Carol Rosenthal Aaron
Carol Rosenthal Aaron descends from two well-known Dallas Jewish families. Her mother's family, the Burners, was in the millinery business, while her father's family, the Rosenthals, was tied to the meat business across generations. Her great-grandfather Abraham Rosenthal served as a cantor at Shearith Israel around 1900 before moving to Fort Worth to become a kosher butcher near the stockyards. Her grandmother Lena Tobolowsky Rosenthal reportedly came to Dallas in a covered wagon from Wichita Falls. Born in Dallas in 1941, Carol was the oldest of three daughters, with younger sisters Linda and Michelle, and describes herself as a fourth-generation Dallasite whose grandchildren represent the sixth generation.
Raised first in Lakewood, where few Jewish families lived, Carol attended Sunday school in South Dallas at Shearith Israel and cherished Sunday visits to her Grandma Rosenthal's home. Around age 13 or 14 her family moved to North Dallas so she could be near her Jewish friends. She became deeply involved in BBYO from ages 14 to 17 and met her future husband, Steve Aaron, at a house party. Both graduated from Hillcrest High School, as did all five of their children. Carol married at 19 and had her fifth child at 28. The couple raised their family in only three Dallas homes over more than fifty years of marriage.
Carol devoted her life to the Dallas Jewish community. She served as a board member and later president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Dallas, and founded Pillars, a networking group for younger adults. She and Steve gave the naming gift for the Aaron Family Jewish Community Center and dedicated its new front entry. She has supported the Dallas Jewish Historical Society, the Holocaust Museum, and Legacy senior living, and remained active in BBYO, receiving recognition as BBG Alumna of the Year. As chair of the community's centennial celebration, she oversaw a historical timeline exhibit and documentary. Her children honored her fiftieth anniversary with a Sephardic Torah placed in the Aaron Main Sanctuary at Shearith Israel.
She cites her parents, Sam and her mother, as her greatest role models.
Full Transcript
today is May 1st too eleven I'm energy I'm in debt I'm interviewing Carol Rosenthal Aaron and our videographer is Ruth Andrus and we are at the residence of Carol Aaron in Dallas Texas Carol tell me about your family [Music] my family consists the burner family which is my mother's family and they were in the millinery business that was Anna and Michael burner and my father's family was the Rosenthal family and my grandmother Lena Rosenthal was Lena Tobolowsky Rosenthal so she was from the Tobolowsky family that's here in Dallas and my grandfather was a Rosenthal that lived here in Dallas my great grandfather Abraham Rosenthal married
to Rachel they had 13 children and he was the second Cantor at sheriff Israel 1900 and what happened was they needed a kosher butcher so he took his family and moved his family to Fort Worth so that they could be near the stockyards and he became the kosher butcher my grandfather max Rosenthal stayed here with his family in Dallas Texas and he had four sons he and Lena had four sons my dad Sam Rosenthal being the youngest and my whole life the whole Rosenthal family has been involved in the meat business all the generations and all the 13 siblings were involved in the meat business
so I feel like I've got quite a legacy here in Dallas my grandmother Lena Tobolowsky Rosenthal actually came in a covered wagon from Wichita Falls and my grandfather Abraham residents all came from Lithuania by way of Rochester his wife came from Rochester New York so been here a long time on fourth generation so that makes my grandchildren 6 generation Dallas pretty remarkable this day were you born in Dallas yes born in Dallas 1941 almost 70 years ago and lived here all my life it was raised in Lakewood actually where there were very very few Jewish families and I lived in Lakewood till I was 13
14 years old and my parents decided that it was time to move to the other side of town where all of my Jewish friends lived I was raised to Cherith Israel and had a wonderful wonderful life in Dallas as a young adult as a young Jewish adult I started out in young Judea and was there for a few years and then moved into bBYO and bBYO he reached you start at the age of 14 and it was my life from the age of 14 to 17 I lived I breathed bBYO and all of my Jewish friends it was the most exciting time in my life
the fact I met my husband Steve I was 14 had just moved over to North Dallas and Steve was 16 and a half I was going to be a freshman at Hillcrest High School he was going to be a senior at Hillcrest High School and we met that summer of my freshman year at a house party all the kids went to house parties all summer long he knew where the party was so everyone congregated there we brought our 45 records and we played music jitterbug and I met Steve and I started dating him those days you dated early it's a lot different today and he
