Other items in this column include:
*Around the county
*Jewish community coronavirus news
*Political bytes
*Recommended reading
SAN DIEGO — Congresswoman Susan Davis (D-San Diego) says she is in a favor of a proposal that would permit voting by proxy in Congress as long as the requirement of social distancing is in effect or if similar emergencies should occur.
In a telephone interview, she said the proposal would allow members of Congress to designate a colleague whom they trust to cast a vote for them, if they cannot be physically present. In her case, she said, she would designate U.S. Rep. Susan Wild, D-Pennsylvania, with whom she shares a house in the Washington D.C. area when she is not at home in San Diego with her husband Steve Davis.
The House of Representatives would have to vote in regular fashion to implement such a rule change, and, if that were to occur, Davis imagines that members of Congress whose districts are within a few hours of Washington D.C. would convene in the House of Representatives to provide a bare majority — even as they did March 27 when by voice vote they adopted the $2.2 trillion CARES package for relief of the coronavirus act.
Davis said that Congresswoman Wild knows her views on many subjects and that she would trust her to cast her vote if travel restrictions prevented her from getting to Washington D.C., and vice versa. Congresswoman Wild, a former Allentown City Solicitor, was elected in 2018 as the first woman to represent Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District. Like Davis, who is completing her tenth and final term in Congress, Wild serves on the House Education and Labor Committee. Whereas Davis’s other assignment is the House Armed Services Committee, Wild’s other assignment is the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
With the coronavirus keeping her in San Diego, Davis says she is nevertheless keeping quite busy at her home in the Kensington neighborhood. With her kitchen serving as an office — except when she goes outside to sit on the patio — she said she has been having conference calls with congressional colleagues, various constituent groups, and with administrators of various federal agencies, all of which, she says, are feeling the strain of handling the coronavirus. This is particularly true of the Internal Revenue Service, which she described as nearly overwhelmed by the volume of checks that are to be sent out under the coronavirus relief act.
She also said that she is concerned about the Post Office, which already was operating under a deficit before the pandemic hit, and now has been experiencing such a loss of mail volume that it is in need of supplemental funds to be able to carry on business.
Davis has endorsed Todd Gloria, who she has mentored since he was in the ninth grade (when she was director of the Aaron Price Fellowship program) to be San Diego’s next mayor. On the other hand, Davis has remained neutral in the race to succeed her in the 51st Congressional District between Sara Jacobs and Georgette Gomez, both of whom are Democrats.
She said she believes the two candidates are fairly similar in their positions and believes either one will do a good job. If she felt that either was lacking, she said, she would have felt obliged to make an endorsement.
Of interest is the fact that no matter who wins, the 53rd Congressional District will again be represented by a woman. Davis said it is a matter of interest that her district, which has changed numbers and boundaries over the years but has always included the Kensington neighborhood, is the only one in San Diego County to ever have been represented by a woman. Lynn Schenk was the first woman to represent it in Congress, and then after Davis defeated Brian Bilbray in 2000, she was the second.
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Around the county
*Michael Jeser, chief executive officer of the Jewish Federation of San Diego County, had an emotional homecoming following his cancer surgery. Here is how he described it on Friday: “What was supposed to be 7-10 days in recovery took 3 weeks for me to actually get home from life-saving cancer surgery. COVID-19 kept us all at an appropriate distance as Laura and I re-entered our neighborhood yesterday. What an unforgettable greeting and heartwarming homecoming between me and my daughter. Eleanore cried and grabbed hold of Laura Jeser and me tight and said ‘we are all together again.” That hug is one I will never forget for the rest of my life. Thanks to friends, colleagues, and others who showed up to make the day so special!
*Do you think removing the chametz from your house is a hassle today? Hinda S. Robinson, 94, sent us a message describing the process when she was just a girl. To clean every piece of silverware, she spent “a full night kashering with heavy white chalk six times for each spoon, knife and fork.” Then she tied each piece of silverware to a butcher cord and her father placed them in a pail in the cellar, “pouring hot water from the heater on top, and adding live coals from the furnace.” She recalled watching the “boiling water spilling up and out over the dirt floor. No chametz could survive!” After the water cooled, each piece was “washed, dried, and placed in a freshly painted table drawer.” Dishes were “brought up from the attic, cleaned, and put safely into the closet.” Before the seder, her grandfather, using a bird feather, “searched for crumbs of chametz everywhere.” Then, with “hands over our heads, he blessed each of us. It was always a holiday never to be forgotten!”
