Andrew Altman is a 12th grader at Baltimore City College High School.
Andrew Altman
By Andrew Altman
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Opinion Do ultra-Orthodox Jews celebrate Thanksgiving?
My family celebrates the holiday, but many Orthodox Jews treat Thanksgiving like any other day of the week
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Community What It’s Like To Wear A Yarmulke In Europe
“Traitor!” Each baseball season, I occasionally get this slightly amusing accusation from a few friends and my younger sisters. After all, I have lived in Baltimore for almost 18 years, and I still cannot bring myself to root for the Orioles. Instead, I am a huge Red Sox fan. This is true even though I…
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Community Is A Resume The Best Way To Land Your Perfect Spouse?
As wedding invitations poured into my family mailbox ahead of Passover, I couldn’t help but think about the reason all of these couples have been able to come together in the first place: the shidduch system. Prevalent in both Modern and ultra-Orthodox circles, the shidduch system is a process through which Jewish singles are introduced…
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Community The Mystical Reason Jews Rush To Get Married Before Passover
It is definitely that time of year again. Aside from receiving numerous envelopes which ominously read “Important Tax Document Enclosed,” the typical ultra-Orthodox Jewish mailbox is filed with an equally anxiety-producing sort of correspondence this time of year: A deluge of wedding invitations. Since the beginning of February, my family has received five ivory envelopes…
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Community I Was The Victim Of A Carjacking At My School — And I Still Want To Be A Public Defender
Just to be clear — it was not a hate crime. Nevertheless, the deed was truly hateful. On Tuesday, January 23, 2018 at approximately 2:30 pm, I was the victim of an armed robbery and carjacking in my school parking lot. That day, like most high school seniors, my mind was on how to pull…
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Community Is Ultra-Orthodoxy A Response To The Holocaust?
In recently watching Neflix’s somewhat controversial yet highly compelling documentary, “One of Us,” which traces the path of three Hasidic Jews who leave the fold, I was struck by a particular observation made by Chani Getter, who is herself a counselor and former Hassid and the director of Footsteps, an organization that helps former Hasidim…
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Community How I Make The Most Of Christmas Break — As An Ultra-Orthodox Public School Student
The “Twelve days of Christmas” can be an excruciatingly long period of time to endure — especially if you are a teenager with all of that time off from school, but do not actually celebrate Christmas. This is my pending predicament for the upcoming holiday season and one I have experienced for the past three…
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Community Why I Chose To Attend Public High School Even Though I’m Ultra-Orthodox
Noticing the black velvet yarmulke atop my dark brown hair, many of the students at my new school assumed that I was Muslim. In the beginning of my freshman year, I enrolled in Baltimore City College High School (“City”) in Baltimore, Maryland after attending ultra-Orthodox schools or “yeshivas” in Maryland for the prior 14 years….
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