was a senior so I spent those those years loving Hillcrest High School we both graduated from Hillcrest and fed all five of our children graduated from Hillcrest High School so we probably hold a record their mother and father and 5 children growing up and Dallas was exciting it was you had so many friends and I have to tell you that today my friends are still 55 years old we've been together 60 years old it's a wonderful thing to have been brought up in a city like Dallas everyone knew everyone and everybody was sometimes on the same family tree so it was a close-knit society and
bBYO really brought us all together and back to your brothers and dependents sisters - how many brothers and sisters were in your family I have two sisters Linda Daniel and Michelle levy and they're both younger I was the oldest of three good children we all live here in Dallas and do you have any idea Wow I know that you said he moved to North Dallas but when you why did they pick like why did your parents pick Lakewood initially my mom actually grew up in Lakewood and we lived in her same house my grandfather had died very early at the age of 56 my grandfather
Michael burner so my grandmother moved over to the Park Cities and my parents at the time I was five years old they decided to move in i we were living in the park season they moved over into Lakewood at that time and took over the house where my mother was raised my mother went through Woodrow Wilson so that's how I ended up in Lakewood and it was a great experience and you said that you were very active in that Jewish youth and your brothers and your sisters were also yes everybody was there was a anyone that wasn't active very few people that weren't active and
in the local bBYO we were in their temple youth group but it was a very important part of everybody's lives we were your parents active in the Jewish community I think my parents were active in the Jewish community they weren't necessarily on all the different committees that were going on in the city but they were active involved in Jewish people and my dad was extremely generous he really provided a lot of livelihoods for many people in the Jewish community and if everyone if anyone ever needed any help of any kind he was there to offer it financially or through advice and what synagogue did your
family belong to well actually I grew up in Sharra's Israel my mother grew up at Temple emanu-el and my father's family some of them were founders of two fareth Israel so we we kind of have been around all three in which synagogue are you currently a member of we're very involved in shared Israel it's very important to our family our children are involved there and they all go there and our members they're all five luckily all five live here in Dallas and all of our grandchildren going through sheriff visual religious school so we feel like we've got a lot of legacy and Sharon back to
your school high school what did you do after high not much I actually went to college one year I was already in those days you were called dropped you were wearing the boyfriend's insignia his fraternity insignia and I was already dropped and Steve was going to be a senior at UT my freshman year at UT so we did like everybody else did that we were good friends with once the boys got graduated we all got married so I got married I had just turned 19 a month before I got married and we proceeded to have family and I had my fifth child when I was
28 and our children are Todd Erin who is married to dawn Nicole blue Angela Erin who is nancial Horowitz who's married to Gary Horowitz Erica Robbins who's married to Craig Robbins and clay Erin who's married to Tracy and 12 grandchildren well yeah we're very we're very thrilled and your when you were growing up and what type of organizations rather than be Jewish organizations other than bebe Wow were there any was there anything for you to participate in there really wasn't it was BB wow I was so involved I was chapter president was a member of Jenny's Esper BBG and in those days we only had
three chapters we only had Remo Wade Oh Jimmy's s mer and Ginny Shep's was the new the new baby there were the ACA boys and that every Bronski and Reuben Kaplan and Brandeis and I happen to have been sweetheart Reuben Kaplan ACA so it filled your life you did a lot of good things you did service to the community and you learned how to fill leadership roles was the Jewish community large at that time or well it was lard I think it was I'm thinking that in relation to the population of the Dallas community then maybe it was about the same percentage naturally it's grown
but all of Dallas has grown and of course it ended it forest lane when I was growing up when I got married the new the new frontier was north of forest lane between forest lane and harvest hill and so that's not you know it's not much but forest lane was like the boundary yeah and how would you say that the Jewish community has changed since you were a child it's more diverse it's a lot different it isn't just centered around being Jewish people are have more opportunities to be involved in different charitable avenues there was only one club you could become a member of and
