The heartland of the Chaldeans always was northern Iraq – the Nineveh Plain – and nearby areas of Syria. The Assyrians lived primarily in the mountainous heights of southeastern Turkey and Iran. Now as ISIS and its multiple successor organizations have murdered the Christians and chased them out of their villages, Aramaic is endangered as never before, and it could finally die as a spoken language.

In the Middle East, neighbors warned the Christians: ‘after Saturday comes Sunday.’ It means: ‘after we finish off the Saturday people, we will finish you, the Sunday people.’  For the Jews, 850,000 of them – the Saturday people – left their homes in Arab lands years ago for Israel. Now in the days of ISIS it is the turn of the Christians – the Sunday people – to find themselves in mortal jeopardy in Iraq, Syria and adjacent countries. Over the past years, we have opened the newspapers every day to read about increasing attacks on Christians, who were killed and their villages decimated.  Sunday finally may be here.  But the persecution is nothing new.