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CNN
4 days ago
- CNN
A father's grief when a ‘light to the world' is put out
In May, Bob Milgrim was taking one of his regular long walks with his wife Nancy in suburban Kansas City when something struck his mind. 'I said, 'Nancy, you know, our lives are perfect. We have two beautiful children, we couldn't ask for more.'' Their only small sadness was the feeling their daughter Sarah, 26, would likely not live close to their home in Prairie Village, Kansas, when she got married and they wouldn't get to babysit grandchildren as often as they would like. Less than a week later, dreams of grandchildren were gone, and the comfort of a perfect life was shredded. On May 21, Sarah was shot dead with her boyfriend Yaron Lischinsky as they were leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC. The gunman told arriving police officers, 'I did it for Gaza,' a witness said. The Milgrims went from musing about babies to burying their own child. From dreaming of their daughter's bright future to being left with only memories. For Bob, there is so much to remember and admire about his only daughter. 'She was everything. She did everything,' he told CNN, reeling off a proud father's list of Sarah's achievements in sports and music, and how she had sung in a choir in European cathedrals on a tour while in high school. She also was a beekeeper and volunteered to feed injured birds of prey at a rescue center, he said. And she had an early and enduring love for dogs. Some mornings Bob would find a young Sarah sleeping with the family pet in its crate. At other times, she would make random four-legged friends. 'She would bring stray dogs home,' he said. 'If she saw a dog without a collar, we'd have to find a home for it or locate the owner … She loved all forms of life.' 'Sarah was a light to the world from the very beginning.' Bob was getting ready to go to bed that Wednesday night last month when his phone lit up with news alerts of a shooting in Washington, DC. At first, he wasn't concerned, but each new piece of information that came out pointed more and more to Sarah and Yaron. The location of the attack was at the Capital Jewish Museum at F and 3rd in Northwest DC. He didn't know Sarah was there, but it was the kind of thing she might do — she often went to events after work. Then it was reported that staffers from the Israeli embassy were involved, and that it was an event for young professionals — just the kind of people Sarah reached out to. And then that a man and a woman had been killed together. 'I knew that Sarah and Yaron were the only couple from the embassy in that age category. And so then I began to become very concerned,' Bob said. He'd already called and texted Sarah but got no response. He called police and the FBI for information, only to be told everyone was responding to the shooting. Finally, someone asked if he could supply Sarah's passport information. He went to his bedroom to look for the copy he had, inadvertently waking his wife, Nancy. She tracked Sarah's phone to the museum. 'We pretty much knew it was her,' Bob said. At that moment a call from a Washington number gave the Milgrims a flash of hope that Yaron was phoning them. But it was the Israeli ambassador to the US, Yechiel Leiter, calling to tell them their daughter was dead. They told him they already knew. But Leiter had more news. Yaron had bought an engagement ring the week before. 'We knew they were very, very serious. We knew they were in love — their bond was unbelievable,' Bob said. He also knew the couple was planning to visit Israel the following week for Sarah to meet Yaron's family. But it was a surprise to learn that Yaron planned to propose in Jerusalem. Soon after her older brother Jacob had his bar mitzvah, Sarah told her parents she didn't want a big party for her own coming-of-age ceremony. But she did want it to be in Israel. Her bat mitzvah two years later was also the first time Bob had been to Israel, and he saw an almost immediate change in his then-teenaged daughter. 'From that point forward, for whatever reason, we don't know, she felt more comfortable in Israel than any place else,' he said. She spent summers and a college semester there, and volunteered for Tech2Peace, an organization that brought Israelis and Palestinians together and taught them technology skills. Sarah helped with the sharing of cultures and finding opportunities to bond, like camping in the Negev Desert, Bob said, adding that she also traveled to the West Bank and made friends with Palestinian women there. Sarah had experienced antisemitism at her high school, where someone once spray-painted swastikas on a building and where hateful jokes were aimed at her. As Jews, Bob said, 'we're always concerned' about the possibility of violence. When she started working at the Israeli embassy in Washington less than a month after the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, she became familiar with the extensive security used there. Bob said he and Nancy had felt it would be OK for her to travel to Israel with the boyfriend she'd met at the embassy and whom she had first mentioned to her dad by saying, 'You're going to love this guy, he's a lot like you. He's a real gentleman.' As the relationship between the young couple became more serious, Sarah's parents tried to show him the best of Kansas City in the hopes that Yaron — who grew up in Germany and Israel — might be persuaded to stay in the US. But even though Yaron loved barbecue and Costco, Bob said they knew the couple would likely relocate to Israel. 