Editor’s Note: On Jan. 20, Donald J. Trump will be sworn in as the 45th president of the United States despite losing to Hillary Clinton by a margin of more than 2.5 million votes. More than half of the country is struggling with the divisive and polarizing election outcome. Shared here are the thoughts of one deeply kind religious leader.

Reflections from Rabbi Daniel Bogard upon the election of Donald Trump

To my daughters and to my son: I am so, so sorry.

I’m sorry that I burst into sobs and tears when I saw you today. I had dreamed of a world where you would, from the very earliest moments of your life, know that you live in a place where presidents can look like you, and the heartache was overwhelming.

I’m so terribly sorry that this is the world that we have left for you. I had thought that we had grown as a nation to the point where if a man objectified, sexualized, and made claims on women’s bodies, that the vast majority of us would say–at the very least–that this disqualified him from the highest of offices; I was wrong.

But I promise that I will work with everything I have to change that. I’ll work to change it within myself–the ways that I blindly go about with male-privilege every day; within our schools, where we know that about a third of college women have experienced sexual assault; within our Jewish community, where we know that abuse exists at the same rate it does in the non-Jewish community; and within our nation, which just collectively normalized this behavior.

To my LGBT friends, my Latino friends, my Muslim friends, my undocumented-friends, my Black friends: I will double down.

I will double down on my work toward justice, and I will double down on my commitment toward the America we were trying to build. An America where we are all welcome, where our diversity is our strength, and where immigrants–like my refugee sister–have always been the lifeblood of America’s greatness.

American Jews exist in a place of unique privilege, within the context of a Jewish history filled with persecution, and within an American society that has embraced us. I promise that I will use what privileges I have, while I have them, to protect those more vulnerable than I am.

And to my friends with more privilege than I have: I hope that you will stand in front of us until we are an unending mass of those who believe that our diversity is our strength, and that out greatness comes from our goodness.

To my conservative Jewish friends who for years cried out that antisemitism would return to America: you were right, and I am scared.

I didn’t believe we would ever see real white-nationalism in the United States in my lifetime; I was wrong.

I used to think that online antisemitism, whether it’s targeting Jewish journalists, rabbis, or just people with Jewish sounding names, was somehow something sort of funny; I was wrong.

I used to think that America was different, was exceptional, that it would be the one place where Jews could totally be at home. But I’m starting to fear that my grandparents were right, and that America is more like all of the other Diasporas we have been in than I ever thought possible.

To my friends who voted for him:

I hope you will hear my fear, and my pain, and my feelings that you voted for a country where my Muslim, Latino, and LGBT friends, my refugee sister and I are not welcome. I know many of you didn’t support him for those reasons–but the fact that these things weren’t disqualifying to you hurts like a cut to my heart.

But, more than anything else, to president-elect Trump:

I hope that I am wrong about the sort of president you will be, and the sort of America that you will create.

Rabbi Daniel Bogard and his wife Rabbi Karen Bogard were at Congregation Anshai Emeth in Peoria for five years before relocating to Cincinnati last year where they are both associate rabbis at Congregation Adath-Israel.