A Chapter or a Footnote?
Shabbat Parashat Behar-Bechukotai
May 24, 2025
When the story of this era in North American Jewish history is finally written, how will the murders in Washington be remembered? Will the brutal slaying of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim be given a full chapter – one with names, parents, love, and pain or will it be left to languish in a footnote, buried in small print, read by no one, skipped over in silence?
This Shabbat, together with our American brothers and sisters, we are mourning. We are outraged. We are afraid.
We are outraged that in 2025, Jews are still hunted for who they are – together with their friends and allies. And we are afraid – afraid that Yaron and Sarah will not be the last.
But we are also asking: will this be a chapter or a footnote?
It feels like a chapter. It should be a chapter. This was a watershed moment: an attack with brutal clarity, rooted in hatred, crying out for reckoning. It demands its own telling. It demands its own turning point.
And yet, I fear we’ve stood at this threshold before.
Surely, the eleven souls taken at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh earned a chapter. But others? Murders that at the time shook us to our core have since faded to the edges of memory.
Can you name the last victim of fatal antisemitism in the United States?
Joseph Neumann.
He was murdered with a machete in Monsey in 2019.
And before that? Three Jews killed at a kosher grocery store in Jersey City. Eight months earlier: Lori Gilbert-Kaye, gunned down in Poway, California.
Do you remember them? Or are they already relegated to the footnotes?
That is the great danger: not just the violence itself, but our fading memory of it. Because when our stories shrink into footnotes, our presence shrinks too. And soon enough, so does our safety.
What’s most chilling is that this list – the one I just read – is not complete. Other attacks were planned and nearly executed: in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Texas – even one originating here in Canada. Thank God for law enforcement. But how long until the next one slips through?
Perhaps what makes this moment different – what gives it the power to break through – is that the shooter shouted “Free Palestine”. This was not just a murder. It was a message. A political manifesto, stained in blood.
And the reaction? Worth noting – because the fact that it is worth noting is, in itself, terrifying.
Yes, many usual critics of Israel swiftly condemned the violence. And yes, we welcome those condemnations. But let’s be honest: statements opposing the murder of people thought to be Jews should not be praiseworthy. They should be assumed. And yet, here we are, breathing sighs of relief because someone had the decency to say, “This is wrong.”
Not everyone did. A Green Party candidate in Calgary said the murders were “100% justified.” Charlotte Kates, the Canadian leader of Samidoun, called them “only logical.” These are not entirely fringe voices; they are part of a larger chorus. And we must ask: what of the silent ones? Those who don’t post, don’t tweet, don’t scream – but also don’t mourn?
Our enemies, both loud and quiet, are watching. And some are celebrating. That alone should tell us: this is different.
But will it be remembered as different?
The cruelty of the murders – killing a couple just minutes after they attended a summit on humanitarian aid, a couple about to be engage – only adds to the heartbreak. And perhaps, just perhaps, to the staying power of this moment.
But still we ask: chapter or footnote?
Our parashah this week offers an eerie echo of our fears:
“You shall be routed by your enemies, your foes shall rule over you, and you shall flee when no one pursues.”
The Malbim, in his Ayelet HaShachar, distinguishes between three kinds of enemy: שׂוֹנֵא, אוֹיֵב, and צָר.
The שׂוֹנֵא is the silent hater. He harbors disdain in his heart but rarely speaks. His hate is invisible, until it isn’t. You see it in his inaction, in his indifference. “So what?” he thinks. “Just another Jew dead.”
The אוֹיֵב is louder. His hatred is out in the open, but he doesn’t wield a weapon. Instead, he wields words. He chants “Globalize the Intifada,” and “From the river to the sea,” and pretends not to know what those chants mean. Many know. They just don’t care.
And then there is the צָר – the one who acts. Who plans. Who kills. Robert Bowers. John Earnest. David Anderson. Francine Graham. Elias Rodriguez. צָר, all of them.
Elias Rodriguez pulled the trigger. But he didn’t act alone.
He was cheered on by the אוֹיֵב who gave him ideological ammunition.
He was enabled by the שׂוֹנֵא who turned away.
He was empowered by every leader who failed to draw a line between protest and violence, between criticism and hate.
And he was permitted – yes, permitted – by university administrators, public intellectuals, and public figures who didn’t want to make waves, so instead made excuses.
That’s how a people becomes unsafe: not in one moment of hatred, but in a thousand moments of silence.
When Jewish blood is cheap, our enemies spill it with ease.
So what do we do?
The parashah contains a haunting curse:
"The sound of a driven leaf shall cause them to flee."
That is no way to live – forever trembling, forever watching the wind.
We must not cower.
We cannot let fear define us.
We cannot shrink.
We cannot become invisible in the hope that invisibility will make us safe.
Our best recourse - perhaps our only recourse – is to live visibly, proudly, defiantly Jewish lives. To march tall in our Judaism. To show up in shul. To wear our Magen David and mezuzot and kippot without shame. To join with thousands upon thousands of other Jews and our allies tomorrow in the Walk with Israel. I want to see you there. Your people are relying on you.
That is how we write chapters.
That is how we make memory stick.
Let what happened in Washington be a turning point – not a tragedy in a series, but a wake-up call that ended the series.
Let us tell our non-Jewish friends who Yaron and Sarah were.
Let us remember them, loudly and often.
Let us write them into the chapter.
And never, never, let them be pushed into the footnote.
