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From ‘how to’ to ‘why bother?’: Michael Strassfeld writes a new guide to being Jewish
(JTA) — “What the son wishes to forget the grandson wishes to remember.” That’s known as Hansen’s Law, named for the historian Marcus Lee Hansen, who observed that while the children of immigrants tend to run away from their ethnicity in order to join the mainstream, the third generation often wants to learn the “old ways” of their grandparents.
In 1973, “The Jewish Catalog” turned Hansen’s Law into a “do-it-yourself kit” for young Jews who wanted to practice the traditions of their grandparents but weren’t exactly sure how. Imagine “The Joy of Cooking,” but instead of recipes the guide to Jewish living had friendly instructions for hosting Shabbat, building a sukkah and taking part in Jewish rituals from birth to death. Co-edited by Michael Strassfeld, Sharon Strassfeld and the late Richard Siegel, it went on to sell 300,000 copies and remains in print today.
Fifty years later, Rabbi Michael Strassfeld has written a new book that he calls a “bookend” to “The Jewish Catalog.” If the first book is a Jewish “how to,” the latest asks, he says, “why bother?” “Judaism Disrupted: A Spiritual Manifesto for the 21st Century” asserts that an open society and egalitarian ethics leave most Jews skeptical of the rituals and beliefs of Jewish tradition. In the face of this resistance, he argues that the purpose of Judaism is not obedience to Torah and its rituals for their own sake or mere “continuity,” but to “encourage and remind us to strive to live a life of compassion, loving relationships, and devotion to our ideals.”
Strassfeld, 73, grew up in an Orthodox home in Boston and got his master’s degree in Jewish studies at Brandeis University. Coming to doubt the “faith claims” of Orthodoxy, he became a regular at nearby Havurat Shalom, an “intentional community” that pioneered the havurah movement’s liberal, hands-on approach to traditional practice. He earned rabbinical ordination from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College when he was 41 and went on to serve as the rabbi of Congregation Ansche Chesed on the Upper West Side and later the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, the Manhattan flagship of Reconstructionist Judaism.
“To be disrupted is to experience a break with the past and simultaneously reconnect in a new way to that past,” writes Strassfeld, who retired from the pulpit in 2015. This week, we spoke about why people might find Jewish ritual empty, how he thinks Jewish practices can enrich their lives and how Passover — which begins Wednesday night — could be the key to unlocking the central idea of Judaism.
Our conversation was edited for length and clarity.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: I wanted to start with the 50th anniversary of the “Jewish Catalog.” What connects the new book with the work you did back then on the “Catalog,” which was a do-it-yourself guide for Jews who were trying to reclaim the stuff they either did or didn’t learn in Hebrew school?
Michael Strassfeld: I see them as bookends. Basically, I keep on writing the same book over and over again. [Laughs] Except no, I’m different and the world is different. I’m always trying to make Judaism accessible to people. In the “Catalog” I was providing the resources on how to live a Jewish life when the resources weren’t easily accessible.
The new book is less about “how to” than “why bother?” That’s the challenge. I think a lot of people take pride in being Jewish, but it’s a small part of their identity because it doesn’t feel relevant. I want to say to people like that that Judaism is about living a life with meaning and purpose. It’s not about doing what I call the “Jewishly Jewish” things, like keeping kosher and going to synagogue. Judaism is wisdom and practices to live life with meaning and purpose. The purpose of Judaism isn’t to be a good Jew, despite all the surveys that give you 10 points for, you know, lighting Shabbat candles. It’s about being a good person.
So that brings up your relationship to the commandments and mitzvot, the traditional acts and behaviors that an Orthodox Jew or a committed Conservative Jew feels commanded to do, from prayer to keeping kosher to observing the Sabbath and the holidays. They might argue that doing these things is what makes you Jewish, but you’re arguing something different. If someone doesn’t feel bound by these obligations, why do them at all?
I don’t have the faith or beliefs that underlie such an attitude [of obligation]. Halacha, or Jewish law, is not in reality law. It’s really unlike American law where you know that if you’re violating it, you could be prosecuted. What I’m trying to do in the book is reframe rituals as an awareness practice, that is, bringing awareness to various aspects of our lives. So it could be paying attention to food, or cultivating attitudes of gratitude, or generosity, or satisfaction. My broad understanding of the festival cycle, for example, is that you can focus on those attitudes all year long, but the festivals provide a period of time once in the year to really focus on, in the case of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, for example, saying sorry and repairing relationships.
