Linda Kendall, age 12, of Spokane, Washington, for her question:

What exactly is a ghetto?

If you listen to the news reports, you might think that a ghetto is some extra¬ordinary invention of modern times. This is not so at all. The first ghettos began almost 2,000 years ago. However, they were not at all like the ones we hear about in our modern news reports.

The ghetto is a thread of human history that takes us way back to Bible days. In those days, the Holy Land of Palestine was populated by people of the Jewish or Hebrew religion. Palestine was the land of the Jews until the year 70 A. D. Then they were conquered by the invading armies of Rome. After their defeat, the Jews went seeking new homes for themselves in the various cities of Europe. There the exiles found people who spoke languages of their own. The Jews and the city folk were strangers who could not understand each other.

It was natural for the exiled Jews in a new city to stay close together. In Vienna and Paris, Rome and Madrid they tended to occupy only certain streets, and for a long time they were shy of mixing with the rest of the city folk. They formed a city within a city. The Italians called these Jewish communities "ghettos." For more than two centuries, the Jewish exiles preferred to live in their ghettos and things were peaceable between them and the rest of the city folk.

In the 300s, the Christian Church took another look at the ghetto and the peace¬able days of the city within a city came to end. Orders were given to shun the Jewish exiles, and mixing with them was banned. Soon the ghettos of Europe changed. Once the people had lived there because they wanted to    now they were forced to remain there. The ghettos were enclosed behind great walls and their gates were locked tight every night. Things grew worse and for centuries the ghetto dwellers of Europe were persecuted without mercy.

In the 1700s, civilized people took still another look at their society. Matters were improved by the American War of Independence and the French Revolution that fol¬lowed it. The cruel persecution of the Jews went out of style, and in many places people were able to venture out of their crowded ghettos to mingle with the rest of mankind. But the European ghetto did not disappear entirely until very recent times.

Reporters often refer to the Polish and Italian, the Black and the Mexican sections  of our American cities as ghettos. But, let's face it, reporters like to startle us, and sometimes they may exaggerate. The so called ghettos of our American cities cannot be compared to the crowded peoples that lived sealed within the walled ghettos of the Middle Ages.

Every sensible person, of course, knows that human nature is fraught with puzzles and problems. Different groups have their own ways and customs. They often find it hard to understand each other. But civilization has advanced a long way since the Middle Ages. On all sides, the sensible majority knows that our problems cannot be solved by ignoring them or by sulking with self pity in a corner. What's more, few if any of our human problems can be properly settled with an angry punch on the jaw.