MAY 18 • 2023 | 23

Starobinsky, 18, said he would be 
interested in participating because it would 
be a supportive environment to address a 
topic as heated and complex 
as the Israel-Palestinian 
conflict. 
“If you really want to 
progress and understand this 
issue, you have to understand 
who is credible and who is not 
credible and where you are 
getting your information,
” said 
Starobinsky, who attended Aronoff’s lecture. 
“It’s important to learn from experiences like 
this. The speaker at Bloomfield Hills was 
biased toward Palestine and may have not 
been most productive for that conversation. 
I look forward to next semester to have 
the opportunity to have more balanced, 
unbiased conversations like this.
”
 
STUDENTS SPEAK
Also attending the program was 
Bloomfield Hills High School senior 

Carli Camens. Camens, an active BBYO 
member, said the events of this year, 
including the diversity assembly and 
the antisemitic fallout coming from 
celebrities like Kanye West, spurred on 
her interest to speak out. 
And she did so by creating 
a riveting forensics piece 
that combines jarring 
antisemitic tropes woven 
with the words of the poem 
I Cannot Forget by Holocaust 
survivor Alexander Kimel 
(1926-2018). 
“After Kanye West’s tweets, I wanted 
to educate and bring awareness to the 
topic of antisemitism, and it made a 
great fit for the forensics category of 
poetry because that is what poetry is 
designed to do,” said Camens, who 
placed fifth in the statewide high school 
forensics competition. 
Camens’ piece juxtaposes a 
contemporary young woman who is 

confronted with antisemitic and even 
Holocaust jokes in social situations 
and battles with herself whether to 
say something or keep silent with 
Kimel’s stark imagery of Jews suffering 
in and being killed in ghettos and 
concentration camps. 
Camens, who looks forward to 
seeking out Jewish communal life when 
she gets to campus at the University of 
Colorado-Boulder in the fall, said each 
time she performed the piece, she wore 
a large Star of David around her neck. 
“I wanted it to be jarring enough for 
people to pay attention,” Camens said. 
“Though I have never firsthand 
experienced people saying these things 
to me, I know people who have. I 
wanted to show how antisemitism is 
becoming so casual in our society.” 

To watch Carli Camens perform her forensics piece, visit 

https://youtu.be/VI8VChUjc6A.

Maxim 
Starobinsky

Carli 
Camens

248-353-1000

