Rabbi Rebecca Rosenthal joined Central Synagogue in the summer of 2015 as the Director of Youth & Family Education. Prior to Central, Rabbi Rosenthal was the Director of Children and Family Education at IKAR, a nationally recognized, innovative spiritual community in Los Angeles. While at IKAR, she reimagined and redesigned the religious school, supervised IKAR’s Early Childhood Center from its creation to present, and created the IKAR teen program. She also taught in IKAR’s adult education program and participated in pulpit and pastoral duties. Before IKAR, Rabbi Rosenthal was the Director of Education at Congregation B’nai Zion in El Paso, Texas, and the Youth & Family Shabbat and Holidays Coordinator at B’nai Jeshurun in New York City. She has been involved in numerous national conversations about the future of congregational education, including the Conservative Moment’s Task Force on Congregational Education and the ReFrame Initiative, to examine and implement experiential education in a religious school setting.   

Rabbi Rosenthal is a native New Yorker who grew up on the Upper West Side and attended Dalton. She received a bachelor’s degree from Yale University and was ordained as a rabbi from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 2009.  She also received a master’s degree in Jewish education and was a Wexner Graduate Fellow. She lives on the West Side with her husband, Dr. Adam Arenson, a professor of American History at Manhattan College, and their three children, Simon, Leo, and Madeline.