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A tragicomic memoir of a dysfunctional, working-class Brooklyn Jewish family.
The Last of the Ellis Island Jews is a tragicomic memoir of a dysfunctional working-class Brooklyn family that illuminates both the vitality of urban life in the twentieth century and the social turmoil of white flight. As a child of immigrants born to older parents, Dinerstein has a unique perspective on four generations—from his grandparents escaping Russia's pogroms to his parents' embattled marriage to his older Boomer siblings (split between feminist and Republican politics) to his own hippie hopes. As a white teenager in majority Black public schools, Dinerstein's firsthand experience led to his academic career as a scholar of race and music. Yet his family fits no paradigm of Jewish success due to a father with rage and gambling problems, resulting in the four siblings escaping early to the Brooklyn streets. As a family growing up with a diasporic identity, the Dinersteins provide a primer of ethnic Jewish culture through iconic scenes: a selfish Seder, a chaotic Bar Mitzvah, a videotaped bris, an allergy attack at Dachau, a staring contest with the Rebbe. Most of all, The Last of the Ellis Island Jews is a chronicle of lost worlds.
"Dinerstein's rich portrait of familial love and dysfunction is set in a world both near and surprisingly far from our own. Written with verve and compassion, The Last of the Ellis Island Jews captures the loopy charm of a vibrant ethnic scene: a tragicomic Jewish family, the grit of old school Brooklyn, and a young man trying to figure out family, faith, and race—with rock n roll as his intermittent guide. Mourn what is lost and celebrate what is triumphant: this uniquely American sense of place and belonging is not coming back." — Jefferson Cowie, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Freedom's Dominion: A Sage of White Resistance to Federal Power
"Joel Dinerstein's The Last of the Ellis Island Jews is a charming, eloquent, and, as a bonus, musically well-informed evocation of a lost world. It's hard to imagine anyone jumping in and not being glad they took this ride." — Eric Alterman, author of We Are Not One: A History of America's Fight Over Israel
"The Last of the Ellis Island Jews is a moving, funny account of Joel Dinerstein's Jewish-American coming-of-age. It captures a moment when Eastern Europe and Brooklyn could somehow occupy the same space, simultaneously, as if time were moving that fast." — Zachary Lazar, author of The Apartment on Calle Uruguay: A Novel
"Joel Dinerstein's The Last of the Ellis Island Jews is a terrific memoir of lost worlds, lost possibilities, informed by an ever-present vision of a better world. In short it is a very Jewish book. Dinerstein, a first generation American, tells how the multi-racial, multi-ethnic Brooklyn he was raised in led him to become the scholar of race and music he is today. But his main focus is on Jewish family dynamics especially the unhappy marriage of his parents, part of an immigrant un-success story. Through a chronological series of deftly animated vignettes that blend comedy and cruelty, a strong note of mourning is balanced by wit and shtik. Through dark passages his love for his mother and sister shines. Despite his wry deprecations this is a story of love, of what holds Jewish families together against all odds, a lesson rooted in an old world that needs remembering today." — Rodger Kamenetz, author of The Jew in the Lotus and Seeing into the Life of Things
"No one I know is more Brooklyn than Joel Dinerstein. No one more sensitive to its lost worlds. But then: no one has a mother more Jewish than Joel's, which makes this hilarious memoir a moving—and even tearful—study in social change." — Jay Rosen, retired professor of journalism at New York University
Joel Dinerstein is Professor of English at Tulane University, where he holds a Sizeler Professorship in Judaic Studies. His many works include The Origins of Cool in Postwar America and Swinging the Machine: Modernity, Technology, and African American Culture Between the World Wars. He lives in New Orleans, Louisiana.
List of Illustrations
Prologue: The Lost World of Jewish Flatbush (1973)
Acknowledgments
1. Bubbe and the Twins Leave the Old Country (1923)
2. The Baby of the Family (1958)
3. Adele-&-Joel Make a Pact (1963–1964)
4. All in the Family (1964–1966)
5. The Elevator Building (1966)
6. Florence and Sid in the Sixties (1966–1968)
7. The Holocaust Across the Street (1967)
8. The Joys of Flatbush (1968)
9. 1968: An Interlude
10. Growing Up Kosher (1969)
11. Miracles and Breakages (1969–1970)
12. Race Changes in Junior High (1970)
13. (Not Your Average) Bar Mitzvah (1971)
14. Hippiedom at Wel-Met Camps (1968–1974)
15. A Gertie Way of Speaking (Yiddish)
16. Teenage Working Life Blues (1972)
17. Cityboys and Suburban Teens (1973)
18. The Athletic Joys of Flatbush (1973)
19. The Four of Us (1973)
20. The Great Music Year (1974)
21. Black Culture at Erasmus (1974)
22. Exit Flatbush: White Flight (1975)
23. Freshman Year at UB (1975–1976)
24. Death, Sex, and Summer Jobs (1976)
25. The Summer of '77
26. What's in a Name? (1978)
27. The RA vs. The Rabbi (1978)
28. Heading Down "Thunder Road" (1979–1980)
29. The Year of California Dreaming (1980–1981)
30. Adele, the Wandering Jew
31. The Prodigal Son Comes Home, Inverted (1981)
32. A Haunting in Munich, Germany (1981)
33. An Epiphany in Mom's Kitchen (1982)
34. The Dream of Four Yarmulkes (1982–1983)
35. Back to Flatbush; or, Meet the Parents (1984)
36. The Fifteen Minutes of Fame of a Failed White Savior (1984–1985)
37. My Son on Donahue! (1985)
38. The Rosh Hashanah Videotape (1986)
39. The Big Rebbe Gives Me Such a Look (1988)
40. The Living Past, the New Kid on the Block (1988)
41. The Louis Armstrong Dream (1989)
42. Jake's Bris, Mara's Brooklyn (1989–1990)
43. Gentrification; or, Brooklyn's Lost Worlds (1991)
44. The Diaspora of The Dinersteins (1992)
Epilogue
45. Father and Son at the Forest Diner (1994)
46. Gertie Leaves New York at the Millennium (1999–2000)
47. The Great Old Brooklyn Lives Just Under the Radar (2018)
The Dinersteins, 2026
Index