Book review 'The Last of the Ellis Island Jews' captures a vanished world of Jewish Brooklyn

Joel Dinerstein’s new memoir blends family drama, cultural history, and social critique in a vivid portrait of working-class Jewish life before the Holocaust became the defining center of American Jewish identity

Joel Dinerstein has spent much of his career exploring the origins of American cool, its popular music, and the nation’s racism – through his books, a Smithsonian exhibit, a class on the History of Cool, and as a jazz DJ in New Orleans.

In “The Last of the Ellis Island Jews: A Brooklyn memoir” (SUNY Press, August 1, 2026), he turns that same incisive eye toward the world that shaped h...