A Statement About the May 21, 2025, Washington, DC, Shooting from Moment Magazine Editor-in-Chief Nadine Epstein

MAY 22, 2025, WASHINGTON, DC—Last night, a few miles from Moment’s office, two innocent young people, a couple about to become engaged, were gunned down and killed as they left the AJC’s annual Young Diplomats reception at Washington, DC’s Capital Jewish Museum.

That I even need to write this sentence is shocking. 

The deaths of Sarah Milgrim, 26, and Yarón Lischinsky, 30, are tragic on a multitude of levels. On her LinkedIn page, Milgrim described herself as dedicated to bridging divides, promoting religious harmony and advancing sustainable practices. Lischinsky was a budding diplomat. Their futures have been erased. The world will never know what they would have contributed, and their children and grandchildren will never be born. Their families are in great pain as are their friends and their colleagues at the Israeli Embassy where they met and worked. That an AJC event about peace and a beautiful museum built to celebrate Jewish history in our nation’s capital were desecrated by hate is deeply tragic and traumatic.

The deaths of Sarah Milgrim and Yarón Lischinsky are also a tragedy for America. For an America riddled by hate, fed by misinformation and teeming with guns that an angry, troubled person could get his hands on. 

Last night, before we posted it, I watched the video Moment received of the suspected killer as he was escorted out of the museum, shouting “Free, free Palestine!” He too was young. Police have identified him as Elias Rodriguez of Chicago, age 30, the same age as Lischinsky. How he became the man who witnesses say gunned down two innocent people is unknown at this point, but that story is surely also a tragedy. 

Also tragic: Milgrim, Jewish from Kansas, and Lischinsky, an Israeli-born Christian Zionist with German citizenship, are the latest in a list of people who have been killed in the United States in the past few years alone, simply because they were Jews or perceived as Jews. That there is such a list, too, is shocking.  

• Thomas Meixner, a University of Arizona professor was shot and killed on campus in 2022. 
• Rabbi Josef Neumann was stabbed in 2019 at his home in Monsey, NY,  and died three months later from his wounds.
• Mindy Ferencz, the owner of a kosher supermarket in Jersey City, NJ, and Moshe Deutsch, a customer, were among four people shot and killed there in 2019. Douglas Miguel Rodriguez, an employee, and Jersey City police detective Joseph Seals were also killed.
• Lori Gilbert-Kaye, a worshipper, was shot in 2019 at the Chabad of Poway synagogue, in San Diego County, CA.
• Irving Younger, Melvin Wax, Rose Mallinger, Bernice Simon, Sylvan Simon, Jerry Rabinowitz, Joyce Fienberg, Richard Gottfried, Daniel Stein, Cecil Rosenthal and David Rosenthal were the eleven Jewish worshippers gunned down at the Tree of Life /Or L’Simcha Congregation in Pittsburgh, PA, in 2018. 
• Blaze Bernstein, a gay college student, was stabbed to death that same year in Lake Forest, CA.

Yehi zichronah livrakha. Let all their memories be a blessing. 

Words and symbols have been the focus of intense debate of late about what constitutes antisemitism. But there’s no gray area in the list above: These are depraved, unjust, violent and absolutely antisemitic hate crimes. We must come together as a nation to prevent future tragedies. To combat antisemitism and all hate. Hate is our enemy.