What does it mean when the man killed in one of the worst antisemitic attacks in US history…was Christian?
He worked for the Israeli embassy, where he “identified as Jewish,” but also was an active member of a Messianic congregation. Should that matter?
As I began to read the backstory of the tragic couple killed this week in what is quickly being seen as one of the most notorious acts of antisemitism in US history, a few discoveries stood out.
Both of the victims were bridge builders, immersed in worldly experiences of multiculturalism and fully understanding the dangers of hate. The event they were attending focused on how a coalition of international aid organizations is attempting to “turn pain into purpose,” by resolving humanitarian crises during these tense times.
The two victims were living embodiments of that ideal of coexistence.1
One of them, Sarah Milgrim, lived abroad in several places, including Costa Rica, and she was in proximity to violence directed against Jews right at home, including the Overland Park, Kansas shooting in 2014 that killed three at a Jewish Community Center, which traumatized her as a young student. It reminded her that safety is elusive for Jews even on her home turf. With or without Toto, Kansas for her was not Kansas anymore.
And the other victim of one of the worst antisemitic attacks in US history, Yaron Lischinsky, was not even Jewish. The NY Times reports that he “grew up in a culturally mixed family with a Jewish father and a Christian mother, and was a practicing Christian, according to Ronen Shoval, the dean of the Argaman Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem.”
The Israeli embassy reported after the attack that he “identified as Jewish,” but unless he converted, which is highly doubtful, traditional rabbinic authorities, especially in Israel, would consider anyone not born of a Jewish mother to be a non-Jew. And he was a “practicing Christian” all the more. The Forward reported that he was in fact a Messianic Jew, who belonged to a Messianic congregation in Jerusalem. In the eyes of most mainstream Jews, his belief in Jesus would place him outside the fold, even though Messianic Jews tend to follow many Jewish customs, refitted for a Christian theological mindset.
Many Jews who are ordinarily inclusive when it comes to defining who is a Jew have big problems with Messianic Judaism, which is seen by many as a cover (like “Jews for Jesus”) to prey on young Jews looking for spiritual direction.
In fact, many of the organizations screaming “Antisemitism!” regarding these murders would condemn Messianic Judaism as itself antisemitic. When Mike Pence invited a Messianic Jewish minister to bless a campaign event in 2019, he was slammed by some of these same Jewish organizations. I must admit that I did too.
See: Murdered Staffer Had Deep Ties to Messianic Community in Israel (Christianity Today)
See: A young Israeli diplomat was returning home to propose. Now they dig his grave (The Telegraph)
The immediate question you must be asking is whether any of this matters.
It shouldn’t. An innocent, peace-loving, bridge-building young man was gunned down in the prime of life. That’s all that matters. If the gunman thought he was Jewish and was aiming for Jews because he hates Jews, it was a hate crime, pure and simple. If he was targeting supporters of Israel for ideological reasons, it was a terror attack. Either way it was a murder. Whether or not Yaron was Jewish, and by whose definition, including Yaron’s own, it shouldn’t matter.
It almost feels like an obscenity to have to discuss this question right now.
But unfortunately, it matters. For a number of reasons.
For one thing, it demonstrates how complex Jewish identity is these days. Yaron’s story (even just the interfaith lineage, minus the Messianic part) is not unusual, especially in the US, where many Reform rabbis accept patrilineal descent as a criterion for Jewishness. Under Reform auspices, his father’s Jewish identity could have been sufficient for him to be seen as a Jew - though his belief in Jesus would likely have negated that among Reform authorities. Still, he may have seen himself as patrilineally and culturally Jewish. But having grown up in Israel, where Ultra-Orthodox authorities control personal status issues and are scrupulous about who is and who isn’t a Jew, his lacking a Jewish mother would have mattered quite a bit. If he was not Jewish by traditional definition, he and Sarah would not have been able to be buried together in Israel - even if married - at least not in a Jewish cemetery.
His body is being flown back to Israel today and the funeral will be private.3 It will be interesting to see where he is allowed to be buried.
Undoubtedly their wedding - had they survived - would not have been in Israel, nor would it have been recognized by rabbinic authorities there as Jewish wedding, even if Yaron considered himself Jewish. And while their hypothetical children - and I am choking up while writing this - would have been considered Jewish because Sarah was, some might have questioned their legitimacy. Identity issues are just extraordinarily complicated, and that’s before you add the Messianic element to it.
Let me repeat that none of this should matter right now. And I apologize to the civilized world for dwelling on the victims’ Jewish identity.
If there is anything positive to be gained by this horrific event, it’s that Yaron’s fuzzy background is preventing groups from pigeonholing him and claiming him as exclusively their own. His heroic life and tragic death are not going to become cliches. He and Sarah won’t become mere statistics. This was more than a simple act of antisemitism, and more than a Hamas-inspired terror attack. To the degree that they are martyrs, it’s solely because they assume their place on a growing list of those killed for being presumed to be Jews.
If anything, though, this was as much an attack on bridge builders and peace workers everywhere. It was also verification that being a Jew is a multifaceted choice, as it was for Yaron - even if he maintained some facets of his Christian identity, he threw his lot in with the future of the Jewish people and the Jewish state, professionally and personally, and was quite likely on the path towards building a Jewish family.
