Two high-profile attacks on the American Jewish community in the past two months have the Johnson County Jewish community holding their breath and at a loss for answers.
The May 21 killings of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, who was from Prairie Village, in Washington, D.C., sparked outrage and grief and were followed soon after by the June 1 attack in Boulder, Colorado, on an Oct. 7 solidarity walk that injured at least 15 people.
A Johnson County native and member of Congregation Beth Torah in Overland Park, Milgrim was remembered in a May 27 service. Beth Torah Executive Director Damien Timms said the area’s Jewish community has come together even more in light of the recent tragedies, noting that three rabbis conducted Milgrim’s service. In fact, while she grew up in the Beth Torah community, she and her parents were also members of other synagogues in Johnson County, including B’nai Jehudah and Kol Ami.
But, he said, the community remains in a “holding pattern.”
“It’s a horrible thing to say because basically what it means is that we’re waiting for the next one. So we are reviewing our security processes, we’re checking in with our community neighbors to see how they’re doing,” he said. “But really sadly, in this climate, what we’re doing is we’re trying to keep our people safe, and that’s how we live in America in 2025.”
Timms said Beth Torah and the wider Jewish community are engaged in two primary activities at the moment.
First, they are working closely with local law enforcement and security organizations like Jewish community-focused Secure Community Network, a threat-monitoring and security advisory nonprofit, and drawing on the security expertise of the Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City.
Timms said a federation staff member “works with national and local law enforcement to ensure any risks and/or threats are known and planned for.”
He added that Beth Torah, like many area congregations, has a long relationship with local law enforcement and hires off-duty Overland Park Police officers to guard services and events.
Second, he and his congregation are also continuing to reach out to “other faith groups, the LGBTQ+ community and other marginalized communities to promote solidarity and social justice.”
Timms noted that, ultimately, that’s where solutions leading to safety lie: with neighbors getting to know each other and building connections across different communities to counter the rise of hate.
From Johnson County into the conflict in Israel
The Kansas City-area Jewish community is also directly feeling the effects of the ongoing war in Gaza.
Longtime resident Alan Edelman recently found himself with a front row seat to the current hostilities. His 10-day trip there ended up lasting two weeks because Israel had closed its airspace while exchanging missile attacks with Iran.
Edelman is a former director of engagement and leadership at the Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City and has made 38 trips to Israel over the years, often inviting Kansas City-area students and community leaders to come along.
Edelman positioned the current conflict with Iran and the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, in the context of hostilities in the region that date back to the 1948 inception of the modern State of Israel and which include 1967’s Six Days War, 1973’s Yom Kippur War, the intifadas of 1987 and 2000, and other conflicts.
“Sadly, this is a country that knows this kind of hostility, and Iran has been threatening to blow us off the face of the earth for decades, and they’re building a nuclear program to accomplish that,” he said.
When it comes to the connections between Johnson County’s Jewish and non-Jewish populations, Edelman feels they have been and remain strong.
Referring to the April 2014 shooting in Overland Park when a self-professed antisemite attacked the Jewish Community Center and Jewish retirement community Village Shalom, killing three people, Edelman said there was fear that the community would pull back — even that people would cancel their memberships, “but membership has increased,” he said, noting with thankfulness what he said has been clear support from the Overland Park Police Department and the community at large.
It is reasonable that the center sees broad use given its offerings: aquatics, arts and culture, fitness and sports activities, youth and family programs, a child care center and programs for adults over 55.
The Johnson County Post reached out to the Jewish Community Center multiple times for comment but did not hear back by press time.
Back home, is the community as integrated as it could be?
Neta Meltzer, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Bureau | AJC, said that currently in Johnson County, the Jewish congregations remain focused primarily on internal support and checking on its members.
When asked what the wider Johnson County and Kansas City metro community could do at this moment, she said there’s a need for greater community understanding and solidarity, especially with the presence of ongoing security concerns.
“Within the Jewish community, whenever there’s a major tragedy or incident, we instinctively come together — our first concern, obviously, is ‘are we OK? What do our people need? What would help in their grieving process?’” Meltzer said.
“And then something that we do regardless of whether there’s an incident, just sort of our day-to-day, is that relationship building with members of other faith communities, with members of other community groups, with elected officials, to say, ‘hey, here’s who we are, here’s what we’re about,’” she added. “That’s really what my organization is tasked with doing.
“But as you can imagine, just with the sheer pace of what’s been happening, we’ve been really focused on checking in on our community right now.”
Meltzer highlighted a string of events near and far that are “staggering” and “beg reflection”: the 2014 Johnson County Jewish Community Center shooting, the 2018 Tree of Life shooting, the 2022 Colleyville hostage crisis.
Meltzer added that Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack and the war that has played out since in Gaza are “for so many of us in this community … really the before and after of what it means to be a Jewish person in the world in this moment.”
Edelman echoed that feeling with his illustration of life in Israel now, experienced during his trip earlier this summer. He noted that since Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s reign and his targeting of Israel with ballistic missiles, Israel has built extensive protective infrastructure, including shelters and early warning systems.
“You go to the shelter as soon as the siren goes off,” he said. “There’s one siren that goes off as soon as they detect the missiles coming from Iran and then a second siren, it ends up being in your neighborhood. The first one, you have about 10 minutes, five to 10 minutes, but the second one, you have a minute to a minute and a half.”
With this in mind and with the April 13 arson incident at Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s residence and the D.C. and Boulder attacks, Meltzer said “it’s like being under siege.”
“First, just in the physical sense of the fear that comes with being aware of all of these different violent attacks and incidents against the Jewish community,” Meltzer said, “but then there’s this other layer — we’re fighting for people to understand who we are and what our connection is to this piece of land half a world away, and why we feel so closely connected to it, what role it plays in Jewish identity.
“These are things that we find that a lot of the challenges we face come from just a deep lack of understanding about what this community even is.”
For his part, Timms agreed with Meltzer but added that “American Jewry is a people that is interconnected with other faiths to achieve a greater understanding of all and to provide the opportunity for others to get to know us.”
To that end, Meltzer wants people to understand that the Jewish identity doesn’t fit cleanly into simple categories. Noting that it’s an ancient identity, she said, among other things, the identity is a combination of the ideas of a faith group, a joinable tribe, a nation and more.
And, she added that even Jews in America who’ve never been to Israel may experience a very deep connection to the state “and feel deeply connected to what’s happening over there.”
But, she underscored that the complexity of Jewish identity must allow for the right to disagree, to critique, noting that during the 2023 judicial reform protests in Israel, Israelis by the hundreds of thousands protested Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government’s efforts to reduce the power of the judiciary.
“What I want people to understand: Zionism is the Jewish identity,” Meltzer said. “It’s not dependent upon one leader or one policy or one military operation. My Zionism is not dependent on these factors. And if there are people out there who don’t agree with something that Israel is doing, you can criticize that. That is not antisemitism.”
Meanwhile, the community waits
Timms said he feels he and his staff have targets on their backs because, “just like the staff of all synagogues and Jewish facilities and institutions here in Kansas City, we all go to work at a place that’s a target.”
“We don’t want to have to come together again for yet another tragedy,” Timms said, “but, we live in a climate of not if, but when the next one will happen.”
But, he noted, the solution lies in connections beyond the community.
“Being Jewish is about being social justice forward. It’s about being aware that we have to be advocates for others just as much as we ask them to be advocates for us.”
Keep reading: Father of Sarah Milgrim says his daughter was ‘trying to do the peace building’
