Steve Rosenthal survived the Champlain Towers collapse in Surfside on June 24, 2021, a tragedy that claimed 98 lives. In this powerful episode of Do It For The Clips, Steve shares his complete story from growing up as the child of Holocaust survivors in Baltimore to building a successful career in Miami's media and advertising world to waking up at 1:15 AM to the sound of his building collapsing beneath him.
Steve opens up about his parents' journey from the ghettos of Lithuania to Dachau and Shutguf concentration camps, how they rebuilt their lives in America, and how his father became deeply religious later in life. He talks about Miami in the 70s and 80s when cocaine was currency, how he became a gold and silver dealer during the Nixon era, and his decades working in the restaurant and real estate advertising business across South Florida.
Then he walks us through the night everything changed. The thunderclap that was actually his building collapsing. The two hours trapped on his seventh floor balcony. The 37 survivors. The 98 who didn't make it. The friends he lost. And the one item he wished he had grabbed, his tallit and tefillin from his bar mitzvah, which miraculously was found in the rubble weeks later by police.
Steve reveals how this tragedy brought him back to Judaism, how he ended up in Brickell at The Rock Shul, why he now puts on tefillin every single day, and his decision to leave his entire estate to the synagogue that became his family. This is a story about survival, faith, community, loss, resilience, and finding meaning after unimaginable tragedy.
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