'She loved Judaism and loved Israel,' Bob said of Sarah, his voice breaking, adding he hoped love would be her legacy. 'I want people to remember her and remember what she did and remember that she didn't hate anybody,' he said. 'She didn't hate Palestinians. She didn't hate Muslims. She loved them all, yet many people hated her … for being Jewish.' He talked of how people Sarah had been close to had cut off contact when she began working at the embassy, how they would even post hateful messages and how none of them offered condolences to him after her death. 'The people that hated her never stopped to ask her, how did she feel? And they never asked her, what is your viewpoint on how things in the Middle East should be settled? They just assumed that she was bad,' he said. A few weeks before his own family tragedy, Bob said he and Nancy were on one of the first flights into Reagan National Airport in Washington after it reopened following a military helicopter and passenger plane crash nearby that killed 67. 'I realized (dozens) of people had lost their lives and (I was) thinking about all the families and the horrific grief that they were going through. And I became emotional. And little did I know that a few months later I'd be going through the same thing.' Earlier this month, Bob and Nancy traveled to Washington, DC, to clean out Sarah's home. They had helped her to move in, and Bob remembered her excitement that day as she looked forward to all that was ahead, a future now unfulfilled. 'We were the first people to go into her apartment since the murder,' he said. 'It was like a freeze frame in time — the cup of coffee, half drunk, was on the counter. There was a little bit of coffee left in the coffee pot … it was one of the hardest, one of the most difficult days of my life, or Nancy's life.' They had also hoped to meet Yaron's siblings in Washington at a Kennedy Center performance by the US-Israel Opera Initiative that was dedicated to the slain couple. But the outside world intruded again when airports were closed in the Iran-Israel conflict and the Lischinsky family could not travel. One of Bob Milgrim's favorite memories is from a time in Sarah's childhood when she looked to him as a teacher. They were walking outside one morning when Sarah wondered aloud why the sidewalk was dry but the grass was wet even though it hadn't been raining. 'I had to explain dew to her, and she goes, 'Dad, you know everything!'' he remembered with a chuckle. After she was killed, Bob marveled at how much Sarah had taught him, too. 'I've learned how to be good and how to respect other people and how important it is for there to be love in the world and to see good in the world. And that's what Sarah saw,' he said. 'And since her tragic death, I've seen much more of it. I've seen much more good, and bad. 'Of course, the bad was horrific, and it could not have been any worse. But the outpouring of love, both from the Jewish community and all communities around the world is what's keeping us going right now. And it's been unbelievable.' Sarah has been laid to rest in Kansas City. Bob and Nancy have taken the pictures off the walls in Sarah's apartment, and the magnets off her refrigerator. They've kept some of her things and donated the rest. Now, Bob echoes the traditional Jewish message to the bereaved: zichronam l'vracha, or 'May their memory be a blessing.' 'Her memory is wonderful,' he said. 'And we need to have the courage to make it a blessing, so the world would be a better place.' Sarah's beloved goldendoodle Andy is now with her parents in Kansas. The dog was the first thing Bob thought of when a victim's assistance officer asked if he needed help with anything. 'We told them the dog was locked up somewhere,' Bob said. 'The agent said, 'We'll take care of getting Andy back to Kansas City somehow.'' The dog was found at Yaron's apartment in Washington and flown to Kansas by that evening. But for the Milgrims, the hole Sarah left is huge. 'The void of her personality and the aura of her being around us cannot be replaced. There's nothing that could fill that hole,' Bob said. 'The three of us, Nancy and Jacob and I, will do our best.' This story was reported by CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Meridith Edwards in Washington, DC, and written by CNN's Rachel Clarke in Atlanta.
