Sarah Milgrim's faith was nurtured by the Jewish community around Kansas City.
In the suburbs of Kansas City, there is a long established Jewish community that is active beyond its modest numbers. The rabbis of the different synagogues all know each other, and families are often members of more than one congregation.
'We're very close knit,' said Rabbi Stephanie Kramer of The Temple, Congregation B'nai Jehudah in Overland Park, Kan. 'We're not big enough to not be.'
Sarah Milgrim grew up here, leading the life of an American teenage girl: sleepovers, high school choir tours, late night conversations with friends. She was an idealist and a lover of animals — she had a pet rabbit named Pablo — and was determined to make a difference in the world, perhaps by working to protect the environment, said Emma Chalk, a close friend since middle school.
But as she grew older, people that knew her said, Ms. Milgrim developed a deeper commitment to her own Jewish identity.
This commitment led her on trips to Israel, where friends said she found a sense of purpose in working with young Israelis and Palestinians, and it eventually led her to a position at the Israeli embassy in Washington, starting just weeks after the Hamas attack on Oct. 7.
On Wednesday night, her job brought her to a reception at the Capital Jewish Museum, where she was one of two embassy employees fatally shot in what the authorities say was an attack by a gunman proclaiming support for the Palestinian cause.
'Since Oct. 7, we've all seen a rise in antisemitism, a rise in hate speech,' said Jay Lewis, the president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City. 'But this was direct violence on one of our own. It got very personal, very fast.'
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