it was a Jewish club which no longer is in existence so life was different everybody you always work together because you didn't have all the outside choices where did you live when you first when did you get married and where did you know Steve and I got married in 1960 and our first huh well first our first apartment was over our Gaston Avenue and it's still standing today we drove by with the same name and that year my Uncle Ben Rosenthal built our first home and we moved into our first time in 1961 we lived there 15 years then we moved to Park Lane and
lived there for maybe another 17 19 years and then we moved into our present home 12 years ago so we've only lived in three homes we've been married almost 51 years of be 51 years in August and can you what type of organizations and projects have you been involved in in the Jewish community that have been the most memorable to you well all of its Mirabal I don't think any any one thing stands out they all play a role in my life and what I believe in for our community I'm just a community kind of person and that's what's the most important thing in my
life is our Jewish community and seeing that it continues to grow and be vital of course you're with the Historical Society and I started out as a board member with the Jewish Historical Society and I loved it and I I think it's an important Avenue for us to have and I hope one day that we'll actually have a community archives that can be housed in a very special place especially now that we have the hundred-year exhibit that is so informative about a history I've been involved with of course the JCC that bears our family name now and to me it's the center of the Jewish
community and it's the place where everyone is accepted and it doesn't make any difference how old you are or what synagogue you worship in so that's majorly important to me been involved in the Holocaust Museum and of course we have to preserve those memories and we have to teach tolerance because there's Holocaust going on everywhere around the world and very involved in legacy which I'm very proud of our two facilities think we've done something wonderful for our community we have something for everybody and we all like to be closely knit and stay in that closely knit community and that's what we've provided of course Federation
the umbrella organization is fantastic because that we didn't have Federation we wouldn't have all of these wonderful agencies they were founded through Federation and bBYO is still an important part of my life I am involved in helping them to bring awareness to people everyone's worried about Jewish education and what the impact is on a child's life and having a Jewish education but what's also very impactful is having a social network that is Jewish and growing up with it and being around it you learned you know that's an education in itself you don't have to learn that from books but you learn it from acting it
out and being part of it and so that's the familiarity of being Jewish so be be well I'm very proud that I am involved with it and I was honored a year ago by the International Convention of bBYO as the BBG alumna of the year which I was proud to accept and I just everyone understand just hope people understand the importance of the youth and them understanding where their religion is and who they are and how to stick together so that we can preserve what would bill can you tell me a little bit about the two-year tenure as president of the Federation yes I before
I became president I started out many years ago Jimmy Ho said Carol would you help me with a pacesetter event and I started working with Harriet Hoffman in those days and I worked for several years doing a pacesetter event and Steve and I were so proud when we could become pacesetters because that was a monumental step and being able to give that about a money $10,000 to a community and we were young when when we did it and we had once heard someone say that the more you give the more you shall receive and that's truly been our case so I started helping out with
with the pace that our events and then they asked me to be on the board and I had never been asked to be on a board and I was so proud and never forget that phone call from in that home and I said Stevie they want me to be on the board of Federation so I started there and then I became campaign chair and from there they were looking for someone to fill the shoes of Larry shaumbra no nobody can fill those shoes I think of him as the elder statesman but kept asking and he kept asking and I said what do you want with
me and he says well you'll be good I said well I'm only good at one thing I can bring people together of various ages and I think that's what they were looking for they were looking for someone who was able to bridge the gap from my generation to this next generation that has now taken over and it's very exciting to see it's going it's moving in a different path and it's becoming more business oriented it's it is big business and we have to do it right and so it's just following a different cycle now it's time to make changes that's good and I was glad
I was able to bridge bridge that gap between one generation to another could you tell me a little bit about when you were growing up in the large family that you had and some of the ways that you celebrated the Jewish holidays yeah well my mother we still still do this to this very day I set the table two weeks in advance let's play my mother did it and that's the way I do it everything is arranged two weeks in advance before the holiday our holidays my home wasn't a real religious home and so my holidays were simple they were fun we had a good