*Hillary Liber adds her salute to the graduating class of 2020 with her own senior class picture from some years ago.
*Laurie Baron, our multi-talented columnist, will present via Zoom, a Lawrence Family JCC-sponsored discussion titled “Statuettes of Limitations: The Oscars and the Holocaust, 1945-1960,” at 10:30 a.m., Wednesday, April 22. To register, click here.
*Israeli filmmaker Nitzan Gilady will participate in a Zoom luncheon at noon, Sunday, April 26, sponsored by the Murray Galinson San Diego-Israel Initiative in collaboration with the Hive at Leichtag Commons. He will discuss his movie Wedding Doll in which such themes are addressed as mental health, romance and independence. Register via this link.
*Jessica Meir, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography graduate student who became an astronaut, has returned from space after 205 days, 3,280 earth orbits, and traveling nearly 87 million miles, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Her landing craft came down Thursday night in Kazakhstan, from which she will be flown to the Houston Space Center.
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Jewish community coronavirus news
*Rabbi Joshua Dorsch of Tifereth Israel Synagogue reflected, “This Passover was definitely one of the most unusual that I, or probably any of us, have ever experienced. Whether it was gathering together for our congregational Zoom Seder, or reciting the Yizkor Memorial Service online, something felt off. As someone who tries to unplug over Shabbat and the holidays and tries to adhere to traditional Jewish observance, the dependency on Zoom and my computer for religious rituals feels weird, and at times uncomfortable. Nevertheless, I am somewhat comforted when I realize that the situation and circumstances are uncomfortable, not the rituals. Judaism has always, and will always, continue to explore new ways to meaningfully engage with tradition in our times. Strange may feel uncomfortable, but uncomfortable does not mean wrong, rather just different and unfamiliar.”
*Rabbi Laurie Coskey says she received a wonderful gift the other day — a jumbo sized can of Lysol disinfectant spray.
*Superman, Captain America, and all those other Jewish-created characters will have to wait a year before they can return to Comic-Con. For the first time in 50 years, the annual convention that draws some 140,000 attendees to the four-day comic fest has been cancelled due to the pandemic.
*Public relations consultant Jacob Kamaras of La Jolla informs us that 300 students at the Jerusalem College of Technology have been recruited to devise technological solutions enabling emergency services and nonprofits in Israel to continue serving people they normally help, but with whom they now have limited contact because of the coronavirus. About 40 percent of the students at the Jerusalem College of Technology are members of the Haredi community.
*Elana Levens-Craig has announced that her Santee-Lakeside Rotary Club was able to donate $1,500 to the Santee Food Bank to help families in need during the coronavirus pandemic. The video above tells the story.
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Political bytes
*The Jewish Insider in an article that references San Diego Jewish World articles about the race in the 53rd Congressional District between Sara Jacobs and Georgette Gomez, reports that Gomez is making headway among pro-Israel Jews notwithstanding the fact that Jacobs is Jewish, has relatives in Israel, and is the granddaughter of community philanthropists Joan & Irwin Jacobs. Overall, the story suggests, Gomez is more favorable to Israel than Jacobs is. A big surprise in JI’s story is an unconfirmed report that Jacobs is dating Ammar Campa-Najjar, a candidate in the neighboring 50th Congressional District, who is of Palestinian and Mexican heritage. A Catholic, Campa-Najjar has denounced his late grandfather, who allegedly was a mastermind in the slaughter of Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympics.
*Jack Rosen, president of the American Jewish Congress, is circulating a petition calling for a nationwide mail ballot to assure full participation in the presidential contest even if the coronavirus pandemic continues through the Nov. 3rd general election. “The stakes have never been higher,” he says. “The 2020 election will be critical for issues such as healthcare, economic and gender equality, unemployment and rising wages, civil rights, education, immigration and much more. Other issues that directly affect the Jewish community need to be addressed. We are deeply worried by the rising tide of anti-Semitism, the increasing number in hate crimes and white supremacist violence, the vocal opponents of the U.S.-Israel relationship, the hate-filled agenda of the BDS movement, and more.”
*Recommended reading
The first yahrzeit of Lori Gilbert Kaye, who was murdered by a gunman who burst into Chabad of Poway on the last day of Passover 2019, was observed quietly, with the synagogue where she died shuttered during the coronavirus pandemic, chabad.org reports.
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Donald H. Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com