Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky were identified as the two Israeli embassy staffers killed in a shooting outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., on May 21, 2025. They had attended an embassy event to mark Israel’s 77th Independence Day on May 10. (X)
By Hannah Feuer
May 22, 2025
Rabbi Zalman Tiechtel remembers having Shabbat dinners with Sarah Milgrim at the University of Kansas Chabad, where she had a large group of Jewish friends and was “full of energy.”
“She was passionate. She was loving,” Tiechtel said. “She was very Jewishly involved.”
Now, Rabbi Tiechtel is mourning the loss of Milgrim, who was shot dead along with her boyfriend, Yaron Lischinsky, outside the Capital Jewish Museum on Wednesday night. Milgrim was 26.
Interviews with those who knew Milgrim describe her as a “proud member of the Jewish community” who was “passionate about Israel” — and a peace advocate committed to fostering dialogue between Israelis and Palestinian.
Milgrim grew up in a suburb of Kansas City, where her family is a member of the Reform congregation B’nai Jehudah. Rabbi Stephanie Kramer wrote in a statement that every time she saw Milgrim’s parents, Bob and Nancy, they “kvelled and beamed with joy and pride about Sarah’s work and her steadfast devotion to Judaism and to Israel.”
As a teenager, Milgrim was already grappling with antisemitism. In 2014, a white supremacist shot and killed three people at a Jewish Community Center and Jewish assisted-living facility in the nearby Kansas suburb Overland Park. Three years later, swastikas were graffitied on the high school Milgrim attended, Shawnee Mission East, where she was a member of the Jewish Student Union.
“I worry about going to my synagogue, and now I have to worry about safety at my school, and that shouldn’t be a thing,” she told the local news station at the time.
Milgrim attended the University of Kansas, where she majored in environmental studies and minored in anthropology. According to Tiechtel, she was active in both campus Chabad and Hillel, attending Shabbat dinners and other holiday programming. She took on a leadership role, serving for about a year as a student representative on KU Hillel’s board of trustees, helping to advise the executive director and staff.
Her older brother, Jacob, also attended the University of Kansas and was president of the Jewish fraternity Zeta Beta Tau. The two went on a Birthright trip to Israel together.
After college, Milgrim earned a certificate in sustainable development at the University for Peace in Costa Rica and a master’s degree in international affairs at American University in Washington, D.C.
She spent a year in Tel Aviv working at Tech2Peace, a program that aims to foster dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians through entrepreneurial training. Her master’s project followed 12 Israeli and Palestinian participants in that program, focusing on the “role of friendships in the peace-building process” and documenting “the complexities of the conflict,” according to a 2023 LinkedIn post.
That experience led Milgrim to a job at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C, where she worked in the department of public diplomacy.
Meredith Jacobs, CEO of Jewish Women International, met Milgrim shortly after she’d started work at the embassy, and the two collaborated on multiple events. Milgrim confided in Jacobs about the personal cost of her career: Her classmates at the University of Peace couldn’t accept her support for Israel, and she had lost all her friends as a result.
But social ostracization didn’t seem to deter Milgrim, who threw herself into the role.
“Sarah truly embodied the Jewish value of tikkun olam—repairing the world,” Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, who collaborated with Milgrim on climate change initiatives, wrote in a statement. “Her loss is devastating not only to her family and friends but to the entire global environmental and Jewish communities.”
Josh Maxey, executive director of the LGBTQ+ synagogue Bet Mishpachah in Washington, D.C., also got to know Milgrim in her role. He described Milgrim as “quite a force within the D.C. Jewish community” and an advocate for queer Jews. The two organized several events together, from small gatherings to high-class events with foreign dignitaries.
“Sarah never sweated,” Maxey said. “She just operated with such class and calm and organization.”
It was at the embassy where Milgrim met her boyfriend, Lischinsky — who had bought a ring and was days away from proposing during a planned trip to Jerusalem.
The deaths are especially painful in Milgrim’s hometown, where her family was reportedly meeting with rabbis from their congregation this morning.
“This hits so close to home — one of our own,” said Jay Lewis, president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City. “It just feels like trauma upon trauma upon trauma for our Jewish community.”
Benyamin Cohen contributed reporting.