In “Judaism Disrupted: A Spiritual Manifesto for the 21st Century,” Michael Strassfeld argues that the challenge of each generation’s Jews is to create the Judaism that is needed in their time. (Ben Yehuda Press)
Passover is coming. Probably no holiday asks its practitioners to do so much stuff in preparation, from cleaning the house of every trace of unleavened food to hosting, in many homes, two different catered seminars on Jewish history. Describe how Passover cultivates awareness, especially of the idea of freedom, which plays an important part thematically in your boo
The Sefat Emet [a 19th-century Hasidic master] says Torah is all about one thing: freedom. But there’s a variety of obstacles in the way. There are temptations. There’s the inner issues that you struggle with, and the bad things that are out of your control. The Sefat Emet says the 613 commandments are 613 etzot, or advice, that teach us how to live a life of freedom. The focus of Passover is trying to free yourself from the chains of the things that hold you back from being the person that you could be, not getting caught up in materiality or envy, free from unnecessary anxieties — all these things that distract us or keep us from being who we could be.
The Passover seder is one of the great rituals of Judaism. We’re trying to do a very ambitious thing by saying, not, like, “let’s remember when our ancestors were freed from Egypt,” but rather that we were slaves in Egypt and we went free. And at the seder we actually ingest that. We experience the bitterness by eating maror, the bitter herb. We experience the freedom by drinking wine. We don’t want it just to be an intellectual exercise.
Unfortunately the seder has become rote. But Passover is about this huge theme of freedom that is central to Judaism.
I think some people bristle against ritual because they find it empty. But you’re saying there’s another way to approach rituals which is to think of them as tools or instruments that can help you focus on core principles — you actually list 11 — which include finding holiness everywhere, caring for the planet and engaging in social justice, to name a few. But that invites the criticism, which I think was also leveled at the “Catalog,” that Judaism shouldn’t be instrumental, because if you treat it as a means to an end that’s self-serving and individualistic.
Certainly rituals are tools, but tools in the best sense of the word. They help us pay attention to things in our lives and things in the world that need repair. And people use them not to get ahead in the world, but because they want to be a somewhat better person. I talk a lot these days about having a brief morning practice, and in the book I write about the mezuzah. For most Jews it’s become wallpaper, but what if you take the moment that you leave in the morning, and there’s a transition from home to the outside and to work perhaps, and take a moment at the doorpost to spiritually frame your day? What are the major principles that you want to keep in your mind when you know you’re gonna be stuck in traffic or a difficult meeting?
And a lot of traditional rituals are instrumental. Saying a blessing before you eat is a gratitude practice.
But why do I need a particular Jewish ritual or practice to help me feel gratitude or order my day? Aren’t there other traditions I can use to accomplish the same things?
Anybody who is a pluralist, which I am, knows that the Jewish way is not the only way. If I grew up in India or Indonesia and my parents were locals I probably wouldn’t be a rabbi and writing these books.
But a partial answer to your question is that Judaism is one of the oldest wisdom traditions in the world, and that there has been a 3,000-year conversation by the Jewish people about what it means to live in this tradition and to live in the world. And so I think there’s a lot of wisdom there.
So much in Jewish tradition says boundaries are good, and that it’s important to draw distinctions between what’s Jewish behavior and what’s not Jewish behavior, between the holy and the mundane, and that making those distinctions is a value in itself. But you argue strongly in an early chapter that that kind of binary thinking is not Judaism as you see it.
Underlying the book is the notion that Rabbinic Judaism carried the Jewish people for 2,000 years or so. But we’re living in a very different context, and the binaries, the dualities — too often they lead to hierarchy, so that, for example, men matter more than women in Jewish life. And we’ve tried to change that. We are living in an open society where we want to be more inclusive, not less inclusive. We don’t want to live in ghettos. Now, the ultra-Orthodox say, “No, we realize the danger of trying to live like that. We don’t think there’s anything of value in that modern world. And it’s all to be rejected.” And it would be foolish not to admit that in this very open world the Jews, as a minority, could kind of disappear. But I think that Judaism has so much value and wisdom and practices to offer to people that Judaism will continue to be part of the fabric of this world — the way, for example, we have given Shabbat as a concept to the world.
