Other items in today’s column include:
* Jewish community coronavirus news
*Photo-sharing our Judaica
* Political bytes
SAN DIEGO — State Assembly candidate Sarah Davis, 39, is no stranger to the Legislature. With baby Lucia in tow, she often made the rounds of legislative offices and committee rooms in the state Capitol arguing successfully for greater state recognition of midwives, so that they could be considered full-fledged health care professionals rather than semi-professionals requiring supervision by physicians. The issue was important not only for the midwives but for the new mothers who preferred to be attended by them at home or in home-like clinics, rather than in hospitals. Until the law was changed, without a physician present, Medi-Cal would not pay the cost for their treatment.
Today Lucia is 7, a second grader being schooled at home by her mother during the coronavirus pandemic. As for Sarah, she is hoping that she can be elected in November to the Legislature and then bring back to those halls her passion for social justice and tikkun olam that she said she imbibed as a child both from her years as a student at Beth Israel Day School and from her paternal grandparents and parents, who since 1960 have operated Al Davis Furniture and Mattress World at 1601 University Avenue, San Diego.
Like her father Bob before her, Sarah Davis grew up at the store, playing on the furniture while a little child, and, as she got older, when not attending Muirlands Junior High School or La Jolla High School, helping out with any variety of tasks. “My grandparents were both there when I was young,” she recalled. “My grandmother was the bookkeeper and my grandpa worked there, and then my dad, and so I did everything from climbing on furniture and mattresses and jumping around to alphabetizing papers and typing on an actual typewriter and all kinds of office stuff that my grandmother thought of, like keeping ledger books and bookkeeping and accounting.” Grandma Bea Davis’s office was off to the side of the showroom.
“With my grandfather (Al), I learned a little bit about mattresses and carpets when I was a kid,” she said. “I would help do tasks around the store. My grandfather was very much the handyman too, so sometimes he would take me up on the roof to put up a sign or hammer a nail in — anything like that. He kept us involved, my brother (Taylor, three years younger) and I.”
Her father married the former Antonia Holland, a Catholic. Their home was secular, but the intermarried couple agreed to send Sarah to Beth Israel Day School where Sarah, a fourth-generation San Diegan on her mother’s side, had many of her family’s values reinforced. “My family has always been very warm and welcoming,” she explained. “They weren’t actively involved in activism or social justice work, but when I was a kid, they were always teaching us that healing the world is important, and believing in equality and building equity, and working to change the things that are unjust. Definitely some of that I attribute to Judaism and my relationship to that.” Today, Davis and Lucia are members of Ohr Shalom Synagogue, which Davis said she chose “because they are so inclusive of queer families and interfaith families, and they have been just incredibly welcoming and it’s nice. Gray (her domestic partner) and I and Gray’s kids went to the recent Purim celebration; I think it was the last thing we did outside the house before we decided we weren’t going anymore” because of the pandemic.
As a child, Davis was a reader, with her nose in a book every spare moment, devoting her attention to issues of social justice, particularly as they related to discrimination against Jews, minorities, and women. At Pomona College, she majored in Black Studies with a minor in mathematics, thinking that she would become a high school math teacher. But after working in after-school classes, she decided that she didn’t like standing up in front of a class and decided to look for another career, one that would involve one-on-one interactions.
“I looked to health care, and specifically women’s health care,” she said. “It was the same social justice drive; I just went from education to health care, and exploring different areas of health care. I was interested in potentially being an abortion provider, but I didn’t go down that road. I was interested in child birth and women’s health overall, so I ended up becoming a licensed midwife. I got my training and license [in 2008] from the National Midwifery Institute, based in Vermont. It is a distance academic program with onsite clinical work with local practicing providers. I did all my clinical work in Encinitas.”
Two years later, with Darynee Blount, another midwife, she opened the Birth Roots clinic in Chula Vista. “People would come in to this little house which, prior to us, was a dentist’s office. It had a pretty little living room, so it felt like a home setting but it also had a medical area. People could come in and have their prenatal visits there, and then when they were in labor come in and have their baby right there, and then go home. It was a great opportunity for people who wanted a very calm personalized setting — kind of like their home to have their baby in, if for whatever reason they didn’t want to be in their actual home.”
I asked about the advantages of a midwife clinic versus a hospital. “I believe it is important to have both options and here in California, we have many, many facilities available for hospital births — not as many for home or for clinics,” she said. “So, definitely, I am a huge fan of hospital births but I think people who are having healthy pregnancies should have the option to have another choice. People who are choosing an out-of-hospital birth are looking for the opportunity to be left alone, to not have bright lights, to not have strangers coming through, to really minimize the risk of infection and picking up anyone else’s germs — which is particularly relevant right now — and the chance to have whichever people they want around them, whatever support people there are, their friends, family, or someone they hire. Many of our families had particular cultural practices that they felt they could keep intact in a setting like ours … In some cases they wouldn’t want any male providers or staff around them. … We had Muslim clients, and Mennonite clients, for example.”
Orthodox Jewish women too? I inquired.
“Our location (in Chula Vista) didn’t work out to our advantage” in that case, Davis said. Had the clinic been located nearer Orthodox communities in the College area or in La Jolla, she said, likely there would have been more Orthodox Jewish clientele.
Many of the women working at the clinic spoke Spanish and that was a comfort to Spanish-speaking clients. “We were able to make them comfortable and not have to deal with translators or confusion.”
Between 2010 and 2014, when Davis gave up her part of the practice to stay home in North Park (near the store) to be with Lucia, she assisted at between 400 and 500 births, Davis said. “We call it ‘catching the baby’; The mom ‘delivers,’ she does all the work and pushes the baby out, and we ‘catch’ them.”
