A recent article in the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail by Marsha Lederman, titled “The Promised Land,” deals with Jewish Canadian concerns over the marked increase in antisemitism in Canada, particularly after October 7.
Anti-Jewish experiences have included the intimidation of Jewish students at all educational levels, harassment at Jewish events, physical assaults, arson attacks on Jewish businesses, and drive-by shootings at synagogues.
Very recently, a mass shooting on Yom Kippur at a small synagogue in Belleville, Ontario, was only prevented because of the presence of an armed police officer, a fixture at all synagogues and Jewish facilities in Canada. The shooter died, and the officer suffered serious wounds.
Lederman’s focus is a program called Lech L’Tulsa, initiated by the Jewish community of Tulsa, Oklahoma, to attract Canadian Jews to the city. It includes some financial help for those making the move. A description of the program also appeared in a December 2025 issue of the National Post, another Canadian newspaper.
Lederman points out that antisemitism is common in the US, as well as in Canada, and many American universities and cities are hostile environments for Jews. However, she also refers to “pockets of respite,” such as Tulsa and Florida, and this made me realize how little the Jewish world has changed over the centuries.
For much of the Middle Ages, and well into the Renaissance, the uppermost question for European Jews was, where to flee? Where could they be safe?
It is not a coincidence that the legend of the Wandering Jew, a Jew said to have taunted Jesus on the way to the Crucifixion, and was then condemned to wander the Earth until the Second Coming, originated in the 13th century.
England has the dubious honor of having been the first European country to expel all of its Jews, in 1290. The first blood libel also originated in England, in 1144. Other countries followed suit: France on three occasions (1182, 1306, and 1394), and Spain in 1492.
Germany was different because German unification did not happen until 1871. Until then, Germany was a patchwork of small kingdoms, principalities, duchies, and free cities. Jews expelled from one place could find sanctuary in a friendlier territory nearby.
For example, Glikl, the Yiddish memoirs of a late 17th-century Jewish woman, edited by Chava Turniansky and published in English in 2019, describes how the Jews of Hamburg were periodically banished from the city, but they could live in nearby Altona, which was under the more welcoming jurisdiction of the King of Denmark.
Similarly, Jews were banned from living in the city of Nuremberg, in Bavaria, for hundreds of years, but they could do business there, then return every evening to their homes in the nearby town of Fürth. In fact, Jews benefited from the first German railroad, a six-kilometer line built in 1835 to join Nuremberg and Fürth.
Moving toward the Promised Land
Lederman's article was interesting and timely, but I was surprised there was no mention of Israel. While it is true, as she notes, that Canada and the US share a common language and culture, Canada and Israel are a closer match when it comes to social support in areas like health and education, not to mention, for Jews, history, and religion.
She does mention that her maternal grandparents obtained visas to go to British Mandate Palestine, but did not go and were murdered in Treblinka.
However, many of the Jews who had to go did, and are still going. In fact, about half of the more than 7.5 million Jews living in Israel today are either immigrants or descendants of immigrants, most from either the post-war DP camps of Europe, the Arab/Muslim world, or the former Soviet Union.
A small but steadily increasing stream of immigrants has also arrived from North America. The Israel Central Bureau of Statistics indicates that about 16,000 Canadians have made aliyah since the establishment of the state in 1948.
Israel’s Aliyah and Integration Ministry reported that 440 Canadian Jews moved to Israel from September 2025 to September 2026. Another 1,000 Canadian Jews have opened new aliyah files. This is a formal process, including an interview with a representative of the Jewish Agency and the submission of documents, including birth certificates and marriage records.
While the Tulsa initiative has received a significant number of inquiries from Canadians, the number of families who have actually made the move so far is quite small, according to an article in The Forward by Benyamin Cohen.
It quotes Jewish Canadian journalist Jesse Brown: “There’s a sadness,” he said about the Jewish exodus from Canada. “I’m not enthused or compelled by what I see as a ‘re-shtetling.’”
The Canadian Jewish population, about 400,000, is almost as large as that of France, the third largest Jewish community in the world. Antisemitism is a serious problem there as well. This year, 4,000 French Jews made aliyah, about 10 times the Canadian number.
A 2026 Canadian survey cited by Lederman indicates that one quarter of Canadian Jews are planning to leave Canada or are thinking seriously about it, and there are no signs that the antisemitism experienced by Canadian Jews is abating. While I don’t think we will see a stampede of Jews leaving Canada, I do think the numbers leaving will gradually increase.
As in the French example, Israel will be their primary destination. After all, in the final analysis, it turns out that America is not the Promised Land.
The writer, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is a retired professor at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.