By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO — For more than half her 20-year tenure as a Democratic member of Congress from San Diego, Susan Davis encouraged the exchange of students from Jerusalem and San Diego, remembering that her own time spent as a young woman on an Israeli kibbutz was formative in her own life.
This year, the Jerusalem-San Diego Zoo exchange program turned the tables on Davis, now retired, and directed the honors to her. At a luncheon Wednesday at the Zoo’s Treetops Café, Davis was joined by a young man whose career she mentored, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, and by a young woman who has succeeded her in Congress, Sara Jacobs.
As green-shirted exchange students from San Diego and Jerusalem watched, the mayor and the congresswoman told of Davis’s many accomplishments and how important her encouragement had been in their own careers. Gloria recalled that he was a teenager when he successfully applied for the Aaron Price Fellowship, a program then led by Davis which introduced teens to government officials and business leaders, providing them insight into the workings of both arenas. During her career, Davis had been a San Diego Unified School Board trustee, a member of the state Assembly, and from 2001 to 2021 a member of Congress. As Gloria got older, he joined Davis’s staff, later launching his own political career that took him to the San Diego City Council, to the state Assembly, and most recently to the mayor’s office.
Jacobs said that it was because of Davis’s encouragement that she announced her congressional campaign in 2020, after having hesitated following a loss for another congressional seat in the 2018 election. Jacobs said that while she went to Israel on a different exchange program as a teenager than either Davis or the zoo exchange students, the interactions she had as part of the Jacobs International Teen Leadership Initiative (JITLI) with Israelis, Palestinians, and fellow Americans were decisive in helping her to set her eye on a career involving U.S. foreign policy. JITLI had been founded by her parents, Jerri-Ann and Gary Jacobs. Her father is the immediate past president of the Jewish Community Centers Association of North America.
After graduating from Columbia University, Jacobs worked for the U.S. State Department and later as an advisor to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign before becoming a scholar in residence at the Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice at the University of San Diego. After being elected to Congress, she was assigned to the House Committees on Foreign Relations and on Armed Services.
The messages to the exchange students from Gloria, Jacobs, and from Davis herself, who happily posed with the students after they received certificates of recognition from Gloria and Jacobs, was that they should take advantage of the exchange which over 11 days will take them behind the scenes at the Zoo, Safari Park, SeaWorld, and other Southern California attractions, not only to learn more about animals but also to get to know each other and to appreciate varying points of view.
The ceremony was organized by Helena Galper, a consultant to Jerusalem’s Biblical Zoo, and emceed by Judge Victor Bianchini, who although now retired from both the federal and state benches, continues to work as a mediator and arbitrator. A medalist in sabre competitions at the national and world levels, Bianchini shooed hobnobbing guests to tables laden with large stuffed animals by quipping to those still standing in the aisles that if they were in his courtroom, he’d find them in contempt.
As the luncheon was at the beginning of the program for the Israeli guests and American teen hosts, the Israelis who introduced themselves could not say much about their common experiences, but Jerusalemites Noureen Alayan and Ilai Eitan both expressed the hope that during the exchange they would make new memories and friends.
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Donald H. Harrison is editor emeritus of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com