Wednesday’s article in the Toronto Star “Calls emerge for U.S. refugee status as group helps Jewish families flee Canada” tells us that thousands of Canadian Jews are looking to move to Oklahoma to escape antisemitism in Toronto and in Canada. 

What?

You read that right.  But the article says more than that. None other than Joe Roberts, an American wolf in sheep’s clothing, who used to chair the board of J Space Canada and once claimed to be “pro-Israel, pro-peace, progressive Zionist.”  Recently, he has moved to embrace Israel’s (and Trump’s) right-wing politics.  He flirted with Jewish Canadian organizations opposed to Israel’s genocide.  Now he embraces the right, saying, 

“When a country — whether it’s a foreign dictatorship or an ally — is unwilling to take care of the challenges of a minority group, it’s one of the promises of America to extend a hand and provide a pathway.”

Canada: No Better Home?

Isn’t that funny.  Just five years ago, Toronto Jewish studies professor David Koffman published a collection of essays about Canadian Jews entitled No Better Home? Jews, Canada, and the Sense of Belonging. In the introduction, he summarizes “Canada may now very well be the safest, most socially welcoming, economically secure, and possibly most religiously tolerant home for the Jews than any other diaspora country, past or present.”

Koffman also says:

“Jews are thoroughly enfranchised wherever power is wielded in this country, on Bay Street, on Parliament Hill, and in the nation’s media centres. The Jewish vote has been taken seriously and courted by successive administrations at the federal and provincial levels.” 

Has all of that philosemitism gone down the toilet in a mere four years? Are Canada’s Jews willing to throw all that naches away to move to…wait for it.. Oklahoma? Well yes, if you believe the caterwauling of folks like Joe Roberts. 

Roberts serves as a shill for Tulsa Tomorrow, a Jewish migration outfit that is trying to resettle Canada’s Jews – at least those desperate to exit the true north’s antisemitic wasteland.  Actually the problem is that while some Canadian Jews reaction to the horror in Gaza and Lebanon is to say it’s terrible and there has to be a ceasefire (except that there is a ceasefire that Israel breaks every hour of every day) other Jews react like Jesse Brown, the Canadaland podcaster, and go crazy.  They are whipping up the ‘fans’ so there is a permanent mass frenzy and fear around antisemitism in Canada–  Jews say they are “scared.” Oh?

Middle-aged Toronto Jews are taking self defence courses; student transfers from public schools to parochial Hebrew day schools rose from eight percent to 24% – after October 2023. Jewish lawyers are suing six major Canadian universities for not making sure Jewish students are safe from fellow students who dare to criticize Israel or condemn the genocide. This tells us Jews are scared – but feeling scared is no objective proof of antisemitism.  

Why would Canadian Jews want to go to Tulsa – surely in the US today there are many who support Palestinians’ human rights and don’t like Israel.  Why take a chance on Tulsa when our Jews could go to the one place in the world with no antisemitism and complete “safety” for Jews–  Israel? But that option does not seem to be so palatable any more.  It seems to be Tulsa – or, I hate to say, Birmingham Alabama – are the places trying to woo Jews.

“Tulsa: You can set your watch back to it.”

new slogan proposed for Tulsa

Tulsa’s boosters tell us there is even resettlement money available to help families relocate.  The weather is about as bad as Canada’s– humid summers, and snowy winters.  Nothing new.  But, we are warned with a smile,  the “home prices [do] not make sense. The numbers next to the square footage looked like they were missing a comma, maybe two.”   Boosters say Canadian Jews will be surprised to hear about the Tulsa Ballet, the Tulsa Symphony, and the Bob Dylan Center that offers exclusive  “access to the creative life of one of America’s most important and influential artists.”  Likely the emigrés have yet to hear about the Woody Guthrie Center that features 

“the radical voice of Woody  Guthrie …[and] Guthrie’s enduring fight for justice through 12 songs that confronted some of the most pressing social issues of his time.” 

Somehow, I doubt that museum will be a big draw for Canadian Jews.  Still, Tulsa is home to over 400,000 people, of whom nearly 3,000 are Jewish. 

