I Didn’t Know Them, But I Know This

A Poem:

I didn’t know them.
Not their voices,
not the way they looked when they were tired or laughing,
not how they moved through the world
with the quiet confidence
of people who belong.

I only know what the news said—
a shooting,
a shout,
two young lives cut down
on a quiet street in Washington, DC.

They were not symbols.
They were not soldiers.
They were people—
partners,
Jews,
alive.

And now, they are gone.

Shot for daring to exist
as Israelis,
as Jews,
as peace-seekers
in a world that increasingly prefers
the easy comfort of slogans
over the hard work of coexistence.

I didn’t know them.
But my friends did.
Sarah was their student once,
a bright spirit at Hillel in Kansas,
growing into someone
the world desperately needed more of.

And as I sit with the shock of this week's grief,
another memory rose—
not from headlines,
but from summers long ago at camp,
when we’d gather on the first Friday night,
staff week before the campers arrived,
to learn Torah in the names
of two other young Jews,
taken too soon.

I didn’t know Matt Eisenfeld or Sara Duker either.
But I remember their names—
spoken with reverence,
carried in stories,
whispered between the Torah
learnt for their sake and ours.

They too were young,
in love,
idealistic,
American Jews
killed for who they were—
bombed on a bus in Jerusalem
for someone else’s idea
of freedom.

Decades apart,
but the same hate,
the same lie:
that killing Jews
is resistance.

I didn’t know them.
But I know this—
this pain is familiar.
This rage has been sitting quietly
in the corners of our hearts
for too long.

We are told
not to make it political.
We are told
not to make it about antisemitism.
But it was.

It is.

And I will not look away.

I didn’t know them.
But I mourn them.
I say their names
like a prayer:
Sarah. Yaron.
Matt. Sara.
Zichronam livracha.

May their memories
become the fire
that keeps us awake.
That keeps us human.
That keeps us Jewish
even when the world
tries to forget
our right to be here.

---

For Sarah Milgrim & Yaron Lischinsky, z”l, and in remembrance of Sara Duker & Matt Eisenfeld, z”l