CNN
4 days ago
- CNN
A father's grief when a ‘light to the world' is put out
In May, Bob Milgrim was taking one of his regular long walks with his wife Nancy in suburban Kansas City when something struck his mind. 'I said, 'Nancy, you know, our lives are perfect. We have two beautiful children, we couldn't ask for more.'' Their only small sadness was the feeling their daughter Sarah, 26, would likely not live close to their home in Prairie Village, Kansas, when she got married and they wouldn't get to babysit grandchildren as often as they would like. Less than a week later, dreams of grandchildren were gone, and the comfort of a perfect life was shredded. On May 21, Sarah was shot dead with her boyfriend Yaron Lischinsky as they were leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC. The gunman told arriving police officers, 'I did it for Gaza,' a witness said. The Milgrims went from musing about babies to burying their own child. From dreaming of their daughter's bright future to being left with only memories. For Bob, there is so much to remember and admire about his only daughter. 'She was everything. She did everything,' he told CNN, reeling off a proud father's list of Sarah's achievements in sports and music, and how she had sung in a choir in European cathedrals on a tour while in high school. She also was a beekeeper and volunteered to feed injured birds of prey at a rescue center, he said. And she had an early and enduring love for dogs. Some mornings Bob would find a young Sarah sleeping with the family pet in its crate. At other times, she would make random four-legged friends. 'She would bring stray dogs home,' he said. 'If she saw a dog without a collar, we'd have to find a home for it or locate the owner … She loved all forms of life.' 'Sarah was a light to the world from the very beginning.' Bob was getting ready to go to bed that Wednesday night last month when his phone lit up with news alerts of a shooting in Washington, DC. At first, he wasn't concerned, but each new piece of information that came out pointed more and more to Sarah and Yaron. The location of the attack was at the Capital Jewish Museum at F and 3rd in Northwest DC. He didn't know Sarah was there, but it was the kind of thing she might do — she often went to events after work. Then it was reported that staffers from the Israeli embassy were involved, and that it was an event for young professionals — just the kind of people Sarah reached out to. And then that a man and a woman had been killed together. 'I knew that Sarah and Yaron were the only couple from the embassy in that age category. And so then I began to become very concerned,' Bob said. He'd already called and texted Sarah but got no response. He called police and the FBI for information, only to be told everyone was responding to the shooting. Finally, someone asked if he could supply Sarah's passport information. He went to his bedroom to look for the copy he had, inadvertently waking his wife, Nancy. She tracked Sarah's phone to the museum. 'We pretty much knew it was her,' Bob said. At that moment a call from a Washington number gave the Milgrims a flash of hope that Yaron was phoning them. But it was the Israeli ambassador to the US, Yechiel Leiter, calling to tell them their daughter was dead. They told him they already knew. But Leiter had more news. Yaron had bought an engagement ring the week before. 'We knew they were very, very serious. We knew they were in love — their bond was unbelievable,' Bob said. He also knew the couple was planning to visit Israel the following week for Sarah to meet Yaron's family. But it was a surprise to learn that Yaron planned to propose in Jerusalem. Soon after her older brother Jacob had his bar mitzvah, Sarah told her parents she didn't want a big party for her own coming-of-age ceremony. But she did want it to be in Israel. Her bat mitzvah two years later was also the first time Bob had been to Israel, and he saw an almost immediate change in his then-teenaged daughter. 'From that point forward, for whatever reason, we don't know, she felt more comfortable in Israel than any place else,' he said. She spent summers and a college semester there, and volunteered for Tech2Peace, an organization that brought Israelis and Palestinians together and taught them technology skills. Sarah helped with the sharing of cultures and finding opportunities to bond, like camping in the Negev Desert, Bob said, adding that she also traveled to the West Bank and made friends with Palestinian women there. Sarah had experienced antisemitism at her high school, where someone once spray-painted swastikas on a building and where hateful jokes were aimed at her. As Jews, Bob said, 'we're always concerned' about the possibility of violence. When she started working at the Israeli embassy in Washington less than a month after the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, she became familiar with the extensive security used there. Bob said he and Nancy had felt it would be OK for her to travel to Israel with the boyfriend she'd met at the embassy and whom she had first mentioned to her dad by saying, 'You're going to love this guy, he's a lot like you. He's a real gentleman.' As the relationship between the young couple became more serious, Sarah's parents tried to show him the best of Kansas City in the hopes that Yaron — who grew up in Germany and Israel — might be persuaded to stay in the US. But even though Yaron loved barbecue and Costco, Bob said they knew the couple would likely relocate to Israel. 'She loved Judaism and loved Israel,' Bob said of Sarah, his voice breaking, adding he hoped love would be her legacy. 'I want people to remember her and remember what she did and remember that she didn't hate anybody,' he said. 'She didn't hate Palestinians. She didn't hate Muslims. She loved them all, yet many people hated her … for being Jewish.' He talked of how people Sarah had been close to had cut off contact when she began working at the embassy, how they would even post hateful messages and how none of them offered condolences to him after her death. 'The people that hated her never stopped to ask her, how did she feel? And they never asked her, what is your viewpoint on how things in the Middle East should be settled? They just assumed that she was bad,' he said. A few weeks before his own family tragedy, Bob said he and Nancy were on one of the first flights into Reagan National Airport in Washington after it reopened following a military helicopter and passenger plane crash nearby that killed 67. 