What freedom means to me
Contestant: Zachary Levy is an 11-year-old student at New York’s Schechter School. Image by Courtesy of the Levy Family
Editor’s Note: The Forward is featuring essays, poems and short stories written for our Young Writers Contest. Today’s entry was written by Zachary Levy, an 11-year-old student at New York’s Schechter School. You can find more work from our young writers here
The word free can mean many things, it just depends on who you are. To me, being free means being included in a group, being encouraged and being free from your fears, regardless of your background or your looks. There was once a really random moment in my life, where I was afraid that I wasn’t going to enjoy freedoms like I always had. Out of anybody who could have been chosen for this accident it was me; I just don’t know how.
Four years ago, on the morning of the first night of Passover, we were burning the chametz and the fire accidentally exploded and just went “BOOM.” I saw a white flash and I was burnt all over my face and head. My mom and dad called the ambulance as fast as they could. I was crying and crying. This was terrible. When I got into the ambulance, the EMT sat me down on the bench and took a cold, wet cloth and wrapped it around my head. This made me feel much better and it calmed me down. The people at the hospital cooled me down and I felt better. However, I looked in the mirror and saw that there were marks all over my face, my eyebrows were burnt, and my skin was blistering.
When I saw myself, I thought no one would want to see me for a while because of how I looked, and I was really scared no one would include me. If nobody was to include me anymore then I wouldn’t feel free. I was afraid people would not talk to me and be scared of me and make fun of me. After going through all the pain emotionally and physically, the doctors said we were allowed to go. When we were leaving the hospital, a man came up to me who looked very “normal” with no injuries. The man said, “Look at this picture. I was badly burnt and I healed very nicely, just like you will”. What I saw on his phone was his picture with a completely burned face even worse than mine. This made me feel so much better. I started to believe that I would heal and that maybe no one would be mean to me, and that I would be free again.
The day I got burned was the day of the first Seder and I was really scared to go. I thought people would not want to sit with the kid with burns on his face. Would people think I was hit with one of the “Passover Plagues”? I thought when I walked in the room people would jump back from me just like when Pharaoh saw the frogs and all the other plagues. During the Seder nobody was scared, they just made me feel better by including me. I started to feel like I was the one being freed from Egypt. I was freed from my fears, I stopped worrying, and I felt ready to see my friends at school. Back to school after break, everybody was confused for a moment but then they just kept going on with their day and just acted like it was normal, like I was normal. After a few months I healed, but I was changed.
This made me more aware of and sensitive towards people who may not feel free. For example, when someone new joins my sports team, I make sure that they can meet everybody, so they can have friends and feel free. Additionally, anytime they messed up I tried to help as much as I could and helped them improve throughout the season. One way I helped my teammates was by telling them to keep their eye on the ball and only swing at pitches they knew they could hit. Since I am a catcher, I helped my pitchers by telling them to aim at my knees because it will look like a strike and that is how we win games.
It has been four years since I was burnt. Every year on Passover I remember this story.
Passover is all about being free. The relationship between the messages of Passover and me, is that no matter who you are, you might have something hard happen but you can find a way to be free. After this experience I felt free because everybody included me. The lesson I learned from it was,no matter what you look like or how you act, there is always a way to be free and to help people be free.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
