New program urges Canadian Jews worried by rising hate to relocate to Oklahoma

As growing numbers of Canadian Jews consider fleeing the country due to rising antisemitism, a U.S. non-profit is actively urging them to consider making their exodus to Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Lech L’Tulsa — a pun on the Hebrew phrase Lech Lecha (go forth) — has even begun offering paid trips to the midwestern city, similar to the famed “Birthright” program offering free tours of Israel.

“Unfortunately, the landscape in Canada is quite bleak right now,” said organizer Michael Sachs, himself a recent Canadian transplant to Tulsa. Lech L’Tulsa, he said, is a signal to Canadian Jews that “your calls for help are not falling on deaf ears.”

The group’s first Canadian “cohort” trip is scheduled for the end of February, and is being shared around Canadian Jewish communities with the slogan “From Canada to Community — Find Your Home in Tulsa!”

A sample itinerary includes a scooter tour of the downtown core, trips to local parks, some real estate open houses and a brewery tour. For an extra fee, attendees can even extend their trip to attend a “Jewish Heritage hockey game.”

Tulsa may not be an obvious choice as a destination for dislocated Jewry. Its Jewish population is usually estimated at just 2,000 people in a metro area of one million.

But Tulsa’s small Jewish community has been active in soliciting Jewish migration to the city, in part to counteract the phenomenon of Tulsa-raised Jews leaving the city after graduation.

Tulsa Tomorrow, founded in 2017, is a Jewish non-profit founded with the mission of attracting young Jews into the city to “keep the community strong.”

Lech L’Tulsa, started in conjunction with the Jewish Federation of Tulsa, is its first program targeted specifically at Canadians.

In addition to the orientation trip, Lech L’Tulsa is offering Canadian prospects US$4,000 in relocation reimbursement, as well as discounted access to immigration support.

For Sachs, a senior director with the Jewish Federation of Tulsa, he said the pitch for Canadian Jews to relocate to Oklahoma is a mixture of affordability and relative safety.

For starters, the average Tusla home price is about the equivalent of $290,000, less than half of the $680,000 average price in Canada at the end of 2025.

As for safety, “you’ll have people here who don’t even understand the level of antisemitism in Canada,” said Sachs. “When I explain what a day in my life was like in Canada they’re shocked.”

As an example, Sachs says he often cites the saga of Samidoun, the Vancouver-headquartered anti-Israel group that was only recently declared a terrorist entity by Canada.

Despite being founded by an active member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Gazan terror group, Samidoun spent years enjoying non-profit status and actively fundraising for extremist causes in the Middle East.

Even now, with Samidoun listed as a terror entity, director Charlotte Kates has faced no legal consequences, and remains https://www.instagram.com/p/DGgMuOVprWa/, including to the 2024 funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

To this day, in fact, Samidoun’s non-profit listing with the Government of Canada remains active, even if it now comes with a message warning that the group is a terrorist entity.

Sachs, with the support of Tulsa Tomorrow, left Canada over the summer after 30 years as a Vancouverite.

In a National Post op-ed at the time, he cited spiking Canadian antisemitism as the final straw of living in a country that was becoming progressively less functional and affordable.

“Synagogues have been vandalized, Jewish schools shot at, Jewish teachers intimidated, Jewish employees abused in their workplaces and union members treated like second-class citizens,” he wrote.

“I can no longer ask my children to stay in a place where their safety is uncertain, their dignity is disposable and their future is compromised.”

Oklahoma has not been immune to anti-Israel demonstrations, including those massing outside Jewish civic spaces or celebrating terrorism. Last year, for instance, a branch of Students for Justice in Palestine at the city’s Oklahoma State University organized a “vigil for our martyrs” on the anniversary of the October 7 terror attacks in Israel.

Nevertheless, the intensity of the demonstrations hasn’t been anywhere near the scale seen in the likes of Toronto or Montreal.

Over the summer, a gathering of 40 anti-Israel demonstrators outside Tulsa’s Charles Schusterman Jewish Community Center received widespread condemnation from civic leaders, whose critiques were even carried on local public radio.

Compare that to a recent incident in Toronto that saw masked anti-Israel demonstrators storm the Eaton Centre on Boxing Day calling for “intifada,” and receiving no arrests or other sanctions in reply.

Said Sachs, “Canada, whether we want to acknowledge it or not, has made the international news far too often for its Jew hatred.”

It’s difficult to put an exact figure on the number of Canadian Jews who, like Sachs, have acted on an “exit strategy” for Canada. In July, the U.S.-based National Review profiled several Canadian Jews who were moving to the U.S. due to security concerns, including Ottawa-based political strategist Georganne Burke. And they fit within a wider trend of outmigration, which is currently hitting generational highs.

The most recent Statistics Canada figures show that in the last 12 months, 120,401 citizens and permanent residents have left Canada — an average of about 328 emigrants per day.

If Canadian Jews are relocating to Tulsa to find safety from ethnic prejudice, it’s an ironic reversal of the situation from 100 years ago, when Canada briefly charted a flood of Oklahomans relocating to Canada for the same reason.

In the years leading up to the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, a deadly mob attack that levelled the city’s black community, Canada had received several trainloads of black Oklahomans seeking to homestead in Alberta. They would found the Northern Alberta community of Amber Valley.