'I realized (dozens) of people had lost their lives and (I was) thinking about all the families and the horrific grief that they were going through. And I became emotional. And little did I know that a few months later I'd be going through the same thing.' Earlier this month, Bob and Nancy traveled to Washington, DC, to clean out Sarah's home. They had helped her to move in, and Bob remembered her excitement that day as she looked forward to all that was ahead, a future now unfulfilled. 'We were the first people to go into her apartment since the murder,' he said. 'It was like a freeze frame in time — the cup of coffee, half drunk, was on the counter. There was a little bit of coffee left in the coffee pot … it was one of the hardest, one of the most difficult days of my life, or Nancy's life.' They had also hoped to meet Yaron's siblings in Washington at a Kennedy Center performance by the US-Israel Opera Initiative that was dedicated to the slain couple. But the outside world intruded again when airports were closed in the Iran-Israel conflict and the Lischinsky family could not travel. One of Bob Milgrim's favorite memories is from a time in Sarah's childhood when she looked to him as a teacher. They were walking outside one morning when Sarah wondered aloud why the sidewalk was dry but the grass was wet even though it hadn't been raining. 'I had to explain dew to her, and she goes, 'Dad, you know everything!'' he remembered with a chuckle. After she was killed, Bob marveled at how much Sarah had taught him, too. 'I've learned how to be good and how to respect other people and how important it is for there to be love in the world and to see good in the world. And that's what Sarah saw,' he said. 'And since her tragic death, I've seen much more of it. I've seen much more good, and bad. 'Of course, the bad was horrific, and it could not have been any worse. But the outpouring of love, both from the Jewish community and all communities around the world is what's keeping us going right now. And it's been unbelievable.' Sarah has been laid to rest in Kansas City. Bob and Nancy have taken the pictures off the walls in Sarah's apartment, and the magnets off her refrigerator. They've kept some of her things and donated the rest. Now, Bob echoes the traditional Jewish message to the bereaved: zichronam l'vracha, or 'May their memory be a blessing.' 'Her memory is wonderful,' he said. 'And we need to have the courage to make it a blessing, so the world would be a better place.' Sarah's beloved goldendoodle Andy is now with her parents in Kansas. The dog was the first thing Bob thought of when a victim's assistance officer asked if he needed help with anything. 'We told them the dog was locked up somewhere,' Bob said. 'The agent said, 'We'll take care of getting Andy back to Kansas City somehow.'' The dog was found at Yaron's apartment in Washington and flown to Kansas by that evening. But for the Milgrims, the hole Sarah left is huge. 'The void of her personality and the aura of her being around us cannot be replaced. There's nothing that could fill that hole,' Bob said. 'The three of us, Nancy and Jacob and I, will do our best.' This story was reported by CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Meridith Edwards in Washington, DC, and written by CNN's Rachel Clarke in Atlanta.
CNN
4 days ago
- CNN
A father's grief when a ‘light to the world' is put out
In May, Bob Milgrim was taking one of his regular long walks with his wife Nancy in suburban Kansas City when something struck his mind. 'I said, 'Nancy, you know, our lives are perfect. We have two beautiful children, we couldn't ask for more.'' Their only small sadness was the feeling their daughter Sarah, 26, would likely not live close to their home in Prairie Village, Kansas, when she got married and they wouldn't get to babysit grandchildren as often as they would like. Less than a week later, dreams of grandchildren were gone, and the comfort of a perfect life was shredded. On May 21, Sarah was shot dead with her boyfriend Yaron Lischinsky as they were leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC. The gunman told arriving police officers, 'I did it for Gaza,' a witness said. The Milgrims went from musing about babies to burying their own child. From dreaming of their daughter's bright future to being left with only memories. For Bob, there is so much to remember and admire about his only daughter. 'She was everything. She did everything,' he told CNN, reeling off a proud father's list of Sarah's achievements in sports and music, and how she had sung in a choir in European cathedrals on a tour while in high school. She also was a beekeeper and volunteered to feed injured birds of prey at a rescue center, he said. And she had an early and enduring love for dogs. Some mornings Bob would find a young Sarah sleeping with the family pet in its crate. At other times, she would make random four-legged friends. 'She would bring stray dogs home,' he said. 'If she saw a dog without a collar, we'd have to find a home for it or locate the owner … She loved all forms of life.' 'Sarah was a light to the world from the very beginning.' Bob was getting ready to go to bed that Wednesday night last month when his phone lit up with news alerts of a shooting in Washington, DC. At first, he wasn't concerned, but each new piece of information that came out pointed more and more to Sarah and Yaron. The location of the attack was at the Capital Jewish Museum at F and 3rd in Northwest DC. He didn't know Sarah was there, but it was the kind of thing she might do — she often went to events after work. Then it was reported that staffers from the Israeli embassy were involved, and that it was an event for young professionals — just the kind of people Sarah reached out to. And then that a man and a woman had been killed together. 'I knew that Sarah and Yaron were the only couple from the embassy in that age category. And so then I began to become very concerned,' Bob said. He'd already called and texted Sarah but got no response. He called police and the FBI for information, only to be told everyone was responding to the shooting. Finally, someone asked if he could supply Sarah's passport information. He went to his bedroom to look for the copy he had, inadvertently waking his wife, Nancy. She tracked Sarah's phone to the museum. 'We pretty much knew it was her,' Bob said. At that moment a call from a Washington number gave the Milgrims a flash of hope that Yaron was phoning them. But it was the Israeli ambassador to the US, Yechiel Leiter, calling to tell them their daughter was dead. They told him they already knew. But Leiter had more news. Yaron had bought an engagement ring the week before. 