time beautiful meals but it wasn't based on a lot of tradition it was based on family being together and celebrating being Jewish that's basically how we handled our holidays Steve's parents were more religious and more traditional than my family and so once we got married we used to have our holidays at the errands and then it was my turn to start taking over holidays and now to this day I don't know how long it's been maybe 40 years or so 45 I now still do to holidays I do Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and Passover our daughter Erica does Yom Kippur and let's see Nicole
or Angela do Chanukah dawn does Thanksgiving so we've worked it out me it's a family that we just move from house to house cus there's so many of us 24 nobody else invites us so we love it it makes for a strong family unit what other what civic organizations are you active in today I've never really been active in any civic organizations except I've been active at children's medical as a volunteer for eight years and now as a donor I think we're very fortunate to have that facility in our city and who have been your role models I think my biggest role model was my
dad and my mom there were two different types of role models but I think those are my two biggest role models I would say Irvin Donsky has been a huge role model for me I'm there freaking used to tell me I went to your dad's Bar Mitzvah they were the same age er raised together we had to celebrate Shabbat and get over there across town and you know I feel so connected to so many people but especially you know I feel special for Irvin I'm a huge admirer of Louise Gartner and all the things that she's done for medicine and for the food bank so
she's done an unbelievable job there's a lot of people everybody contributes something else that makes me understand the world a little bit better and makes me think about how to do things for other people so is there anything in particular that you done so much for the Jewish community but is there anything that you can think of specifically that you would still like to do no I think what I would like to do now is sit back and and teach other people maybe not even teaching but just as you came a little bit about about our community and how important it is I'm very proud
of starting pillars in the Federation it's a group of 35 to 50 year olds and it is a non fundraising entity and to me you can't always talk about dollars you have to talk about people you have to want to be around other people and networking plays such a big role and feeling comfortable around others so this is a very special group of young people and they enjoy getting together and I'm glad that five years ago I founded this group is there anything else you'd like to add too after this interview the only other thing I'd like to add is that I want everyone to
understand that these places and agencies and buildings and in schools don't just drop out of the sky somebody has to be working hard to see that they reach the needs of the community and we all have different needs not all of them are financial our needs are to see that we have a strong community our needs are to go work out at the JCC our needs are to see that our grandchildren or our children are having a Jewish education are we financially needy not all of us but we all need our Jewish community why I wish he would just describe how the beautiful exhibit that
you assembled how how you developed it well I was first asked in the parking lot you know a lot of things go on in a parking lot outside the Federation office so the parking lot conversation was Carol from David Peter Carol would you like to chair I want you to chair the centennial celebration and I said well how can I turn you down so I said okay so got to thinking centennial year long celebration we need to have for our first time a men's and women's event together so that we can all come together and celebrate a hundred years and then we need to keep
it going because we need to do there are certain things that we don't have our community did not have an exhibit that talked about how the Dallas Federation got started how the agencies became who they are today and what was going on in our world for a hundred years so I was able to combine a fabulous group of women called the time line girls and that's robin sachs becky brooder cynthia Feldman and christa Weinstein who have various backgrounds in history and the arts they agreed not so easily but they agreed to do this and as they started getting information we first visited to the archives
at Temple emanu-el and saw what they had done and as they started evolving and reading the books the history of our community and figuring out which one was right which one was wrong and getting all the research and the data before you knew it they had butcher paper strung out over Becky bruders table and we're putting markings on it according to the date lines and the that they had found and out of this emerged this unbelievable exhibit that gives you a time line down the center of the panels on the left side gives you the history of the Jewish community what was happening at that
