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