We celebrate this morning’s Supreme Court decision to uphold the constitutional right to birthright citizenship.  As American Jews, we know that the country that is safest for Jews is the country that is safest for all of our neighbors, including our immigrant neighbors. A nation hostile to immigrants is a nation hostile to Jews.

The constitutional right to birthright citizenship is a signifier of who we are as a country — that anyone born here, no matter how their family arrived, is entitled to equal rights. This right is deeply intertwined with our nation’s history of slavery, as a guarantee of citizenship for freed slaves. The Trump regime’s desperate attempt to end birthright citizenship is part of the legacy of white supremacy in this country that we must dismantle for the safety of all.

While we celebrate this decision, we do so with a heavy heart in light of the Court’s other back-to-back attacks on our rights. Today, it issued an anti-trans decision that will harm trans youth across the country, and just last week it ruled against TPS — both are catastrophic losses for our neighbors, family members, fellow congregants, and coworkers. Haitians, Syrians, Black, and Muslim communities, who have spent decades building their lives here under the promise of our government protection, will need us now more than ever. Trans and gender non-conforming people, whose bodies have been made a battleground with 804 anti-trans bills across the nation, will need us now more than ever.

As the nation marks its 250th anniversary amidst the regime’s efforts to dismantle the promise of our democracy, moments like this one will define the next 250 years. Fighting for our democracy means fighting for each other. And together, we will keep fighting to make this a country where all of us, no matter who we are, how or whether we pray, or where we were born, can live with dignity and safety.