They were just days away from a marriage proposal when a gunman cut their lives short.
Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim were leaving a reception for young Jewish diplomats at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, on Wednesday evening when a man fired into their group. The young couple, both employees of the Israeli Embassy, were killed.
Lischinsky, a 30-year-old Israeli citizen, had deep ties to his country’s Messianic Jewish community.
“He was a godly young man, and he really just wanted to serve God and Israel with all his heart,” said Sandy Shoshani, whose husband, Oded Shoshani, pastors a Hebrew-speaking congregation in the King of Kings network in Jerusalem. “The family are precious friends and believers, strong in the Lord, and lovers of Israel.”
Shoshani said Lischinsky’s family has been a part of her congregation for more than 20 years, and all five of the family’s kids have served in the Israel Defense Forces. Lischinsky finished his master’s degree three years ago and immediately began working for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, according to Shoshani. She described him as an intelligent, warm, and funny guy who loved everyone he met.
Milgrim, 26, grew up in Kansas, where she was involved in Jewish student organizations. As a teenager, she witnessed an antisemitic hate crime that made her think about the threats faced by Jews in America.
“I worry about going to my synagogue,” she told a local TV station in 2017. “That shouldn’t be a thing.”
The couple attended the new members class at Church of the Ascension and Saint Agnes, an Episcopal church in Washington, Ryan Danker, a scholar at the John Wesley Institute, told CT.
Federal authorities are investigating the Jewish museum shooting as both a hate crime and act of terrorism. They have charged 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez, a Chicago resident, with first-degree murder. Rodriguez reportedly told the arresting officers, “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza.”
Antisemitic attacks have dramatically increased since the start of the war in Gaza, following the Hamas attacks in October 2023. New York City, home to the largest Jewish population in the world, experienced a 30 percent increase in antisemitic hate crimes between 2022 and 2024, according to one report.
Jews for Jesus CEO Aaron Abramson said Jewish people always fear the violence underneath criticisms of the state of Israel.
“This is part of the landscape of the hatred that we [live in]. And it’s scary for Jewish people,” he said. “It feels like it’s percolating just beneath the surface, and we know historically that antisemitic hatred, it doesn’t take long for it to turn into things like what happened in DC.”
The Messianic Jewish community in Israel is close-knit, and Abramson said many of his team members attended youth camps with Lischinsky growing up.
According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, there are roughly 188,000 Christians in Israel. Three-quarters of them are Arab Christians. David Pileggi, rector of Christ Church in Jerusalem’s Old City, also knew Lischinsky and worked with his father for three years.
Pileggi said Lischinsky frequently visited his church and enjoyed the Anglican liturgy. He said they talked several times about the possibility of reconciliation between Arabs and Jews.
“The small Christian and Messianic Jewish community in Israel is paying a heavy price for the Gaza war,” he said.
The deaths of Lischinsky and Milgrim drew widespread condemnation from world leaders, including US president Donald Trump, who posted on social media, “These horrible D.C. killings, based obviously on antisemitism, must end, NOW!”