The Tulsa Race Massacre took place over two days.  White residents killed up to 300 Black people and attacked Black-owned homes and businesses. The whites burned to the ground 35 square blocks of a Black neighbourhood. 

Now Tulsa may not be everyone’s cup of tea. For instance, one of the worst episodes of racial violence in American history took place in Tulsa in 1921 when nearly 4% of the white residents were members of the KuKluxKlan (KKK).  A 19-year-old Black shoeshiner, Dick Rowland, was accused of assaulting  a young white woman, an elevator operator.  Over a couple of days, the white hordes set out to lynch Rowland—a fairly normal event as Oklahoma had seen 75 lynchings in as many years.  

The Tulsa Race Massacre took place over two days.  White residents killed up to 300 Black people and attacked Black-owned homes and businesses;  the whites burned to the ground 35 square blocks of a Black neighbourhood.  Thousands of Black Tulsans became  homeless.

Oklahoma’s nickname is “The Sooner State”; it refers to white American settlers, Sooners, who stole land owned from Indigenous people before any law came into effect. In 1889 the Indian Appropriations Act allowed just about every land grab. The Land Rush Act of 1889, opened up millions of acres of Indigenous lands to white settlement at little to no cost. 

But again, that was all in the past.  

Sit-in at Katz Drug Store

In 1958, in Oklahoma City about 100 miles from Tulsa, 13 Black children and a Black teacher, Clara Luper,  launched a first  sit-in at the city’s Katz Drug Store lunch counter. That kicked off desegregation in the state—notably the desegregation of the city’s public schools, 66 years ago. 

This  resulted in bussing Black children into white schools, and the attendant “white flight” to the suburbs.  Today the schools that once had more than 70% Black students,  now have 70% Hispanic students.  

But children of Canadian Jews who move there can avoid “problems” of race at school.   There is a Jewish day school in Tulsa which should make some Toronto Jews feel right at home.  For the reasonable tuition of $9,000 per year, a Jewish child can attend the Mizel Jewish Community Day School.  

You can join other Jewish families, including the Mueykos from Winnipeg (photo below),  who toured the city.  Some would-be migrants even get free accommodation, air fare and meals for a weekend as an enticement to explore moving with Tulsa Tomorrow.   It’s not just Tulsa Tomorrow that is trying to get Jews facing discrimination and hardship in Canada to go to the US.  The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative US think tank, is plumping for the Trump administration to “offer asylum to Canadian Jews who, per U.S. law, have a credible fear of persecution on account of their faith or ethnicity.”  

I too want to encourage Toronto’s Jews to emigrate to Tulsa – the doctors, the dentists, the university professors, the lawyers, the school teachers, the artists and the bloggers who still love Israel.   Tulsa—not Israel —  seems to be the new home for Jews who can’t stand the fact the tide has turned.  For most Canadians, Israel is now a pariah state;  Canadian pollster Leger notes  61% of Canadians see Israel unfavourably. 

Yet most establishment Canadian Jews look the other way, and want to distract (worse– punish) those who criticize Israel.  Many Canadian Jews talk about Jewish feelings, Jewish safety, and discomfort with the way Zionism is being attacked.   Some Canadian Jews are whipping themselves into a panic because the majority of Canadians oppose Israel’s genocide.  Somehow Jewish feelings  trump 73,000 dead Palestinians and 174,000 seriously injured; their feelings trump 10,000 women and children buried under the rubble of Gaza; their feelings blunt the fact that Israel’s missiles have created 4,000 amputees– mainly children.   100,000 children are at risk of starving to death.  

But let’s be clear– Jewish feelings, Jewish concerns, count more than anyone else’s misery – especially if Israel and pro-Israel organizations created it.  Yet Joe Roberts emphasizes that more than 900 Jewish Canadian families – 2000 people – are ready to move.  Tulsa –here they come. 

Photo at the top: Postcard of detainees forced to march by an armed mob, likely toward McNulty Park (rather than the Tulsa Convention Hall as the card states. This is the first postcard of the Riot, published in 1921 (credit: University of Tulsa Archives).