A core aspect of Hanukkah is pirsum ha-nes, publicizing the miracle. For most American Jews, this means placing a menorah on a windowsill and flooding the block with light, but every year, one Jewish family in North Raleigh, N.C., puts on a show that can compete with any of their neighbors’ Christmas displays.

The display of Jewish pride makes the family’s home a destination on tours of holiday lights, but it also became a stop made in desperation, one that opened the larger Jewish community to an unexpected friendship, one with roots stretching far into the Middle East.

Although he’d never talked to the family before, Damascus, Syria-born Shawkat “Chuck” Jabr, wasn’t nervous when he knocked on the door to the popular destination last July. He’d lived four doors down from the family for years and recognized them as kind souls.

“I know you are Jewish,” he said to Tammie Green, who owned the house with her husband. “Can you help me and my people?” 

Let me introduce you to my rabbi, Green replied.

In the months since, the small Jewish community of Raleigh has banded together to support the Syrian Druze community, from which Jabr hails. He specifically reached out to the Jewish community, recognizing how many of the community’s nonprofits have fine-tuned the art of advocacy, hoping to bring lessons to his own community after many of his family members were murdered in Sweida, a predominantly Druze community in southern Syria.

Eric Solomon, rabbi at Beth Meyer Synagogue in Raleigh, knew of the Druze from his trips to Israel, but had never met one in Raleigh. Jabr, a Ph.D.-educated businessman who served as president of the Raleigh Chapter of the American Druze Society, estimates Raleigh has a community of 200-300 Druze, with several thousand living in North Carolina. Jabr knocking on that door “was almost like a prayer,” Solomon told eJP. “It’s a little like throwing a Hail Mary.”

The Druze community was not organized like the Jewish community was, Jabr said, because they never had to be.

“We[’ve] never been through what we have been through,” Jabr said, referencing attacks on Sweida and other Druze towns and cities in Syria by Bedouin militias allied with Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa, who took power in December 2024 after a more than decade-long civil war. Israel’s intervention this past summer “was a matter of existence” for the Druze community living in Sweida, he said. The militias and state military seized towns, murdered and kidnapped hundreds, and still hold many hostages, according to human rights groups.

Israel, which had pledged to defend the Syrian Druze, conducted airstrikes against Syrian military positions in order to force al-Sharaa’s government to intervene and halt the attacks. Some have criticized Israel’s strikes on the Syrian military as they threatened the emerging government, including U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, who said they were poorly timed and could potentially destabilize the country.

The new relationship between the North Carolina Druze and Jewish communities is part of a larger debate over Syria’s new government and specifically al-Sharaa, who was previously affiliated with Al-Qaeda, though he has since renounced the group. Some hope that the removal of former Syrian leader Bashar Assad, whose brutal dictatorship and alliance with Iran and Russia made the country into a global pariah, will allow Syria to integrate into the wider world. This includes some Syrian Jewish figures, who are openly lobbying for al-Sharaa’s government in the United States and internationally. Others are skeptical of al-Sharaa for his past ties to terror, seeing the treatment of the Druze minority as an omen of deadly sectarianism to come.

“We are the minority of the minority,” Jabr said. “So we did not expect [this] to happen to us, unfortunately, what happened this year, the indiscriminate killing and slaughter of my people. So finally, we said, ‘We really need to gather our act together so we can be more organized and get our voice heard to the world that we do exist. We are not going to be exterminated.’”

In the first meeting with Jabr in his office, Solomon remembers both men in tears. “I was a rabbi to him,” he recalled. “It was very moving.”

Druze community members are “like cousins,” Solomon said. In Israel, they make up around 2% of the population and serve in the military. Jews need to care about the massacres in Sweida and other Druze towns because the Druze and Jews are allies, he said, but also just because the Druze are human beings who are being murdered. “This is just completely against every value of the Torah.”

Months after the first introduction, on Oct. 4, Jabr was the guest speaker at Shabbat services at Solomon’s congregation. The title of his speech was, “When my Druze community was in danger, I knew where I could turn for help.”

“I got to meet the best people that I’ve ever met in my life,” Jabr remembered about the event. At kiddush, he and his wife were greeted by congregants asking how they could help. The chair of the Raleigh Jewish Community Relations Council, Mark Goldhaber, promised, “We are going to keep going until we get you guys safe and sound.”

Post-Oct. 7, Jewish nonprofits “need to strengthen and spread our net to folks who you know are potential allies,” Goldhaber told eJP. Amid skyrocketing antisemitism, his JCRC has worked to “broaden our net of connectivity,” reaching out to Hindu and Latter-day Saint (Mormon) allies.

“When I see some someone like Chuck, who just really needs help, who is very pro-Israel, who was grateful in ways that I couldn’t imagine, and went out of his way…to just simply say thank-you [for Israel’s actions], we need to grab those opportunities and figure out, how do we help folks that are willing to help us?” Goldhaber said.

The Jewish community does have skills that could help others, Goldhaber added. “We have a lot of knowledge. We have to be reaching out much broader to say we want to be a full part of the community… These types of opportunities remind people.”

Since that meeting, Goldhaber introduced Jabr to Republican Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC) and is organizing for Jabr to speak for student groups at the University of North Carolina. He is working with the media to get the word out about the Druze struggles, hoping to then share these stories with politicians, especially important at a time when President Donald Trump is working to normalize relations with the new Syrian regime, having met with al-Sharaa at the White House on Monday. With U.S. support, Israel is also involved in direct negotiations with al-Sharaa, who has criticized Israel’s interventions in southern Syria on behalf of the Druze.

“We know the United States has a lot of interest in Syria and Israel, but at the same time, we need to make sure that our Druze people [are] being protected,” Jabr said.

Solomon hopes “in the short term, we want to just call attention and help lift him and do our little part to help the Druze community as human beings and as kin… but the longer thing is, we now have a friend.”

This friendship, he said, only occurred because of Israel’s relationship to its Druze community. “Look what Israel has given to a diaspora community — friendship.”

The relationship between the Jews and the Druze is “closer than we think it is,” Jabr said. In his case, literally on the same block.

“You guys need to know that you have friends around,” he said. “Not everybody hate[s] Israel. Not everybody wants to eliminate the Jews. No, we are standing by you, and in return, I hope you guys will stand by us, because we both are minorities, and unfortunately, we have more enemies than friends.”