We can best protect America’s values and safety by maintaining strong, open-hearted, reciprocal relationships, internationally and also within America — between Americans of every ethnicity, creed, economic and legal status. We cannot eliminate physical risk to Americans through any government policy; we all risk damage and death every day, simply by being alive. We can, however, respond to one another as human beings with human dignity, and attempt to ease pain and hunger and want where we see them and according to our capacities. We have the ability now, right now, as Americans, to respond constructively to the horrors perpetrated by Daesh and by civil wars in the Middle East, by offering peace and safety to people desperately in need of it. We cannot — we dare not — close this door.

Vera Broekhuysen, Candidate for Cantorial Ordination and Master of Jewish Education ’16, Hebrew College, Newton, MA

Published online by the Center for American Progress