Health-care workers' responsibility

2/18/2006

As I read your Jan. 30 article regarding the proposed legislation for health-care workers' rights, I could not believe my eyes. As an African-American woman who was one of three in my nursing class, I could not understand the need for such a proposal. I have always wanted to be a nurse. I have never even considered imposing my views on my patients or refuse to take care of them because they did not fit a certain set of rules.

After 30 years of nursing I have worked with the very poor and the ultra rich. Doing home care, I have gone into homes so infested with roaches I needed to spray my clothes before and after leaving the home. I have taken care of HIV/AIDS, IV drug users, gays, lesbians, Protestants, Muslims, Catholics, and Jews. All of them knew what was in my heart: the desire to help.

They saw no looks of judgment or fear. They saw my willingness to do all I could to make them well or ease their pain and even share that precious moment when life slipped away.

I agree with your Feb. 7 editorial. If you as a health-care worker do not like what is being done in your facility, leave. Quit. Go someplace where you share the same views. People who need you the most may not be the richest or share your political or religious beliefs. They may be poor and homeless, or living in the lap of luxury. This does not nor should not affect the care a health worker gives. If it does, then why do it at all?

DIANE ELIZABETH MUELLER

Berwick Avenue

I need to respond to some of the criticisms made of me by Rabbi Tovia Singer in a Feb.11 article titled "Rabbi says Messianic Jews are Christians in disguise."

I have never considered myself a Jew who left Judaism and converted to Christianity. I believe Yeshua is the fulfillment of Judaism. Second, I was born Jewish, raised Jewish, and will always be a Jew. Being a Jew is a matter of birth. Jewish male children are circumcised eight days after they come into this world, not because they have chosen to believe or not believe certain things but because they are a physical descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Approximately 70 percent of Jews in America and the majority of Jews in Israel are considered secular Jews, many of which are agnostic; yet in their case, we don't hear the Jewish community saying "they are no longer Jewish." Third, neither I nor my synagogue, Adat Adonai, "disguise" ourselves, or "prey" upon the weak and vulnerable as Rabbi Singer suggests.

Instead I am very open about who I am and what I believe. All one has to do is tune in to my TV program "Discovering The Jewish Jesus" to see how transparent I am. Finally I would like to say that in my estimation this is really not about me, Adat Adonai, or Messianic Judaism. It's about Jesus - "Is He who He said He was -The Jewish Messiah (John 4:22-26)?"

Messianic Rabbi

Kirt Schneider

Adat Adonai Messianic Synagogue

Sylvania

Returning Betty Montgomery as Ohio attorney general next November would be like President Bush telling Mike Brown in his not to be forgotten quote "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." I doubt that with her performance in the Noe scandal, and as a former attorney general, that the voters of Ohio will be saying "Monty, you've done a heck of a job."

Jerry Chabler

Sylvania