By Joseph Marshall
Forget the Promised Land, how about Tulsa?
That is not a punchline. It is the question now being posed to Jewish Canadians who no longer feel safe where they live.
A new initiative quietly gaining attention in Jewish media is offering something once unthinkable. Not aliyah to Israel. Not a move to New York or Florida. But relocation to Tulsa Oklahoma. The program is called Lech L’Tulsa and its pitch is blunt. If Canada no longer feels livable for Jews, there is another option.
The Jerusalem Post first reported on the initiative this week. Since then, additional reporting from Israeli and Jewish outlets has filled in the details. The program is aimed specifically at Jewish Canadians who say the post October 7 environment has pushed them from discomfort into fear. It offers legal guidance, community support, financial incentives and in some cases exploratory trips to Tulsa to see if life there is viable.
The fact that such a program exists at all should stop Canadian leaders cold.
Tulsa is not Brooklyn. It is not Toronto. The Jewish population there is estimated at roughly two thousand people. The community is small, close knit and largely non Orthodox. There is a Chabad presence that serves as the anchor for Orthodox life, but there is no large day school system, no dense kosher infrastructure and no Jewish neighborhood in the way Canadians understand it.
And yet Tulsa is being marketed as safer. Calmer. More welcoming.
That alone is an indictment.
According to multiple reports, Lech L’Tulsa is being organized by members of the local Jewish community along with partners who assist newcomers with settling costs and immigration questions. It does not provide work visas, but it helps families understand their legal options. Some reports cite relocation incentives totaling several thousand dollars. Others describe planned group visits that look suspiciously like a reverse Birthright. Come see Tulsa. Meet the community. Imagine a different future.
The push factors are not subtle.
Canada has seen a documented surge in anti Jewish incidents since October 7. Synagogues vandalized. Jewish schools threatened. Rallies where calls to gas Jews are no longer whispered. Jewish Canadians are told constantly that these are isolated events. That the country remains safe. That criticism of Israel has nothing to do with Jews. That everything is fine.
And yet here we are. Jews being recruited to leave.
The articles cite statistics from mainstream Jewish organizations showing massive increases in reported incidents. They quote families who no longer feel comfortable wearing Jewish symbols. Parents who think twice before sending children to Jewish schools. Professionals who are suddenly being told that Zionism is a stain on their résumé.
Tulsa, of all places, is being framed as an antidote.
It is worth pausing on the symbolism. For generations, Jews fled Europe for North America. Canada marketed itself as tolerant, pluralistic and safe. Now Jews are being told that the future may lie in a small city in Oklahoma because Canada no longer delivers on its promise.
This is not about Tulsa being perfect. It is not. Even the reporting acknowledges that pro Palestinian protests exist there too. But the scale is different. The temperature is lower. The sense of institutional hostility that Jews increasingly describe in Canadian universities, unions and cultural spaces appears far less entrenched.
There is also something deeply unsettling about how normal this story is being treated.
No emergency parliamentary debate. No national soul searching. No prime ministerial address asking why Jews are contemplating exit strategies. Instead, the conversation happens in Jewish outlets, as if this is an internal community matter rather than a national failure.
Lech L’Tulsa is not a mass movement. Most Canadian Jews are not packing their bags. But the very existence of an organized pathway out of the country aimed specifically at Jews should terrify anyone who still believes in the Canadian social contract.
When Jews start asking where else they can live, it is not because they want novelty. It is because history has taught them to notice patterns early. To listen when the ground shifts. To leave before leaving becomes impossible.
Forget the Promised Land. How about Tulsa.
That sentence should never have made sense. The fact that it does says far more about Canada than it ever will about Oklahoma.