'We knew they were very, very serious. We knew they were in love — their bond was unbelievable,' Bob said. He also knew the couple was planning to visit Israel the following week for Sarah to meet Yaron's family. But it was a surprise to learn that Yaron planned to propose in Jerusalem. Soon after her older brother Jacob had his bar mitzvah, Sarah told her parents she didn't want a big party for her own coming-of-age ceremony. But she did want it to be in Israel. Her bat mitzvah two years later was also the first time Bob had been to Israel, and he saw an almost immediate change in his then-teenaged daughter. 'From that point forward, for whatever reason, we don't know, she felt more comfortable in Israel than any place else,' he said. She spent summers and a college semester there, and volunteered for Tech2Peace, an organization that brought Israelis and Palestinians together and taught them technology skills. Sarah helped with the sharing of cultures and finding opportunities to bond, like camping in the Negev Desert, Bob said, adding that she also traveled to the West Bank and made friends with Palestinian women there. Sarah had experienced antisemitism at her high school, where someone once spray-painted swastikas on a building and where hateful jokes were aimed at her. As Jews, Bob said, 'we're always concerned' about the possibility of violence. When she started working at the Israeli embassy in Washington less than a month after the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, she became familiar with the extensive security used there. Bob said he and Nancy had felt it would be OK for her to travel to Israel with the boyfriend she'd met at the embassy and whom she had first mentioned to her dad by saying, 'You're going to love this guy, he's a lot like you. He's a real gentleman.' As the relationship between the young couple became more serious, Sarah's parents tried to show him the best of Kansas City in the hopes that Yaron — who grew up in Germany and Israel — might be persuaded to stay in the US. But even though Yaron loved barbecue and Costco, Bob said they knew the couple would likely relocate to Israel. 'She loved Judaism and loved Israel,' Bob said of Sarah, his voice breaking, adding he hoped love would be her legacy. 'I want people to remember her and remember what she did and remember that she didn't hate anybody,' he said. 'She didn't hate Palestinians. She didn't hate Muslims. She loved them all, yet many people hated her … for being Jewish.' He talked of how people Sarah had been close to had cut off contact when she began working at the embassy, how they would even post hateful messages and how none of them offered condolences to him after her death. 'The people that hated her never stopped to ask her, how did she feel? And they never asked her, what is your viewpoint on how things in the Middle East should be settled? They just assumed that she was bad,' he said. A few weeks before his own family tragedy, Bob said he and Nancy were on one of the first flights into Reagan National Airport in Washington after it reopened following a military helicopter and passenger plane crash nearby that killed 67. 'I realized (dozens) of people had lost their lives and (I was) thinking about all the families and the horrific grief that they were going through. And I became emotional. And little did I know that a few months later I'd be going through the same thing.' Earlier this month, Bob and Nancy traveled to Washington, DC, to clean out Sarah's home. They had helped her to move in, and Bob remembered her excitement that day as she looked forward to all that was ahead, a future now unfulfilled. 'We were the first people to go into her apartment since the murder,' he said. 'It was like a freeze frame in time — the cup of coffee, half drunk, was on the counter. There was a little bit of coffee left in the coffee pot … it was one of the hardest, one of the most difficult days of my life, or Nancy's life.' They had also hoped to meet Yaron's siblings in Washington at a Kennedy Center performance by the US-Israel Opera Initiative that was dedicated to the slain couple. But the outside world intruded again when airports were closed in the Iran-Israel conflict and the Lischinsky family could not travel. One of Bob Milgrim's favorite memories is from a time in Sarah's childhood when she looked to him as a teacher. They were walking outside one morning when Sarah wondered aloud why the sidewalk was dry but the grass was wet even though it hadn't been raining. 'I had to explain dew to her, and she goes, 'Dad, you know everything!'' he remembered with a chuckle. After she was killed, Bob marveled at how much Sarah had taught him, too. 'I've learned how to be good and how to respect other people and how important it is for there to be love in the world and to see good in the world. And that's what Sarah saw,' he said. 'And since her tragic death, I've seen much more of it. I've seen much more good, and bad. 'Of course, the bad was horrific, and it could not have been any worse. But the outpouring of love, both from the Jewish community and all communities around the world is what's keeping us going right now. And it's been unbelievable.' Sarah has been laid to rest in Kansas City. Bob and Nancy have taken the pictures off the walls in Sarah's apartment, and the magnets off her refrigerator. They've kept some of her things and donated the rest. Now, Bob echoes the traditional Jewish message to the bereaved: zichronam l'vracha, or 'May their memory be a blessing.' 'Her memory is wonderful,' he said. 'And we need to have the courage to make it a blessing, so the world would be a better place.' Sarah's beloved goldendoodle Andy is now with her parents in Kansas. The dog was the first thing Bob thought of when a victim's assistance officer asked if he needed help with anything. 'We told them the dog was locked up somewhere,' Bob said. 'The agent said, 'We'll take care of getting Andy back to Kansas City somehow.'' The dog was found at Yaron's apartment in Washington and flown to Kansas by that evening. But for the Milgrims, the hole Sarah left is huge. 'The void of her personality and the aura of her being around us cannot be replaced. There's nothing that could fill that hole,' Bob said. 'The three of us, Nancy and Jacob and I, will do our best.' This story was reported by CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Meridith Edwards in Washington, DC, and written by CNN's Rachel Clarke in Atlanta.
