Israeli Ghetto

Harry Polachek, in his May 2 letter to the editor, suggested exchanging the 125,000 Palestinians of East Jerusalem with the 125,000 Jewish settlers of Judea and Samaria to resolve two sticking points in the agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Mr. Polachek claims both groups would be happier surrounded by large numbers of their brethren, and the Jews could be closer to the center of their cultural, artistic and religious activities.

Sounds almost like a medieval European ghetto, doesn't it? In fact, there is even a wall around part of it already. Is that why the State of Israel came into being -- for a sort of ghetto-away-from-the-ghetto for Jews homesick for the good old days?

Why ever would Mr. Polachek think the settlers would avail themselves of this "opportunity" to move to the center of Israeli culture, etc., when they voluntarily left it for the settlements in the first place?

This is just another example of naive Americans offering simplified, child-like solutions to complex problems they can not hope to understand, let alone solve.

J. M. Lepman

Baltimore

Blaming the Car

I read Jim Haner's article, May 6, concerning Ford Taurus police cars. I am a retired auto-truck-mechanic, in no way connected with Ford Motor Company or its agencies. I don't own a Ford product. However, I have 50 years of automotive hands-on experience.

Don't blame the vehicle, blame the operators.

These are light-weight, economy autos, which cannot be handled rough.

Since the government implemented mandatory requirements for emissions and then required fuel mileage to increase, the vehicles have been down-graded.

The theory is that it takes a certain amount of fuel to drive a certain amount of weight a certain distance. Weight is a factor. The entire weight of the vehicle is lightened.

Front wheel drive is a delicate thing on these vehicles. Front suspensions are frail. Brakes are tiny. Parts very expensive.

Preventive maintenance is not performed, mechanics are not qualified to stay ahead of unforeseen breakdowns. There is not enough qualified help to maintain these light-weights.

The agencies buy vehicles for a price. The vehicles of 18 to 20 years ago took the punishment and cost much less.

They required less maintenance and mechanical experience. They used more fuel, but were safer and dependable. Cost and vehicle downtime were the taxpayers' saving and law-enforcement's saving.

For example, Dodge and Plymouth 318 rear wheel drive police cars from Baltimore County and many other states and Chevrolet Biscayne, some 15 years of age, are still in service with hundreds of thousands of miles in this state.

Then they continue hard life as cabs with a million miles all over the country.

Students and lower income families in Northwest Baltimore own and drive these hand-me-downs, having very little problems.

We can't rely on a toy vehicle for tough jobs. All the other economy cars are the same, foreign or domestic. You can't send a boy out to do a man's job. You can send the operator out on the job with heavier rear wheel drives and chances are they will take the punishment and get the job done and save money and time.

I don't think Ford engineers or any other agency can modify the smaller vehicles.

Melvin Fried

Baltimore

A Miracle

It is positively a miracle to observe the total lack of confusioand traffic jams at the Baltimore Symphony Youth Concerts at the Joseph Meyerhoff Hall.

Aside from the main purpose of these delightful concerts, educating our youth through very entertaining and diversified music, the logistics of unloading and loading literally hundreds of our youth from all over the state with the parking of hundreds of yellow buses without some congestion is somewhat unbelievable.

I don't know the masterminds behind the planning of these most enjoyable concerts, which not only feature the Baltimore Symphony but also a narrator, sometimes a ballet and dancers, school choruses and solo singers, story tellers and even sometimes staging and scenery. They deserve many kudos.

Flocks of children enter the Meyerhoff Hall, sit quietly for 50 minutes and exit with little or no disorder. I have yet to see one totally disturbing kid dragged from the hall.

Let's thank our taxpayers and private donors which make these concerts possible. The children also pay a nominal fee.

Ruth Von Bramer

Randallstown

Enough Already!

It is high time to lay off President Clinton's pre-presidential sex life.

What useful purpose can be served by digging up this subject now? It is nothing but a cheap, mean shot at the president in an effort to harm and discredit him politically.

If Paula Jones was so upset about his alleged advances, why did she wait three years before filing a lawsuit?

Let the president get on with his work, and stop the malicious defamation. His prior sex life is the concern of no one but him and Mrs. Clinton. So far, she doesn't seem to be complaining.

Ruth H. Schaffer

Baltimore

Interesting?

Usha Nellore's comments (letter, May 7) about how "boring" Singapore is because of government control -- and the insinuation that America is "vibrant and interesting" because of our freedom -- is both illogical and absurd.

I have worked at the University of Maryland Medical System's Shock Trauma Center for six years and find absolutely nothing "vibrant" or "stimulating" about caring for gun shot victims or blown-apart drug dealers or accident victims who are mauled by some drunk driver on parole after the third or fourth conviction.