Bridges vs. Barriers
Here’s an irony. At this moment, the Israeli government is debating action that would repeal a universally accepted definition of who is a Jew that was made so broad as to allow even a person with just a single Jewish grandparent to find sanctuary in the Jewish state. While such a person would probably not be considered Jewish according to traditional standards, that currently does not matter. It hasn’t mattered since the Law of Return was first enacted in July of 1950. With the embers of the Holocaust still smoldering, the State of Israel used the Nazis’ definition of Jewishness, as manifested in the Nuremberg Laws.
But now this narrow-minded coalition, obsessed with building walls instead of bridges, wants even to keep away from the Jewish state people who would have been gassed at Auschwitz. It didn’t matter how many Jewish grandparents the person next to you in the gas chamber had, or even if that person was even “officially” Jewish.
Yaron may have been Christian or he may have been Jewish - or perhaps both. Maybe even neither. But what he definitely is - irreversibly and tragically - is dead. The murderer did not distinguish.
A rabbinic text specifically states that the righteous of all peoples have a share in the World to Come. No distinctions are drawn where it matters most. The rabbis lived in hard times – they could have easily fallen into the parochialism that is so prevalent in our world today. But they rejected that.
But now, following the Shoah, we've reached a different place in the evolution of Judaism and human civilization. I believe we have entered a world of connection rather than separation and distinction. But the old world of divisiveness is not giving up without a fight. We need to build bridges.
Which is precisely what Sarah and Yaron spent their all-too-brief lives doing. They loved Israel, the loved humanity and they loved peace.
"Sarah was so empathetic and talking about the people in Israel who were suffering, the Palestinians in Israel who are suffering," said friend, Jennifer Mizrahi on ABC 7 in LA. "She was an incredible person, and she will be really missed."
We need to continue their work.
SEE THIS WEEK’S COLUMN FOR R.N.S. AND MY JEWISH ETHICIST PIECES
Per L.A ABC 7 Eyewitneess News: "Sarah was so empathetic and talking about the people in Israel who were suffering, the Palestinians in Israel are suffering," said friend, Jennifer Mizrahi. "She was an incredible person, and she will be really missed."
"Yaron was the kind of guy that would have conversations with anybody about anything," said another friend, Mariam Wahba. "I will forever think of him as a diplomat and a peacemaker at heart."
And Sarah was mourned by her family and synagogue back in Kansas.
“In a world flooded with empty slogans and online posturing, Sarah Milgrim was something far rarer: a quiet peace builder. She didn’t seek headlines. She sought dialogue. Just a few years out of college, she was already known for her engagement with organizations that brought together Christians and Jews and Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians. Her final master’s degree research project was on the role of cross-cultural friendships in peace-building.”
Here are some notes regarding the funeral. The funeral was held in the small cemetery of Yaron’s moshav, and a number of Israeli officials showed up.
From the article:
“The funeral service blended religious traditions and elements. A leader of the Hebrew-speaking King of Kings congregation of Jerusalem — part of a Messianic community that says its mission is to reveal the true face of Jesus to Israel — officiated alongside representatives of the Orthodox Jewish burial society.”
I checked on the community’s cemetery - a small one on the outskirts of Beit Zayit, and it has an interesting story - righteous gentiles from the Holocaust are buried there.
“Mizrahi and Ashkenazim are buried there. Devout heaven-fearers along with freemen whose only word on their tombstone is "Adam" or "Lover of the Land". Descendants of rabbis and rebbes along with Christian Righteous Among the Nations (a matter that sparked controversy but was decided by a majority vote, as some of the founders of the moshav from Yugoslavia were the ones who saved their Jewish spouses in the Holocaust). At the entrance on the left, the grave of a Muslim Righteous Among the Nations from Bosnia, Zinave Hardega, who saved a Jewish family and during the civil war in Yugoslavia, was brought to Israel with her children by the family she saved.”
https://amudanan.co.il/w/P243525
See more on Messianic Jews from the current edition of the religion journal ARC:
Here’s the most relevant passage, interviewing a Messianic “rabbi.”
https://arcmag.org/the-jesus-loving-rabbi-of-litchfield-county/
“All Jews, in essence, are messianic,” Rabbi Peter said cheekily. “We may not all agree on who the messiah is.” He is well aware of the negative connotations of Jews for Jesus, the branch of Messianic Judaism popular in the 1970s and 1980s that was generally considered to be Christian proselytizing in disguise. He insists that his form of Messianic Judaism, which is not connected to any larger organization or movement, is not that. There’s no hidden agenda, he promises. “I do not support in any way people trying to proselytize and convert people. I feel that our call is to awaken, not convert.”
That works “both ways.” In church on Sundays, “I’m not trying to make a Christian person Jewish,” he said. “I want whatever I share to awaken them to become a better Christian.”
Likewise, he added, “with a Jewish person, I don’t want them to be converted into anything. I just want them to realize, ‘Oh my gosh, this is my scripture, this is my Moshiach.’”
Talk, write, be angry but never harm another person!!!!
One death is too much . Killing never solves anything. Whether it it is in the US, Israel or Gaza. All deaths are equal .