Sarah Milgrim’s Life—and Death—Calls Us to Be Louder, Prouder Jews

“I worry about going to my synagogue and now I have to worry about my safety at my school, and that shouldn’t be a thing.”

Those were the words of an 18-year-old Sarah Milgrim in Johnson County, Kansas, in 2017. Last week, on May 21, 2025, Sarah and her boyfriend Yaron Lischinsky were gunned down outside an American Jewish Committee event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington DC in an antisemitic hate crime that shocked the world.

Years before, Sarah’s life was already marked by antisemitism.  Sarah’s way of fighting back was to stand up against hatred and embrace her Jewish identity.

Antisemitism in Kansas

Sarah was in high school in Kansas City when the city was rocked by antisemitic shootings.

In April 2014, a white supremacist drove to a Jewish area of Kansas City “for the specific purpose of killing Jews.”  He pulled up outside a Jewish Community Center teeming with children and teenagers. The gunman shot into the building many times. In the parking lot, he spied 14-year-old Reat Underwood and his grandfather, 69-year-old William Corporon, who was taking Reat to a talent contest being hosted in the building. The killer shot both of them at point blank range and they perished on the scene.

The killer then drove a short distance to a Jewish nursing home named Village Shalom and shot Terri LaManno, a 53-year-old woman who was visiting her mother. “I wanted to make (expletive) sure I killed some Jews or attacked the Jews before I died,” the murderer later explained.  Though none of his victims were Jewish, he succeeded in his odious goal of making Jews in Kansas City – and around the world – feel unsafe.  “Because of what I did, Jews feel less secure,” the killer later boasted at his trial.”

The murders had a profound effect on Sarah Milgrim.  When she went to Hebrew school and to synagogue with her family, she worried about her safety.  Then, in her senior year of high school, someone daubed swastikas on her school’s property.  “It’s so ignorant that you would bring up a symbol like that, that would bring so much pain,” Sarah told reporters at the time.  “You know, I worry about going to my synagogue and now I have to worry about my safety at my school, and that shouldn’t be a thing.”

If the people who daubed anti-Jewish symbols thought they could intimidate Sarah and frighten her from expressing her Jewish faith publicly, they were wrong.  Sarah embraced being Jewish, educating herself about Judaism and Israel.

She was a member of her high school’s small Jewish Student Union, a club of about half a dozen Jewish students.  She threw herself into teaching her classmates about Judaism.  She helped “educate both the students and the parents of students in her public high school about antisemitism,” recalled the club’s advisor. “That was something that she was passionate about.”

“She Was Very Involved”

“She was very involved in Jewish life on campus,” Rabbi Zalman Teichtel, who runs the Chabad center on campus, explained in an Aish.com interview.  “She was very passionate; she was very driven. She wanted to make an impact, as you can see from her career.”

Sarah used to attend Shabbat and holiday meals at Chabad and at Hillel.  She joined the Board of the University of Kansas Hillel and she and her brother visited Israel on a Birthright trip.

“When she was there, she had this connection moment where she realized this was a place that was one of the definitional building blocks of her identity,” remembered Ethan Helfand, the Executive Director of University of Kansas’ Hillel.  “It seems like she realized this is what she was supposed to be doing, this is what she was supposed to prioritize.”

Sarah, whom her father described as a person who loved all people, who took in animal strays, who wouldn’t even “step on a bug” because she loved life so much, never stopped growing in her connection to Israel.  She completed a Master’s Degree at American University in Washington DC, where she researched “peace-building” between Jews and Arabs in Israel, then earned a Certificate in Sustainable Development at the University of Peace in Costa Rica.  Sarah also spent a year working in Israel building bridges between Jews and Arabs in the high-tech sector.

Sarah was committed to using her skills and talents to strengthen the Jewish state, no matter what the cost to her own social life.

When she returned to the United States, Sarah found that her public support for Israel made her a persona non grata in the left-wing circles of many of her peers.  She confided to a friend that all of her friends from the University of Peace had dropped her.  Yet Sarah was committed to using her skills and talents to strengthen the Jewish state, no matter what the cost to her own social life.  She took job planning events at the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC.

“Sarah never sweated,” one local figure who often worked with Sarah on events recalled. “She just operated with such class and calm.”

Growing Atmosphere of Anti-Jewish Hatred

Sarah started working at the Israeli Embassy in November 2023, just weeks after Hamas fighters invaded Israel, killing over 1,200 Israeli and taking over 240 people hostage. Even before Israel launched a military operation aimed at removing Hamas from power in Gaza and recovering the hostages, much of world opinion had already turned against Israel.  In the days before the murders in Washington, the atmosphere became even more fraught.

A day earlier, UN Under-Secretary-General Tom Fletcher erroneously announced that 14,000 babies in Gaza were about to die of starvation in the next 48 hours.  Fletcher’s statement was utterly false, the UN later acknowledged; it seems to have been based on a UN report estimating the number of people who might face malnutrition if fighting lasts for another year.  Yet Fletcher’s incendiary statement had a lightening effect around the world.  Britain immediately broke off negotiations for a trade agreement with Israel.  The European Union called for a halt of its negotiations for a new trade agreement with the Jewish state.

The murderer who shot Sarah and Yaron posted on social media “Escalate For Gaza, Bring the War Home” and called for “armed action,” bought a gun and a ticket to Washington DC.

Igniting Our Own Passion

Sarah knew what it was to feel tense and afraid; she also knew how to fight back.  Even as a teenager, she grasped that the best way to fight antisemitism is to live even more Jewishly – being proud Jews is the only answer to those who would seek to destroy us.

In her short life, she showed us how: educating herself about Jewish life, attending Jewish Shabbat and holiday events, traveling to Israel, and working to make the world a better place.  Her life is a blueprint to being more engaged, more knowledgeable and more proud as Jews.

This week, in memory of Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, let’s resolve to do something in their memory.  Attend a Shabbat meal.  Read a Jewish article or book.  Educate ourselves about Israel.  Maybe even plan a trip there, as they wanted so much to do.  The murderer who gunned down Sarah and Yaron in cold blood stole their lives and their futures.  But he can’t steal their legacies.  Let’s learn from their resilience and carry on their passions.

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