There is nothing "interesting" about watching someone's lung inflate and deflate through a knife-hole created by an angry 15-year-old over a pair of dirty tennis shoes.

When the weather gets just a little bit warmer, people go nuts and these "violent" crimes grow exponentially.

It gets real old after about two or three years of seeing it happen.

Instead of pretending just how cozy and protected you are, you must understand it could very easily be you or your family that ends up as another "interesting" American statistic.

I wouldn't want a totalitarian government or anarchy.

But our "democracy" can be grossly impaired by a government which seems to be insulated from the more "interesting" facets of society.

Jeffrey Natterman

Catonsville

Helen Bentley

I was shocked to see just how low The Sun stooped on May 7, when it published a vicious cartoon about Rep. Helen Bentley, R-Md.

The cartoon was a personal attack and went way beyond the bounds of decency.

Do you resent that Mrs. Bentley has had cosmetic surgery to improve her appearance? Surely all of us -- and particularly those in the public limelight -- are entitled to a "lift" here and a "tuck" there -- even if only to make us feel better as we approach the "golden years."

Is the possibility that a conservative might become governor an offense to your liberal sensibilities? Even your enemies deserve respect, especially when they are honest and tenacious.

It took Mrs. Bentley three tries to defeat the incumbent in the Second District.

She has served her constituency well. Whether you like or dislike her, you know where she stands. Her integrity has never been questioned.

Is this the beginning of concerted campaign on your editorial pages to de-humanize and vilify the front-running conservative candidate?

Will this campaign end in an endorsement of the liberal candidate of your choice?

I would hope that this is an isolated incident and that your editorial staff will recapture the high standards of a major newspaper.

At the very least you owe an apology to Helen Bentley and her many constituents who hold her in high regard.

John A. Tyler

Lutherville

Judaism and Human Sexuality

With sad predictability, members of the (Orthodox Jewish) Rabbinical Council of Baltimore have hastened to denounce a thus-far unpublished document whose text, based upon gross mischaracterization, they apparently have not read (Religion Notes, May 5). I refer to the Pastoral Letter on Human Sexuality of the (Conservative Jewish) Rabbinical Assembly.

As one of 11 rabbis who co-authored the assembly's latest draft, I wish to advise my Orthodox brethren that the 35-page, footnoted text unequivocally affirms that the proper and ideal venue for human sexual relating is marriage.

In the eyes of all the authors, no other relational setting fulfills that ideal.

Nonetheless, as teachers of religious values, we believe that it is vital to address people whatever their relationship to the ideal.

We in the Rabbinical Assembly have decided not to put our heads in the sand by simply saying, "Don't do it!"

Few would take seriously a reflection on human sexuality that does not at least face up to the changed context of sexual relating that affects most people.

That context includes the fact that the average age of marriage has continually risen in our day, often for quite compelling reasons.

The result has not been surprising. Many people tend not to remain celibate through an extended period of single adulthood. Many divorced persons, who were used to sexual fulfillment, often find themselves unable to remarry.

Their unwillingness to live the rest of their lives without sexual companionship is, whatever one's value orientation, not surprising.

There are also many elderly people who would prefer to be married but who live unhappily in non-marital sexual companionship because the loss of Social Security benefits that would follow marriage would put them into financial distress.

What do we as teachers of faith say to these people?

Shall we simply say, "Too bad, but that's life and you're a sinner"? Such religious absolutism may comfort its proclaimers, but it will not advance the values of faith and it will not begin to influence people's lives.

The Rabbinical Assembly pastoral letter, while urging people to live by the ideal, nonetheless chooses to face the reality that many do not feel that they can.

In the face of this, we as rabbis have chosen to do in the realm of sexual ethics what we do in other areas of religious growth: help people more from where they are today to where they might be tomorrow, but without an "all or nothing" attitude. Good sense and compassion demand no less.

The full text of the pastoral letter, which will eventually be issued to our laity, teaches in a deeply persuasive way what the ideal religious sexual values ought to be: commitment through marriage, holiness, monogamy, reverence for one's partner, the mystical possibility of immortality through procreation, modesty and tenderness, non-coerciveness, non-abusiveness, a concern for the safety and health of one's partner, etc.

But since many people have not yet brought themselves to the level of the ideal, the letter urges them to add holiness to their relationships with as many of the operative sexual values of our tradition as they can, even if a marriage is not yet established.

The Rabbinical Assembly report directs itself to helping human beings grow spiritually even if their current patterns cannot be fully endorsed.

Contrary to my Orthodox colleagues, this is not "against every and any principle of Jewish behavior."

It is what Jewish leaders have always done -- and is a proper approach for our times.

Mark G. Loeb

Pikesville

The writer is rabbi, Beth El Congregation.

