Author, Joel Dinerstein

Joel Dinerstein has spent much of his career exploring the origins of American cool—through books, teaching, a Smithsonian exhibition, and years spinning jazz on New Orleans radio. 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 him: the working-class, Yiddish-speaking, streetwise Jewish culture of Flatbush—and the loud, loving, broken family at its center. All this and more on News Radio KKOBSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.