“The feeling of how proud someone is after they push out a baby is worth everything, and you know that someone who is that proud and feels that powerful pushing out a baby is going to be an amazing parent … and is going to feel really confident in their power to move forward in parenting this little tiny human that they just brought into the world.”
Davis, herself, was attended by a midwife through part of her pregnancy, but when it was realized that she would give birth to a premature baby, she transferred to hospital care — later pointing out to legislators that well-trained midwives know when there are complications to a pregnancy and will recommend hospital care in plenty of time.
Having Lucia with her as she testified or called upon legislators in their offices was beneficial, Davis said.
“She was very calm and a happy baby. Everyone liked seeing her, so she got me in the door. What I would tell them was that I want other families in California to have the incredible care that I had. I had so much support and personalized information from the midwives and then I was one of the small percentage of people who ended up having a complication, which wasn’t appropriate for having a baby at home. My midwife took great care of me, got me to the hospital when I needed to be, and continued to support me after that. So I feel that I am a great example of how even in the non-ideal circumstances, the midwife worked great and still offered support and benefit to the family.”
Asked if Lucia has an affinity for politics, given her early exposure to the Legislature, the Democratic candidate responded, “She is happy to speak against Donald Trump at any opportunity. She knows a couple of things about our political philosophy. The things we talk about a lot are that we believe people can work together and make the world a better place. We believe that people are more important than money, and we talk about that a lot. We talk about racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, and she talks about that in an age-appropriate way.”
In the November general election, Davis will be opposing San Diego City Councilman Chris Ward, who placed first in the March 3 primary election by a margin of 67,954 votes to Davis’s 33,106 , and Micah Perlin’s 20,181 votes. (as of the close of counting on Saturday, March 21). Perlin since has endorsed Davis for election in the Assembly District now represented by San Diego mayoral candidate, Assemblyman Todd Gloria. As both Davis and Ward identify as members of the LGBTQ community, they agree on a broad range of issues such as the need for full legal equality, marriage equality, and legal and job protection for trans-people, according to Davis.
In the next column, I’ll cover some of the issues upon which Davis is campaigning in the district that stretches along the coast from Imperial Beach and Coronado to Del Mar and Solana Beach and includes in San Diego such neighborhoods as La Jolla, University City, Mission Beach, Pacific Beach , downtown, Balboa Park, Little Italy, North Park, South Park, mission Hills, Normal Heights, University Heights, Kensington and Talmadge.
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Jewish community coronavirus news
*Through the Yiddish Academic and Arts Association of North America, Tanja Yakovleva is teaching a class in Yiddish and she decided to integrate the topic on everyone’s minds: the coronavirus. A helpful and hopeful phrase: Ikh (I) hob (have) nisht (not) kin (any) hustn (cough). Or for that matter, “Ikh hob nisht kin shmerts (pain).”
*Rabbi Rafi Andrusier of Chabad of East County sent out what he described as “unsolicited advice” to members of his congregation and friends. Some excerpts: “1. Consider taking a break from the constant barrage of negative reports, and focus your soul and energy on empowering messages. There are lots of online learning available… 2. I highly recommend that we each take some time for personal prayer each day, especially now! Recite the shema each day, morning and night. Men, put on your tefillin. Read some of the Psalms. Or choose whichever prayers you like. And then close your eyes and say some personal words or communicate in thought with our Father in Heaven, one on one. Apparently HASHEM wants our attention… Take a few minutes each day, privately, just you and your G-d. Try this and see how soothing and therapeutic it can be. You’ll remind yourself that all is not lost and we are never alone! 3. I suggest (and ask) that each of us make it our business each day to reach out to 5 people in the community just to say hi and see how they’re doing. At times like this we need each other. Lifting up another is the most uplifting thing we can do for ourselves. 4. For Hashem’s sake… – STAY HOME …People are fighting for their lives on respirators. Not just very old people, but even middle aged people. People who just one week ago were walking the streets and all was totally fine. In case you are unaware, this is very serious. Not in potential but in actuality. .. If you are 65+ you absolutely MUST stay home. I repeat – you MUST stay home!!! I say this as your rabbi, because the most important mitzvah in the Torah is to guard our health.”
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Photo-sharing our Judaica
While we are complying with the ‘Stay at Home’ mandate from California Governor Gavin Newsom, I thought it might be fun ifm via this column, we shared photos of some of the Judaica that San Diego County residents love along with the stories (if there are any) behind them. Above is a photo of Ernie Addleson blowing a shofar that he and his wife Ellen Addleson purchased in the Mea Shearim section of Jerusalem approximately the same time as Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin were signing a peace treaty in 1979 at the White House with U.S. President Jimmy Carter. When the Addlesons brought the shofar home to San Diego, Rabbi Monroe Levens of Tifereth Israel Synagogue came to the house to “bless and blow it.”
Do you have a favorite piece of Judaica — whether it be a ceremonial object, sculpture, painting, or something else — that you would like the community to enjoy? If so, please send a picture of a member of your household with that object, and tell us the story behind the Judaica’s acquisition. Please send the photo and information to editor@sdjewishworld.com and then watch for it in this column!
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Political bytes
*Three San Diego political figures are coronavirus patients: Will Rodriguez-Kennedy, chairman of the San Diego County Democratic Party; Steve Padilla, a former Chula Vista mayor and current councilman, who also chairs the state Coastal Commission; and Kelvin H. Barrios, who placed first in the March 3 primary election for the 9th District seat of the San Diego City Council.
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Donald H. Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com
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