Let { P n } ∞ n =0 be an orthogonal polynomial sequence on the real line with respect to a probability measure μ with compact and infinite support and D N = ∑ N n =0 P n h n the N th element of the Dirichlet kernel, where h n = ( ∫ P 2 n dμ ) − 1 . We are investigating the r th integer power D r N and prove for special orthogonal polynomials that in the case r ∈ N \ { 1 } the sequence { D r N } ∞ N =0 gives rise to an approximate identity. This applies for example for Jacobi polynomials.