and on the right side gives you the history that was going on in Dallas and around the world so that you have it all right there together and these girls did such a remarkable job and they worked beautifully with a wonderful graphic artist Greg did Mark who helped put this together and we now have this magnificent exhibit that will be around for a hundred years so that they can now the next exhibit can be for 200 years of history they can see how to develop it and it's an educational tool for all of our children whether they're in Jewish day school or not it's an
educational tool for the whole entire Dallas community Jewish and non-jewish to know what we have done we have made huge contributions to the growth of the city of Dallas in the financial district and the retail district in the medical section we've done tremendous things we've had mayor's - women mayor's for Jewish and so we've had a lot of contributions so that's why this is such a very special exhibit it's now at the courthouse the old Iranian bread museum but we'll be moving from there and it has different schedules I'm not sure it's going to possibly be at Northpark in the fall it will be at
the JCC it can move out the legacy it commits it doesn't have to just stop after one year of movement it can go anywhere anyone that wants to see it we have it where it can be shipped and can be set up and it's very easy and the other thing I'm very proud of is the documentary that we did the video and I thought that we did a great job in bringing all that together in the history of the Jewish community so we now have something for our historical system and thank goodness that the Historical Society could provide us with the information and it was
a team effort and we did it now we only have two more events left for the year we have Havdalah under the stars then will take place at the JCC on November 12 and then we have a community midst of a day that will take place where 21 synagogues are coming together one day we expect maybe 3,000 people to participate so what have we done for this centennial year we've reached out you're educating and we're becoming a larger and greater community Thank You Carol for allowing us to interview you on behalf of the Dallas Jewish Historical Society thank you and thank you so much happier
it was wonderful thank you so so much Carol tell me about your experiences in Sunday school well we went to Sunday School in South Dallas and so at the time I was living in Lakewood so we didn't have hardly any juice in Lakewood so Daddy would take us every Sunday and we go down to South Dallas to share this room then he'd pick us up and that was the most exciting part of Sunday not Sunday school but going to have lunch at Grandma Rosenthal's they grandma and grandpa lived on wind Elkin and we made the rounds every Sunday because my dad was so devoted to
his family that we never missed a Sunday that we didn't see my aunt Esther Esther Goldman and my uncle max Tobolowsky and my aunt Ida Leventhal and uncle harry Rosenthal and his family they all lived in South Dallas and in those days South Dallas still was home to a lot of the Jewish families so we would go to Grandma's house and we've had lunch and we'd have chicken and I'll never forget she had chickens that she was raising her inner backyard and we always wondered if what we were eating just came out of the backyard and it was great I had had the advantage because
of the age that I am now of having a family who lived in South Dallas and family who lived in the park cities and I extreme poles it was great I had the grandmother who always had the apron tied around and the big black shoes that laced up and the hair and a bun and always sitting me and all of us home with a tin can full of poppy seed cookies that was the greatest that was grandma rose and on the other side of town I had my mommy Anne who was Anna burner and she was from a different world they had come down from
New York and they were in the millinery business and she was my Auntie Mame my grandma my mommy and she sewed sequins on everything that she had designed and outlined every pattern on every skirt we would go and we would use iodine and she would go outside and so you know she liked to go to Florida and places like that from the summertime so we'd go outside in her backyard her duplex on Glivec Lane right across from the high school Highland Park High School okay we she'd let us tan and we'd go out and with tan and she'd take a kitchen timer and we turn
over after 10 minutes and then we turned back so you know from poppy seed cookies to baby oil I had it all it was the best and I don't think very many people in Dallas can say that they had the best of both worlds but I truly did and it was it was something I I think that's just I think that's why I love the community so much because I could see all aspects of it and I've I've been able to live through the many different times that people lived here in Dallas and the different cultures that were here in Dallas amongst the Jewish people