New York Post
23-06-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
How the law — and goodwill — are helping to end antisemitism
Recent antisemitic attacks in Boulder, Colorado and Washington, D.C. are a chilling reminder that violent hatred toward Jews is not a relic of the past. These alarming incidents underscore the urgency of confronting antisemitism in the courts to hold wrongdoers accountable. 5 The murders of Yaron Lischinsky and his fiancée Sarah Milgrim in Washington in May brought home just how severe the antisemitism crisis has become. @yaron_li/X This belief is what ultimately reshaped my own career. I was a litigator at Miami's oldest law firm, specializing in employment law for nearly a decade. But after Hamas' October 7 terrorist attack on Israel, I felt an overwhelming need to do more. I reached out to several legal organizations that fight antisemitism, offering my services pro bono. One of them, StandWithUs, quickly responded and sent me a case involving workplace harassment. In that case, the employee was consistently harassed by coworkers and third parties solely because she is Jewish. I guided her through the administrative process of filing a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which put her employer on notice of the hostile work environment. I also helped connect her with local counsel in her state. It was so empowering to help someone who was being unlawfully harassed in the workplace because of her religion. After helping her, I realized that I needed to make this type of legal work—fighting antisemitism as a lawyer—my new career. If there ever was a time to take a stand, it was now. 5 Author DeeDee Bitran turned her passion for advocacy and justice into a new career defending Jews enduring antisemitism. Courtesy of Deedee Bitran Shortly thereafter, I joined the StandWithUs legal team as Senior Counsel and Director of Pro Bono (while remaining Of Counsel at my law firm). I did not realize how many egregious cases of antisemitism nationwide would soon be under my purview. I had no idea just how many remarkable pro bono lawyers we would partner with in nearly every aspect of the law — including employment law, civil rights litigation, defamation, constitutional law, and criminal law. In just the last year, pro bono lawyers have joined StandWithUs' legal team by providing legal help to an identifiably Jewish man who was punched outside of a restaurant while waiting for his Uber; a Jewish waitress repeatedly called 'Anne Frank' at work by her supervisor; a Jewish medical professional denied her professional license renewal because she is Israeli; a Jewish employee who questioned Hamas' statistics and was stalked online by a menacing social media account; a visibly Jewish man thrown out of a store because he is a Jew, and so many more. 5 Via the nonprofit StandWithUs, Bitran helps clients navigate the often complex legal processes that can often accompany tackling hate-based crimes. In all of these cases, StandWithUs turned to its pro bono attorney network for legal representation or consultation, while lawyers provided critical legal assistance in their areas of expertise. We guided Jews and/or Israelis who had been unlawfully targeted for antisemitism. For instance, a Jewish high school student reached out for legal help when students and administrators relentlessly harassed him at school because of his religion. StandWithUs promptly connected him with a local, passionate pro bono lawyer eager to help. Working alongside StandWithUs legal staff and his firm's legal team, the lawyer represented the student, sought and won legal redress for the harassment the student experienced. That one lawyer's efforts not only helped the student feel safer and supported, but, most importantly, achieved a positive resolution for the student with the school and an end to the antisemitic harassment. 5 The site of the antisemitic torching incident at a pro-Israel rally in Boulder, CO. In my role as pro bono director, I have learned that there are many lawyers or law students nationwide who want to help but aren't sure where to start. Pro bono work with organizations like StandWithUs can provide lawyers and law students with compelling and meaningful legal projects and cases to help combat antisemitism in communities, workplaces, and schools. Lawyers can support victims of antisemitism with legal remedies, empowerment, and invaluable support. 5 In October 2023, just weeks after Hamas' attack on Israel, Jewish students were unable to enter their classrooms at the Cooper Union in New York City. X / @JakeyKluger If you're a lawyer or law student asking yourself, 'What can I do?'—this is your answer. Lend your skills. Use your voice. Join the growing network of pro bono attorneys who refuse to stand by in the face of rising antisemitism. The law is a powerful tool, and when placed in the hands of dedicated advocates, it becomes a force for protection and justice. Every pro bono lawyer who steps forward sends a powerful message: that hate will be met with courage, and injustice with action. Deedee Bitran is Director of Pro Bono at the StandWithUs Saidoff Legal Department
Newsweek
11-06-2025
- Politics
- Newsweek
Capital Jewish Museum's LGBTJews Exhibit is About Pride and Preservation
