KSHB 41 reporter Lily O’Shea Becker covers Franklin and Douglas counties in Kansas. Share your story idea with Lily.
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Kansan Sarah Milgrim, one of the two Israeli Embassy staffers killed outside the Capital Jewish Museum in D.C. on Wednesday, graduated from the University of Kansas in 2021 and left behind a legacy in the university's Jewish community.
Milgrim's partner, Yaron Lischinsky, was also killed in the shooting.
"We are devastated," said Rabbi Zalman Tiechtel of the Chabad Jewish Center at KU. "Our entire community of the Kansas University Jewish community, the students, the alumni, the parents, the families, were in shock."
KU Hillel released a statement on social media expressing the loss of its former member and said those closest to Milgrim described her as "the definition of the best person."
Sarah's smile brought warmth to gatherings at KU's Chabad Jewish Center, Tiechtel said.
"Hard to believe that Sarah's smile is no more here simply because of baseless hate and darkness," he said.
Federal authorities said the deadly shooting is being investigated as an act of targeted violence, according to the Associated Press.
“Right behind me, Sarah would come spend Shabbat dinners, holiday programs, Hanukkah celebrations," Tiechtel said on the grounds of a construction site of the new Chabad Jewish Center at KU set to open in September.
At the same spot Sarah once celebrated, Tiechtel says they're rebuilding a brighter Jewish future.
"We fight this darkness with light," he said.
KU's Chabad Jewish Center community decided Thursday morning, Sarah will be part of that future.
“Her name, her legacy, her presence will be imprinted within this actual physical structure so that for the next 100 years, as young Jewish students will come celebrate, she'll be part of that celebration," Tiechtel said.
Tiechtel encourages the greater Lawrence and Kansas City Jewish community to lean on each other at this time.
“The world now has a big void, has tremendous darkness from the loss of such a bright soul," he said. "We need to fill that hole by doing more goodness, more kindness, more mitzvot, more love, more connectivity, exactly what Sarah would want us to do.”
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