so it was very very very special I left it and more about the inner 20 of the tabla skis in the Rosenthal's and well I think you know the tabla skis I never was very close to the Rosenthal's had such a huge family remember my grandfather was one of the oldest of 13 children what was exciting for me in those days was that the Rosenthal's had a cousins club and they met and all the Rosenthal's actually lived in Fort Worth except for my family but they came over and they would congregate here in Dallas and they would have a big party and here I was
the little girl and I was just in awe all these people and they all looked alike you could always tell a Rosenthal man and they all were Stetsons in those days everyone never saw my father but he didn't have on a Stetson if you went downtown Dallas all the men were wearing extensions it was it was a different world a different era it was the handshake the good friend policy people weren't writing contracts to be sure that they said they did what they said they would do they relied on one another there was trust there was caring it was different than dye I think that
that's why why I am Who I am today is because of the life that I got to see and lead when I was young we went said boy your Hoffman was my cousin my dad's first cousin and we tried to get the Rosenthal clan together again we brought over to my house several years ago about 150 showed up but there's so many now I can't even imagine we're spread all over but there's still some living in Fort Worth so it's good thank you vision thank you very much for the addition to the interview Carol thank you I was good Sephardic Torah that our children presented
us on our fiftieth anniversary wait I'm turning off the lights this is a picture of Sephardic Torah 50th anniversary we were just shocked when we saw it it is absolutely breathtaking they called rabbi kershaun who was an Israel for this summer and told him what they wanted to do and Rabbi Gershon went and found this Torah and had it shipped here and they had to flex put on it and one plaque says dedicated with love and honor to our parents Carol and Steve Aaron the other plaque says in celebration of their 50th wedding anniversary and it now is in the main sanctuary in fact it's
called the Aaron main sanctuary at shared Israel in the ark hopefully our children our grandchildren and all their friends will be able to celebrate their happy bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs reading from this Torah and will be able to be there with them in spirit uoh off the lighter okay no I was recording but you want to tell us taken approximately a year ago this past December and now stays in the hallway of the Aaron family Jewish Community Center it was presented there on the day that we had the dedication to the front entry the new front entry of the JCC which we were proud
to to do for the center it gives it new energy and it's been remodeled and it's exciting to see something old turn into something new I will always just one thing many years ago when we were when they had the capital campaign here in Dallas we had the privilege and the honor to be able to name the Jewish Community Center and the reason that happened is that many many years ago the Jewish community in the 50s everything was moving from South Dallas to North Dallas and so the JCC needed to move from Pocahontas Street well there were people in our community who didn't really want
a Jewish community center especially with the word Jewish on it so there was some dissent in the community but finally it was decided that we would have a Jewish community center but it wouldn't be called Jewish community center so they went to Jewish ships and they said look if you will use your letterhead and you will send out letters supporting this community center we will call it the Jewish ships community center so in the 50s when they moved the center from South Dallas North Dallas it became the Jewish community center many years later it was changed he had never find it big imminent financial backing
and they felt like they wanted to change it and really call it now a Jewish community center so they changed the name to Jewish community centers so when the capital campaign came on in the city was building new places new JFS schools were being redone legacy was being built and the JCC was going to be new again as far as the fitness center they built a huge editorial they came to us and because of our donation we were but they said well what do you want to do what do you want to name it what do you want to name and I say well I
don't want to name anything that everybody isn't part of so that's the reason it's called the Aaron family Jewish Community Center to this day so at the dedication I spoke and I told everyone there that you know I went to tell my folks what we were doing because I knew how proud they would be seeing but we had accomplished and what we were doing for others so I went and I told and I looked on the on the plate that the marker for their grade and it said that the most thing that was paramount in their minds was family and friends and community and that's
the way Stevie and I feel so therefore they're passing on their legacy to us and hopefully we will continue to pass it on to our other generations you