Ten Years and Counting | Illini Chabad Celebration Event
October 20, 2013 • Bryn Mawr Country Club

I appreciated Dov Hillel's reference to half full glasses of wine because as we stand here to celebrate David and Karen, as vital to Chabad, we also recognize that Rabbi Teichtel and Goldie always keep our glasses full.

It is certainly a privilege to be standing here before you to recognize David and Karen as the recipients of the Founder's Award. But it is also wonderful, for as I reached out to some of their friends and family, I had the most pleasurable of conversations and got to know a bit more about just who these two are. They have lived in a number of communities; of course performing their professional activities with great accomplishment. Yet they have also been a vital part of those communities, not content to stand aside.

In talking with Karen, she remarked that David was happy to accept the offer from the University  of Illinois Law School, partly because it was "going home" . This made me recall my own fond feelings about the mid-West and another son of  Illinois; Carl Van Doren (born in Hope, Illinois) and the effort of the Illinois chair of English, Stuart Pratt Sherman, to get Van Doren to return. Sherman wrote; "Here you are in the great heart of the country. Here is the place to feel the pulse of real people beat" .

Sherman did not succeed in getting Van Doren back but David and Karen did return to Illinois to the great  benefit of the university and the community-and of course- Chabad. David is a Chaired Professor in the School of Law with notable experience in the private sector. Karen is playing a significant role with iFoundry in the  College of Engineering which has just received some broad recognition for  much needed efforts to redo undergraduate education. It has been a great pleasure for me to hear her speak so engagingly on this topic.

We are fortunate to have them among us and to be able to honor them tonight.
Please help me welcome to the stage David and Karen Hyman, recipients of the Founder's Award.