Leaders of Jewish institutions rarely need a reminder that antisemitism, like other forms of discrimination, still exist. But when Washington, D.C.'s Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum launched its new exhibition, "LGBTJews in the Federal City," in May, they had no idea that a deadly attack would unfold on their doorstep. On May 21, Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Milgrim, 26, two Israeli embassy staffers attending an event at the museum, were shot and killed. The suspect, Elias Rodriguez, 31, allegedly told police as he was apprehended: "I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza." In contrast, Lischinsky and Milgrim were at the museum to attend an annual interfaith event held by the American Jewish Committee for young people in diplomatic service, to promote peace and understanding despite differences of beliefs and opinions, specifically focused on humanitarian diplomacy. Rodriguez was charged the following day with murder of foreign officials, amongst other serious federal offenses. "Such acts of terror attempt to instill fear, silence voices and erase history—but we refuse to let them succeed," Dr. Beatrice Gurwitz, executive director of the museum, said in a statement after the shooting. "The Capital Jewish Museum was built to tell the centuries-old story of the greater Washington region's vibrant Jewish community. We are proud to tell these stories of Jewish life. In our work, we share Jewish stories in the service of building bridges and opening dialogue in our beautiful city." Building those kinds of bridges is what the museum is especially proud of, and what its new exhibit represents. Shortly before the killings, Newsweek spoke with Gurwitz in conjunction with WorldPride 2025 for a previously planned story about the new exhibit. While the quotes in this story are from before the shooting, the tone of "LGBTJews in the Federal City" reinforces Gurwitz's sentiment about the importance of resisting fear and not being silenced, and is consistent with how they addressed the attack afterward. "There's going to be debate and disagreement embedded in [what to exhibit]," Gurwitz told Newsweek. "And then the other thing that we take seriously as an institution is doing our best to capture those debates right. There is never one opinion. There is never one approach. And I think that we have a responsibility to not only document Jewish political engagement, but also showcase the ways that people have come at it from diverse perspectives over time." And for much of these debates, no matter the issue, it's the backdrop of Washington, D.C., that gives it its weight and national implications, said Jonathan Edelman, collections curator. "No matter what city people were living in when they fought for their rights, people gathered in Washington." Jewish Allies march in the DC pride parade, 1990s. Jewish Allies march in the DC pride parade, 1990s. Gift of Bet Mishpachah with thanks to Joel Wind & Al Munzer, Lillian & Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum Collection Telling a Complicated History "I feel like my whole curatorial practice for the last 30 years has been leading to this moment," Sarah Leavitt, director of curatorial affairs for the Capital Jewish Museum, told Newsweek. "I think, increasingly, stakes are really high and it's really on us as museum professionals to really be doing part of that work to tell America's story in a much more complicated way. And that includes to tell, in our case, a local Jewish story in a complicated way." The exhibit—with hundreds of artifacts provided by the community, a large portion of which came from the local LGBTQ+ Bet Mishpachah synagogue—maps LGBTQ+ history and its intersection with Jewish history in Washington, D.C., through images, archival protest campaign posters, Washington Blade archives, a panel of the AIDS Memorial Quilt and oral histories produced with the Rainbow History Project. "A big part of this exhibition and this collecting effort is to capture more of this history, especially LGBTQ history, which has either been erased intentionally by people trying to protect themselves, or by people who don't believe that history should be preserved," Edelman said. As a recent transplant to D.C. while in graduate school, he found that "in every aspect of the Jewish community, there were large amounts of out LGBTQ people," unlike where he grew up in the Midwest. "I want everyone to see themselves in this exhibit and see that LGBTQ history is Jewish history." As an intern at the museum in 2019, he had the germ of an idea which has now flourished into this exhibit. The collection puts particular emphasis on two key aspects of queer life in Washington, D.C.: the Lavender Scare moral panic from the late 1940s to the mid-1970s and the AIDS epidemic in the '80s and early '90s, as well as the impact it had on recent LGBTQ+ history in D.C. and the Jewish community. A photograph of Sarah Lynn Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky is displayed outside the Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum on May 29, 2025 in Washington, DC. A photograph of Sarah Lynn Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky is displayed outside the Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum on May 29, 2025 in Washington, DC. Chip Somodevilla/Getty 'What Happens Here Matters' "Washington has a specific story with the Lavender Scare—the purge of homosexuals from the federal government, which we're kind of seeing again right now. This is not a new story," Edelman said. During the height of the anti-Communist movement of the mid-20th century, thousands of queer federal employees were either fired or forced to resign because of their sexual orientation. One of these fired workers, Frank Kameny, became an influential activist in the gay rights movement. He would go on to form the influential Mattachine Society of Washington in 1960 and, in 1965, organized protests outside the White House advocating for gay rights and the reinstatement of federal works. The story of Kameny, a Jewish man, is one of the many told about this period. "To me, it's