It is May 22, 2026 while I write this, sunset is in some four hours and it will be the last night of Shavuot. This day last year, I woke up to the news that two people had been murdered leaving a Jewish museum that had been hosting an event the night before. I heard the news because my mother had sent me a text that said βbe safe. Love you sweetie.β I wrote the below post after having come home from services where I learned several of our congregation had family who lived in DC. I had seen posts discussing raising money for the shooterβs legal funds, I had seen justifications of the murder, and I had said Kaddish that day for the yahrzeits of my congregationβs loved ones, and the village of a man who was destroyed in the Shoah. 6,000 Jews used to be from his village once. Thereβs not even two left.
Shavuot is a holiday I love, it is joyous and wonderful. But tomorrow morning we will have the Yizkor service and no one will say βamenβ during the Kaddish because all of us are mourning our lost, including all 6,000 of those Jews from that Hungarian village. I did not know Sarah Milgrim or her partner Yaron Lischinsky, but when I stand for Kaddish tomorrow I will be thinking of them. I havenβt stopped thinking about them since I learned their names last year.
