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Essay Contest
The Latest
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	  Culture Unexodus — a story of freedomEditor’s Note: The Forward is featuring essays, poems and short stories written for our Young Writers Contest. Today’s entry was written by Julie Levey, a 12th grader at New York’s Spence School. You can find more work from our young writers here. The smell of albondigas — Sephardic meatballs with peas and artichoke hearts —… 
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	  Culture Freedom is seeing others for who they truly areThese last couple of weeks during the quarantine, I’ve seen and heard an endless amount of complaints about people not being able to leave their houses and having to cancel vacations. One of the dubious perks that come with being poor is being used to not taking trips to places or going out a lot…. 
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	  Culture To be free is to loveEditor’s Note: The Forward is featuring essays, poems and short stories written for our Young Writers Contest. Today’s entry was written by Rachel Ezrielev, a 13-year-old student from Eastern Middle School in Silver Spring, MD. You can find more work from our young writers here As they punched me, slamming me against a wall and… 
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	  Culture The lie wasn’t ignorance; it was freedomEditor’s Note: The Forward is featuring essays, poems and short stories written for our Young Writers Contest. Today’s entry was written by Laine Schlezinger, who attends 11th grade at Burlingame High School in Burlingame, CA. You can find more work from our young writers here I live in the Bay Area, a place we call… 
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	  Culture We took pity on ArkansasEditor’s Note: The Forward is featuring essays, poems and short stories written for our Young Writers Contest. Today’s entry was written by Nora Wyrtzen, a fifteen-year-old student from New Haven, Conn. You can find more work from our young writers here. Spring, and pale pink cherry blossoms kissed the earth with gossamer petals; lamenting their… 
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	  Culture Freedom for me is freedom from you — a poemEditor’s Note: The Forward is featuring essays, poems and short stories written for our Young Writers Contest. Today’s entry was written by Victoria Y.T. Nealey, a 13-year-old student at the Brandeis School of San Francisco. You can find more work from our young writers here WHAT IT MEANS TO BE FREE you you are the… 
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	  Culture Freedom is fighting for changeOn a sunny Saturday in September 2018, I put on some makeup, changed into the new outfit I’d bought, and headed into New York City with my friends to go to the Global Citizen music festival. We’d been waiting for the festival for weeks, a chance to celebrate our first month of 10th grade with… 
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	  Culture From Minsk to America, freedom remains elusiveEditor’s Note: The Forward is featuring essays, poems and short stories written for our Young Writers Contest. Today’s entry was written by Josh Elkin, a 16-year-old student from the High School of Health Sciences in Wales, Wisconsin. You can find more work from our young writers here. In 1980, a Jewish couple in Minsk makes… 
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