Rak Barak

Last night I had the opportunity to see former Prime Minister Ehud Barak speak at the IU Auditorium. I feel very fortunate to have had this opportunity. While I don't necessarily agree with all of Barak's politics, I thought that he was a fantastic speaker. His thick accent was a little hard to understand at points, but his knowledge of the English language was very impressive. As one person said during the Q & A, "Your English is quite impressive as a second or third language...I wish we had a leader who could speak one language correctly."

Attendance was very impressive. I think it is pretty safe to say that the majority of the crowd was Jewish though many Muslim and Christian students and Bloomington residents were there as well. I felt very connected with the audience. When Barak would say something good there was a lot of applause. Of course there were protestors who tried to make points to object to what Barak was saying (both Jews and non-Jews). I thought that Barak handled these comments very elegantly. I was extremely impressed with his responses to these questions.

Overall I really enjoyed the lecture. It made me extremely happy that Union Board brought someone so influential for the State of Israel to IU.