VMI's Creative Solution

Consider the following headline that appeared in The Sun on May 2: "Marriage of two Virginia colleges will make sure women stay out of VMI." This was the headline for an article regarding Virginia Military Institute's victory in federal court that approved the plan to establish a new single gender military program for women.

Why not a headline that reads "Creative solution at VMI preserves the benefits of single gender education for both women and men"?

VMI has consistently defended its 155-year-old "male only" admissions policy on the ground that single-gender education is a viable and, indeed, valuable methodology.

Quite simply, to admit women to VMI would so alter it that the very experience they seek would cease to exist for both genders. Clearly that would not be fairness or equality. Instead, that would be a net reduction in choices.

The constitutionality of VMI's position has withstood judgment in all proceedings. In the initial trial, a federal judge found in favor of VMI. The federal appeals court in Richmond did not "overturn" the ruling, as the press said.

In fact, it refused to order that women be admitted and ratified both the findings and conclusions of the lower court. It also remanded the case back to the lower court and turned the focus of the issue toward devising a solution that insured comparative alternatives for women as a criteria for continued funding of VMI by the state of Virginia.

VMI has now put together and will help fund a creative solution, the Virginia Women's Institute for Leadership (VWIL) at Mary Baldwin College.

It is a unique military program with admission limited to women, a new choice that combines military training and discipline with the time tested educational advantages that continue to serve the scores of all women's civilian colleges already in existence.

It is a VMI experience for women that does not deny the same to men. Once again, the courts have sided with VMI and once again, the press has misinterpreted the outcome.

These are the facts to date. There is little doubt that the legal maneuvering between VMI and the U.S. Justice Department will continue and eventually reach the Supreme Court. Whatever the outcome, you can be sure that the public will have to read between the lines to find the truth.

In the meantime, here's to VMI for holding fast to its convictions and for taking a leadership role in designing a win-win solution. They have refused to accept the widely held paradigm that equality means "the same."

Quite simply men and women are different. This says nothing whatsoever about their relative worth as human beings or their potential for achievement and contribution to society.

In actuality, the differences between the sexes, if properly leveraged, can be the platform that maximizes the development of individuals who are so inclined to attend single-gender schools.

If the program is upheld, we will then be able to look beyond the slanted reporting of the litigation and watch as VMI and VWIL set a new standard and a new tradition that will benefit women, men and all of society.

Frank Rosenthal

Towson

The writer is a 1982 graduate of VMI.

Lessons from Singapore

In response to Andrew Schmookler's enlightening article "Must We Employ Barbarism to Contain Barbarism"? (Opinion * Commentary April 29), the answer is quite clearly a loud "Yes."

The American public has not only become totally sick of crime -- but more than that, we have become terribly frustrated by the lack of real punishment ever meted out to those who threaten society's lives and property.

We have become so involved in the civil rights of the criminal that we have forgotten about the civil rights of society.

Liberals in this country have gone so overboard in protecting the criminals that society now lives its life in total fear -- fear of being mugged, raped, assaulted or murdered; fear of being robbed, having property damaged or stolen -- we have become prisoners in our own homes, streets, indeed, in our own country.

We have replaced the fear of punishment of the criminal with the punishment of fear to society.

It is therefore no wonder that Americans have breathed a sigh of relief that some country in the world has been brave enough to respond unhesitatingly.

In the Singapore caning case, finally, someone is being punished! We haven't seen that in so long -- neither in the schools, nor in the criminal justice system, which is so overburdened that the majority of criminals just don't get caught, and if they ever do, they never get punished in a way that suits the crime.

Singapore is a safe country to walk in by night, murder and mayhem are practically unheard of -- society is protected.

Maybe it's time that America swings the pendulum to society's direction, and begins protecting us rather than the criminal.

Perhaps it's time to mete out punishment that fits the crime, punishment that is stern and leaves a lasting impression.

This is not barbarism -- this is the real thing. Barbarism is the daily acts of violence in the schools, in the home, in the streets, in society as a whole.

Singapore may not be America -- but it has the right idea. It's time government came to the understanding that punishment is not barbaric but a necessary controlled response to battle the ever-rising evil being perpetrated against us.

"If you begin being kind to the wicked," goes a profound statement, "you'll end up being wicked to the good."

We have become so enamored and kind to those who threaten society that we've ended up being totally cruel toward the frightened, frustrated American society at large.

Rabbi Chaim Landau

Baltimore

Take a lesson from Singapore. Bring back the whipping post.

If each state had a whipping post in front of city hall where criminals, including the younger ones, received a good scourging in public, it would make one think twice before acting.

In the case of murder that requires death, after the scourging the public bystanders should stone them.

Shirley Reis

Baltimore