You know, in the first 11 chapters of the Torah, there are no Jews. So clearly, Jews and Judaism are not essential for the world to exist. And that’s a good, humbling message.
OK, but one could argue that while Jews aren’t necessary for the world to exist, Judaism is necessary for Jews to exist. And you write in your book, “If the Jewish people is to be a people, we need to have a commonly held tradition.” I think the pushback to the kind of openness and permeability you describe is that Jews can be so open and so permeable that they just fall through the holes.
It certainly is a possibility. And it’s also a possibility that the only Jews who will be around will be ultra-Orthodox Jews.
But if Judaism can only survive by being separatist, then I question whether it’s really worthwhile. That becomes a distorted vision of Judaism, and withdrawing is not what it’s meant to be. I think we’re meant to be in the world.
Your book is called “Judaism Disrupted.” What is disruptive about the Judaism that you’re proposing?
I meant it in two ways. First, Judaism is being disrupted by this very different world we’re living in. The contents of the ocean we swim in is very different than in the Middle Ages. But I’m also using it to say that Judaism is meant to disrupt our lives in a positive way, which is to say, “Wake up, pay attention.” You are here to live a life of meaning and purpose, and to continue as co-creators with God of the universe. You’re here to make the world better, to be kind and compassionate to people, to work on yourself. In my mind it is a shofar, “Wake up, sleepers, from your sleep!” “Judaism Disrupted” says you have to pay attention to issues like food, and justice, and teshuva [repentance].
You were ordained as a Reconstructionist rabbi. Do you think your book falls neatly into any of our current denominational categories?
[Reconstructionist founder] Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan’s notion of Judaism as an evolving religious civilization is the one that I feel closest to. But I feel that the denominational structure isn’t particularly useful anymore. There’s basically two categories, Orthodox and the various kinds of liberal Judaism, within a spectrum. The modern world is so fundamentally different in its relationship to Jews and Judaism that what we’re seeing is a variety of attempts to figure out how to respond. And that will then become the Judaism for the next millennium. It’s time for a lot of experimentation. I think that’s required and out of that will come a new “Minhag America,” to use Isaac Mayer Wise’s phrase for the emerging custom of American Jews [Wise was a Reform rabbi in the late 19th century]. And we don’t need to have everybody doing it one way. As long as people feel committed to Judaism, the Jewish tradition, even if they’re doing it very differently than the Jews of the past, they will be writing themselves into the conversation.
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Northeast Philadelphia says goodbye to its last Jewish deli
(JTA) — PHILADELPHIA — After running the family deli for several decades, Steve Stein says his 83-year-old legs were telling him it was time to call it quits. But it wasn’t only that.
The neighborhood has totally changed since his dad, Mike, first took over the business more than 60 years ago. Back then Northeast Philadelphia was an epicenter of Jewish life, packed with synagogues and other Jewish establishments. Most of them are gone. And now — with the close of Steve Stein’s Famous Deli and Restaurant — the area just lost its last Jewish deli.
But only after an outpouring of affection from longtime customers, who flocked to the place once news spread in the last few weeks. “It’s overwhelming,” Stein said. “The amount of people that came in here in the last 10 days, two weeks. Their comments are very touching. I knew I was liked. I didn’t know I was loved.”
To be sure, several customers told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that they’ll miss Stein, but they also bemoaned the fact there aren’t many Jewish food options left. Certainly none with prices as low as Famous.
“I’ve been going there my whole life, “ said Rebecca Asheuer, who grew up a few miles away from Famous’ current location — its third since the Steins took over the business. “I feel surprise and sadness, because it’s the last one in the Northeast.
“I think the Jewish people are moving out of the city and also the businesses used to be passed down in families. Now with the economy and other stuff, people don’t want to take over the family business anymore,” she said.
Another longtime customer mourned the closing of the deli, but also the disappearance of Jewish life in the area.
“I kind of expected it to go sooner or later,” said Aileen Owens, who remembered going to Famous when the Auspitz family ran over six decades ago. “There’s nobody around. Synagogues and all that stuff, it’s all fading out. They went to the suburbs.”
According to Steve’s account, his father Mike Stein, his brother Arnold and cousin Jack began running the produce concession at the Famous Deli in Philly’s Castor Gardens neighborhood in the late 1950s. Around 1960, they bought the deli from the Auspitz family, which had operated a chain of Philadelphia delis dating to the 1920s.