so important that my generation understands what people before us had to go through and what they fought for beyond the story of Stonewall, beyond Harvey Milk," Edelman said. "Washington was such an epicenter in its own way and had its own unique aspects." While the exhibit does focus on D.C., it's the national implication these stories have that's most salient, despite rarely getting the attention better-known people and events in queer history do, like the 1969 Stonewall riots, an uprising after repeated police brutality against LGBTQ+ people; or Milk, one of the first openly gay elected officials in the U.S. who was assassinated in 1978. "D.C. has such important national resonance. And I think maybe, the rest of the country ignores that at their peril," Leavitt said. "What happens here matters for real. And the work that happens in the federal government every day, it matters. And again, that's not always a march toward justice. I mean, a lot of terrible things have happened at the federal level as well. But it's not just Frank Kameny, who we know devoted his entire life and career to opening up the federal government to gay workers, but there are so many other people as well who are marching with him." "This exhibition is so much more than the sum of its parts because it really helps emphasize why D.C. was such an important place for the LGBTQ movement and how that change rippled out across the country," Gurwitz said. "You see how the emergence of gay culture in D.C., the particular threats to gay people in D.C., help mobilize all of the different kinds of change that happened in D.C., which then has a national impact." Exhibition space at the Captial Jewish Museum Exhibition space at the Captial Jewish Museum Capital Jewish Museum The Sheer Scope Unsurprisingly, given its significance as a turning point for the movement, the exhibit also focuses on the AIDS epidemic. "When you look at the AIDS crisis, this is something that people in our generation, some people know about, but a lot of people don't," Edelman said. "I sat in this home with this one [older] man, where he was flipping through pages of photographs from the 1996 display of the AIDS quilt on the National Mall. And there were a lot of pictures of specific quilt patches, not just the big, broad photos. And I asked him why he took all of these, and he said, 'These are all my friends and former lovers who I lost.' It was dozens of people. And I don't think we understand the scope of that." One thing the trauma of the AIDS epidemic did do was force institutions to reevaluate how LGBTQ+ people are seen. One way this manifested was a critical debate about the inclusion of gay victims of the Holocaust in Jewish institutions during this era. "There was a movement in the 1980s to make sure that the Holocaust Museum tell[s] the story of non-Jewish gay victims of the Holocaust," Gurwitz said. "There were Jewish advocates advocating to tell these stories and ultimately Elie Wiesel wrote a letter and said you have to tell these stories. This needs to be part of it. I think that is such an important testament to the importance of our cultural institutions in sharing history in a way that shapes our understanding of the past." In 1989, Wiesel, a Nobel Prize-winning writer and Holocaust survivor, was awarded the Humanitarian of the Year Award from the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ rights organization. At the ceremony, Wiesel said: "Those who hate you hate me. Bigots do not stop at classes, at races, or at lesbians and gays. Those who hate, hate everybody." The Holocaust Museum in D.C. opened on April 26, 1993, a day after the March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation. And the stories of homosexual victims of the Holocaust were included. US President Barack Obama hands to gay rights activist Frank Kameny a pen which he used to sign a presidential memorandum regarding federal benefits and non-discrimination June 17, 2009 in the Oval Office of the... US President Barack Obama hands to gay rights activist Frank Kameny a pen which he used to sign a presidential memorandum regarding federal benefits and non-discrimination June 17, 2009 in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC. More MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty A Blessing of Memories "I think it resonates so deeply because it's recent history," Gurwitz said about most of the LGBTQ+ history on display at the exhibition. "And it is significant change over time. We can all find moments that we remember, that trigger our own experiences and allow us to see that we have been part of this evolution. So, I think it is actually tremendously moving for people who come in the door." "The rich and interesting and pulls in local context, national context, international context, Jewish stories, non-Jewish stories. There is so much to engage with and to learn that even people who feel like they know this history will have something to learn in this exhibition, and that's extraordinarily gratifying." It's the context of these stories being told through the prism of diverse perspectives that makes "LGBTJews in the Federal City" particularly poignant after the events of May 21. "May their memory be a blessing" is a traditional Jewish expression of condolence after someone dies. Capturing those memories, the lives lived and tragically cut short, like Lischinsky and Milgrim, are what make the work of institutions like the Capital Jewish Museum vital. As Leavitt said about the exhibit before the shooting, she hopes the exhibition is "one way for people to see their story, whatever their identity is." LGBTJews in the Federal City will be on exhibit until January 4, 2026.
