We're asking young people what they think about growing up in this strange and unsettling time. We want to hear from them — what does freedom mean today?
“Sometime perhaps I shall transcend this Americanism in order that I may be free to enjoy the full freedom of those ideals which I now carry in my heart’s heart.”
Those words were written by a young man from Delaware named Benjamin Brodinsky who won The Forward’s 1931 essay contest.
Writing contests were one of the ways The Forward brought together a nascent Jewish community. Our readers contributed essays about ideal relationships, about what it meant to be a Jew and an American. Among our judges were Forward’s founding editor Ab Cahan and Sherwood Anderson, author of “Winesburg, Ohio.”
Today’s Forward.com looks a little different from the daily newspaper our early essayists read. But the themes they wrote about still resonate — the need to find connection, to see the unique human qualities in each other, to navigate between our roles as Jews and Americans.
In this spirit, The Forward, in partnership with The Jewish Education Project and BBYO have been asking middle-school and high-school age students to submit essays, stories, and poems about the meaning of freedom in 2020 America. We’ve been publishing some of these entries on our site and we’re awarding a cash prize of $180 to the top essay in three age categories.
Although Sherwood Anderson and Ab Cahan are no longer here to judge our contest, we’ve assembled a top-notch panel including Dahlia Lithwick, a senior writer at Slate.com; former U.S. ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, Forward senior editor Adam Langer and representatives of The Jewish Education Project.
If you know a young writer who should be entering our contest, please tell them to send their name, age, name of the school they attend, a photo of themselves, and their entry (no more than 1,000 words) by May 1 to [email protected]. You can find more information on our contest guidelines, click here.
Oh, and if you’re interested in learning a bit more about our 1931 essay contest winner, here’s a remembrance his daughter Elisa Miller wrote for the Forward in 2014.
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