In the suburbs of Kansas City, there is a long established Jewish community that is active beyond its modest numbers. The rabbis of the different synagogues all know each other, and families are often members of more than one congregation.
“We’re very close knit,” said Rabbi Stephanie Kramer of The Temple, Congregation B’nai Jehudah in Overland Park, Kan. “We’re not big enough to not be.”
Sarah Milgrim grew up here, leading the life of an American teenage girl: sleepovers, high school choir tours, late-night conversations with friends. She was an idealist and a lover of animals — she had a pet rabbit named Pablo — and was determined to make a difference in the world, perhaps by working to protect the environment, said Emma Chalk, a close friend since middle school.
But as she grew older, people that knew her said, Ms. Milgrim developed a deeper commitment to her own Jewish identity.
This commitment led her on trips to Israel, where friends said she found a sense of purpose in working with young Israelis and Palestinians, and it eventually led her to a job at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, starting just weeks after the Hamas attack in October 2023.
On Wednesday night, that job brought her to a reception at the Capital Jewish Museum, where she was one of two embassy employees fatally shot in what the authorities say was an attack by a gunman proclaiming support for the Palestinian cause.
The attack shocked Jewish people in the Kansas City suburbs where Ms. Milgrim grew up, even if it was not completely surprising.
“Since Oct. 7, we’ve all seen a rise in antisemitism, a rise in hate speech,” said Jay Lewis, the president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City. “But this was direct violence on one of our own. It got very personal, very fast.”
The Jewish community in and around Kansas City was all too familiar with violent antisemitism. In 2014, a white supremacist killed three people outside a Jewish Community Center and a Jewish retirement home, openly proclaiming his intent to kill Jews.
Several years later, two sheds on the grounds of Shawnee Mission East High School were spray-painted with swastikas and other Nazi graffiti. At that time, Ms. Milgrim was a senior at Shawnee Mission East and a member of the school’s Jewish Student Union.
It was a small group, around six to eight people, and members met once a month. Through the club, Ms. Milgrim began learning more about Israel and developing a deeper connection to Jewish culture, said Rachel Prero, who advised the club as the city director of the Kansas City National Conference of Synagogue Youth. A positive and easygoing young woman, Ms. Milgrim also was eager to reach out to others in the broader community, an instinct that would be the basis of the work she did for the Israeli Embassy.
After the swastikas were found on the school campus, she helped organize an event “to educate both the students and the parents of students in her public school about antisemitism,” Ms. Prero said. “That was something that she was passionate about.”
At the University of Kansas, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies, Ms. Milgrim became involved with the school’s chapter of the Jewish campus group Hillel. In 2018, she participated in Birthright Israel, which offers free trips to Israel in an effort to bolster Jewish identity.
“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,” said Ethan Helfand, the executive director of KU Hillel, recounting what he had read in the messages that had been pouring in from her friends and classmates on Thursday morning.
“It seems like she realized this is what she was supposed to be doing, this is what she was supposed to prioritize,” he said.
After college, Ms. Milgrim earned master’s degrees in natural resources and sustainable development from the University for Peace in Costa Rica, and in international affairs at American University in Washington. As part of her research at American, she returned to Israel in 2022 to work with Tech2Peace, an organization that brings together Israelis and Palestinians in their 20s for seminars to develop technical skills and meet people on the other side of the long-running conflict.
“Over the course of three months, Milgrim conducted around fifty interviews, recording stories of hate and extremism transformed toward genuine friendships between Israelis and Palestinians,” Judith Shapiro, the director of her graduate program at American University, wrote in a letter to students. She conducted some of these interviews under rocket fire, Professor Shapiro said, and had found the work so rewarding that she returned in early 2023 “to research the role of friendships in the peace-building process.”
Jake Shapiro, a fellow American who worked at Tech2Peace for five years, said Ms. Milgrim made friends with both Israelis and Palestinians in the program. “It is no small feat to come into this conflict as an American,” said Mr. Shapiro, who is not related to the professor. “She was able to come right in and fit in.”
In November 2023, several weeks after the attack by Hamas, Ms. Milgrim went to work for the Israeli Embassy. Her job was in the public diplomacy department, according to an embassy statement, where she was in charge of outreach to progressive and social justice-oriented groups. She worked particularly closely with Jewish L.G.B.T.Q. groups and women’s organizations, said Sheila Katz, the chief executive of the National Council of Jewish Women.
The work was “stressful but meaningful,” Ms. Milgrim said in a message to Ms. Prero, who had reached out to her to share her pride that the young girl she once knew was now in such an important role.
And while Ms. Milgrim told Ms. Chalk, her childhood friend, that the attack and the work that followed had taken a heavy emotional toll, she also told her at one point that she had met someone. He was Yaron Lischinsky, a researcher at the embassy, and he would become “really the first person she was head over heels excited for,” Ms. Chalk said.
Ms. Chalk was getting married herself, and the two friends traded ideas about weddings. Mr. Lischinsky was planning to propose to Mr. Milgrim on a trip to Israel. They were scheduled to leave on Sunday.
On Thursday morning, people who knew Ms. Milgrim lamented that she had lost her life in such a tragic way, when she had devoted her short life to trying to figure out ways to move past violence.
“I can’t speak in Sarah’s name, but from my perspective the greatest tragedy would be this act of violence justifying another act of violence,” Mr. Shapiro said.
Ms. Chalk said that her friend had always believed that there “was enough space for all of us in this world to be loved and cherished.”
“She really wanted leave the world a better place,” she said. “I think she did.”
Kevin Draper contributed reporting.
Campbell Robertson reports for The Times on Delaware, the District of Columbia, Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia.
Isabelle Taft is a reporter covering national news and a member of the 2024-25 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their career.
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