he has continued to interrogate and research throughout his career.
Additional topics discussed in this program:
- Joel Dinerstein teaches a Jewish literature class at Tulane University, assigning books such as The Rise of David Levinsky by Abraham Cahan, The Promised Land by Mary Antin, He, She, and It by Marge Piercy.
- Joel Dinerstein grew up reading Saul Bellow, Phillip Roth, Bernard Malmud, Grace Paley, and Cynthia Ozick.
- When Joel Dinerstein visited the Dachau Concentration Camp, the experience was eye-opening to the process of how racism is built and institutionalized.
- Joel Dinerstein grew up in a kosher home and went to Hebrew school. By contrast, many of Joel’s Jewish students identify as secular and ethnically Jewish.
