Who will save the Christians of the Middle East?

A few days ago Prince Charles lamented about the death of Christians and Christianity in the Middle East, particularly in Syria. He told the BBC he fears there will be “very, very few” Christians left in the Middle East after the turmoil wracking the region. “But at the same time I fear that the problems in the Middle East are not going to go away immediately…And so there is a danger that there is going to be very, very few left.” He said, and rightly so, that the plight of Christians persecuted by Islamic extremists was “a most agonizing situation.” And he noted they were only one of many minorities in trouble around the world. Lots of talk.

I know that Israel has set up hospitals on the border to help and has been tending to these people for more than two years. So what is the Christian world doing, exactly, to save their brothers and sisters? Here is the story of one brave woman who was behind the rescue of the Jews from Syria. One woman and 3,228 Jews. Her name is Judy Feld Carr. I met her. Amazing how a wife, mother, grandmother can make such a difference in our world. Would that there would be more like her. To save the Christians in the Middle East as she saved the Jews in Syria. Between 1975 and September 11, 2001, Judy Feld Carr rescued 3,228 Jews out of a population of 4,500 from Syria. Her plan began when she and her husband, Dr. Ronald Feld, read about twelve young Jews who had died horrible deaths when they’d stepped on a minefield while trying to escape from Qamishli, Syria. Their clandestine activities began by reaching out with the offer of books for the Syrian Jewish community in 1972. Just as the two were getting more deeply involved, Ronald died from a heart attack leaving Judy alone at 33. She didn’t quit. Her first success was arranging for an elderly and sick Aleppo rabbi to come to Toronto for cancer treatment in 1977. Jews had been living in Syria since Biblical times and in Aleppo since the 4th century when the synagogue Kanisat Mutakal was built. There were more than 10,000 Jews in Aleppo for most of the Ottoman Empire. When Syria obtained her independence from France in 1946, the Jews and their property were attacked and then came the pogroms. Not unlike the many other Muslims countries in the Middle East. Prior to 1947 there had been 30,000 Jews in three districts within Syria. In 1947 the Jews of Aleppo were attacked, synagogues burned and 6000 Jews fled, their property taken over by Muslims.

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Related: Yes, they were “randomly selected” Jews Intolerance in the DNA With the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 the lives of the Jews in Syria deteriorated even further. Laws reminiscent of Nuremburg were established. Jews needed a permit to travel more than 3 kilometres. They were forced into ghettos. There were restrictions on education and business. Any Jew trying to escape was often tortured and killed. By 1967 there were only 1500 Jews in Aleppo of the 4500 in Syria. Judy quietly raised money through word of mouth and in 1973 established the Dr. Ronald Feld Fund for Jews in Arab Lands in the name of her late husband at their Conservative synagogue, Beth Tzedec, in Toronto. In 1977 she married Donald Carr who joined her in her mission. Money raised paid for bribes, airline tickets, and Syrian secret police. She arranged for people to be smuggled across the border into Turkey and then on to Israel. Difficult and dangerous for all. “We were buying Jews, one by one, from a hostile government. It was the best-kept secret in the Jewish world.” I can tell you that keeping her work a secret in the Jewish community was remarkable. She also had to negotiate fees because those from whom she was “buying” the Jews had different fees for different people: one price for an elderly man, another for a single woman. What was a pregnant woman worth? There were times when families were forced to separate. All of this sounds so much like Germany in the Hitler era. When one of the presidents of Israel was approached by a young man in the Israel Air Force asking him for help to get his family out of Syria the president’s secretary called Judy in Toronto. “That’s how I came to get his family out, part as a result of an escape and part by ransoming. It was the most difficult thing. First they had to find me. They never saw me; I was the voice on the telephone, and they had to trust what I was going to do.” In the 1990’s hope for a comprehensive peace in the Middle East opened the door for Jewish emigrants. But not for free. Passports and visas still came at a price. And Judy and Donald continued to raise funds to purchase freedom. In 1995 the late Prime Minister Yizhak Rabin wrote of Judy: “Very few people, if any have contributed as greatly as you have.” Judy received the Order of Canada in 2001 when her activities were finally revealed. She teaches us that anyone can be a hero. It isn’t enough to talk about change or wait for others to bring it about. It requires great courage of one’s convictions. That comes from a moral compass. Her compass is ethical monotheism and its teachings of social justice and prophetic law. We must never lose touch with these teachings. The last Syrian Jew was rescued September 11, 2001.