Steve and his brother Arnie eventually ran the deli together. As Jewish families moved farther into Northeast Philadelphia, the deli moved as well — first to Krewstown Road in the mid-1970s, eventually having two locations there, and then about 14 years ago to its final location at 1619 Grant Ave.
If all goes right, Steve’s 57-year-old son Lee hopes to continue the migration and resurrect the family business in the suburbs. Sort of.
“I’m looking to have a place of my own,” said Lee, who started off as an eight-year-old taking out the trash, but would occasionally try to cut the lox when no one was looking. “I have a lot of experience in this business.
“I call myself multi-talented, not just in the deli business, but in cooking and baking, I would probably downsize and not do fruit and produce like we do here. It’s just not worth, you know, the space for what you’re paying. I would do a similar situation to here. Deli, prepared foods, a little bit of bakery, a small sit down. But what I’ve told the people that come in here, ‘You’ll never, ever see some of this product again. And you’ll probably never, ever see these prices ever again.’”
Still, he wants his new venture to be affordable.
“My father always liked being a people-pleaser,” the younger Stein said. “So he tries to please people with a price. But that price affects you eventually.”
As for Steve, he wishes his son well, but knows it won’t be the same. “Lee wants to try something, but not here,” Stein said.
He added that some remaining establishments in the wider region – “they do 90% restaurant and 10% deli, I do 90% deli and 10% restaurant” – will “benefit from me not being here.”
One former competitor isn’t so sure. “I’m upset another Jewish deli has closed and he’s been in business a long time and certainly has his whole clientele,” said Michael Young, longtime owner of Ben & Irv’s, a deli restaurant in Huntingdon Valley, a suburb about 20 minutes northwest of Famous. “But it’s a different world today; a different area. So I don’t know if it will help us.”
Lee Stein said he actually tried to stay put, but needed a little help.“The real problem is the landlord never took care of the building,” said Lee, who wishes his dad had been more assertive on that front. “I tried to make it work here with them, figuring this would be an easy fix. I asked them for some renovations; to put a new roof on. The roof has several holes in it. When it rains outside, it pours in here. So, I tried to negotiate with them first before I did anything else, but that wasn’t going anywhere.”
JTA’s attempts to reach the landlord for comment were unsuccessful. Regardless, Steve Stein, who was forced to close the deli for a short while last year due to health code issues, says he is ready to turn the page.
The first thing he’ll do once things settle down is get therapy on his aching legs. And he’s excited to have more time to devote to his wife of 61 years, Sheila, along with his children, Lee and Mindy, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. “But I’ll miss my customers. They’re like family.”
Already he’s feeling the difference “It’s devastating,” he said on Aug. 24, the day after the store officially closed, amid a final “blowout sale” to get rid of what little was left. “I’m usually the first one in the store.
“It’s going to be very much missed by me.”
He’s not the only one.
“Nothing lasts forever,” said one customer before heading into Famous one last time. “But it’s very sad.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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For graphic novelist Joann Sfar, drawing after Oct. 7 was a way to put stones on Jewish graves
For many Jews, the morning of Oct. 7 remains seared into memory. In Joann Sfar’s case, it was also the day of his birthday party, which included “as many Muslims as Jews,” he told me. Amidst tragedy, Sfar felt a profound gratitude for life, which seemed especially precious. It was a day of fear and uncertainty, followed by many more over the following months. For Sfar, drawing was the only way out.
To Life is Sfar’s illustrated journal of his experience after Oct. 7, a reflection of his fierce peace advocacy coupled with a profound connection to Israel. It follows several previous books by Sfar, who is a French Jewish graphic novelist best known for The Rabbi’s Cat. His works touch on his Sephardic heritage, highlighting a history of friendship and brotherhood between Arabs and Jews.
To Life is the English translation of Nous Vivrons, which was published in June 2024 as the first of a three-part series. It was followed by Que Faire Des Juifs? (What To Do with the Jews?), a nearly 600-page graphic novel that chronicles the history of the Jewish people. Sfar concluded the series with Terre de Sang: Le Temps du Désespoir (Land of Blood: The Time of Despair), which shares Palestinian voices and which Sfar describes as the “saddest” volume of the trilogy.
