NCSY TO HONOR BRENDA AND DR. HOWARD ROSENTHAL, OF KANSAS CITY, WITH ENID AND HAROLD BOXER MEMORIAL AT BEN ZAKKAI HONOR SOCIETY RECEPTION IN NY, JANUARY 30
NCSY | Jewish Youth Leadership, the international youth movement of the Orthodox Union, will salute Brenda and Dr. Howard Rosenthal of Kansas City, with the Enid and Harold Boxer Memorial Award at its Ben Zakkai Honor Society (BZHS) Annual Scholarship Reception Sunday, January 30 in New York.
Enid and Howard Boxer created NCSY as a continent wide youth movement.
At the reception, the OU will also pay tribute to the remarkable legacy of Dr. Bernard Lander z”l, the founder and for 40 years, president of Touro College. Dr. Lander died on February 8, 2010 at the age of 94.
BZHS is an alumni “Hall of Fame” whose new members are nominated by, and voted on, by its current members based on the nominees’ service to NCSY and the Jewish community. The Society’s main function is to raise funds for scholarships for high school NCSYers for summer programs in North America and Israel and for teens to continue their Jewish education after high school. The Society has helped pay tribute for more than forty years to esteemed NCSY alumni and community leaders who have demonstrated their dedication to Torah and their service to the Jewish people.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of married couples met in NCSY. Brenda Fogelson and Howard Rosenthal are the exception. They met in sixth grade at the Phoenix Hebrew Academy, before there was an NCSY in their community.
By the time they reached the eighth grade, they had established the Ohr HaMidbar NCSY chapter and were both awarded the “Torah im Derech Eretz” award at Regional Convention. They participated in every convention, conclave, and program West Coast NCSY had to offer. Not only did they grow Jewishly, but they influenced their families to do the same!
Howard finished high school early, won Regional NCSYer of the year honors and went off to study at Bar-Ilan University in Israel completing his studies at Yeshiva University. Brenda was named National “NCSYer of the year” and Regional “NCSYer of the Decade,” continuing her studies at both Touro and Stern College in New York.
After graduation, the Rosenthals moved back to Arizona and studied medicine at the University of Arizona. After completing orthopedic residency at the University of Kansas and a Fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, the couple joined the staff at the University of Kansas, Howard as an orthopedic oncologist and Brenda as a heart transplant coordinator. They decided to establish Kansas City as their home and played a giant role in rebuilding a once proud Orthodox community that had fallen on hard times.
The Rosenthals play pivotal roles in their synagogue: Beth Israel, Abraham & Voliner, (the only Orthodox Synagogue between St. Louis and Denver), The Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy and numerous communal agencies. As Medical Director of the Mid-America Sarcoma Institute, Howard is the only Orthodox orthopedic oncologist in the country. Past president of his synagogue, the kollel and head of the Rabbinic Search Committee, he continues to serve as the ba’al koreh and ba’al tefilla. A National Vice President of the Orthodox Union, Chairman of the Menorah Medical Center, on the board of directors of the Jewish Heritage Foundation of Kansas City, he is also Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at the University of Medicine and Biosciences at Kansas City and Associate Professor of Surgery at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and is widely published in medical literature.
Brenda has served as President of their Synagogue, on the Board of the Hebrew Academy, and is a driving force behind the Kansas City Chevrah Kadisha. The Rosenthal home is packed with teenagers every Shabbat. It has been said that hundreds of Jewish adults can say that they spent one seventh of their teenage years at the vibrant Rosenthal home!
Aside from Brenda’s ample volunteer work, she is a nurse practitioner in a large internal medicine practice, as well as surgical assistant to Howard. Most important, the Rosenthals have instilled an abiding love of Torah in their children; Aryn, Daniel, Naftali, and Davida.
Brenda and Howard Rosenthal, worthy recipients of the award honoring the Boxers’ name, brought NCSY to Arizona as teenagers and keep it alive in Kansas City as adults!
A key part of the reception will be the honoring of the memory of Dr. Lander.
“Dr. Bernard Lander’s historic role in helping to create and nurture NCSY ensured him a special place in contemporary American History even before he set out to revolutionize higher education by founding Touro College,” declared Dr. David Luchins, Chairman of the Political Science Department of Touro College, and who, with his wife, Vivian, has been an NCSYer since 1965.
For information on attending the BZHS Annual Scholarship Reception or to contribute to its Souvenir Journal, contact www.ou.org/bzdinner or Elaine Grossman at 212-613-8350 or Grossmane@ou.org.
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