We begin this day in mourning.
With horror and grief, we bear witness to the murders of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim—two staff members of the Israeli Embassy in Washington D.C., two beloved souls on the threshold of engagement, their future shining with the radiance of love and devotion.
As antisemitism spreads around the globe, Yaron and Sarah’s murders outside the Capital Jewish Museum scream out to us the atrocity of Jew-hate within our own country. When the call for liberation of one people mutates into such inhumanity, we see how hate can infect even the noblest of virtues. This was the desecration of life, love, and hope.
Yaron and Sarah were building a life together. Their love was a light in a world too often shadowed by destruction. And now, with their lives extinguished, the world is darkened.
“My eyes are spent with tears; my heart is in tumult; my being melts away over the ruin…”
(Lamentations 2:11)
In this moment of devastation, we mourn not only two lives, but the love between them—the sacred possibility of partnership and promise, torn apart by brutality.
May we carry their names forward with responsibility.
May we resist every force that corrupts virtue into vengeance and love into violence.
And may their memories be for a blessing.
Rabbi Ben Spratt
Senior Rabbi