I spoke with Sfar in July after reading To Life, which will be officially released on September 8. At present, the translations of the second and third volumes are not yet scheduled to be published. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Now that you’re expanding To Life’s audience to English speakers, what do you expect non-French audiences to learn? What do you hope that they take from your piece?
What I would really love is a new vision on the Middle East. I’m really surprised how New York has made the Middle East American, using it in the Trump and Mamdani debate, which I have to say has very little interest from Europe. What I would love is for people to see real lives from the Middle East to see how similar people are. I come from a part Ukrainian and part Algerian Jewish family. When I went to Palestinian cities, I was surprised how many Palestinian seniors look like my father, and how many Moroccan Jews from Israel look Palestinian.
These are people who are very similar and who are trapped in a conflict which is older than them. I really would love readers to dig into personal experience, rather than abstractions. I think embracing this region is really putting hope into individuals, because if you start to put faith into narrative, you’re lost.
In your work, you make an interesting distinction between individuals denying each other’s peoplehood on both sides — Israelis saying there was never a Palestine, anti-Zionists saying Israel never existed — and your emphasis on interviews in your piece. Why was it important for you to have such a connection to real humans throughout the process?
It’s a very strange thing to say because there was real tragedy, but it made me happy because I love these people. I’ve been lucky enough to spend a lot of time in Palestinian and Israeli cities. If you take it from an individual level, I believe in them and I have a hope for them. Something beautiful is that even if they don’t want it, they are interconnected. Their economies are interconnected; no one is going to exterminate anyone. They’ll be there still.
In this region, no one ever talks to me about Zionism. People deal with their everyday issues; they have no idea what’s going to occur in two months. I know people who are smarter than me have a big political essay about this region, but that’s not my job. My job is to do what I love, like an adventure novel, where you go to the place, you meet the people, and you bring back a story.
Were there any illustrations in the book that you found particularly interesting or meaningful?
There are some photographs that are so shocking you cannot see them in the news, and making a drawing makes it more acceptable. One picture that blew me away is the burial of a father who was killed during October 7. His kid is crying on the grave, and there are the small stones you put on Jewish Ashkenazi tombs. This kid is a Jew, but he could be an Arab, and he mourns his father with a stone. I did a very simple drawing, and somehow that’s what war is about. War is not about heroism, it’s not about glory, it’s not about victory, it’s about kids who are going to mourn their fathers or mothers or family.
This reminds me of a quote from the book where you say that your writing “is like putting little rocks on top of Jewish graves.” Are there any moments in the book that you feel are the most important to hear and remember?
In some fields of France today, and especially among artists, it’s almost forbidden to recall October 7 because of the mass murder of Gaza. But my feeling is you need to be able to cry for both. October 7 was the worst murdering of Jews after WWII, and the mass massacre in Gaza is something we shall remember in 100 years. We should be able not only to cry for both, but also to consider the situation as a whole and to say, okay, what’s next? Are we waiting for the next slaughter or can we do better than this?
As an American, I know about the Jewish experience in the U.S. over the past few years, but I didn’t know exactly what was going on in France and the antisemitism there that you described in your book. Can you tell me more about your experience?
I’m more worried about America because for French Jews, we never let people harass us without responding. We still have a very strong connection to the Arab world, so when people try to oppose Jews and Arabs in France, it somehow doesn’t work. I would love to say that in an optimistic way, but there’s also a lot of violence and harassment. The minute a Jewish artist starts to work, there’s a threat of boycott and everyone starts to treat him like a ‘genocidal Zionist.’
I’ve been talking of Palestine for 30 years, doing reporting in Palestinian towns for two years, but somehow it’s not enough. But we really fight back, because violence here is very often. I had a performance in Marseille, and people gathered at the front to prevent me from drawing on stage. Luckily, many people showed up to defend me, because they knew my show was humane, about peace. At some point, it’s because I’m a Jew that pisses them off. But we know it’s a fight, and we’re ready for it.
What were people’s reactions to your book when it first came out in France? I’m especially curious about the non-Jewish and anti-Zionist population, and whether they read your work.
Everything online is hell. In bookstores, it’s heaven. For To Life, it’s been two years of performing in huge bookstores. I also went to all the universities in France which were blocked by the pro-Gaza crowd, like Columbia, but in France I went to talk in front of them and they were very nice talks. The book sold more than 60,000 copies in France, which is huge. It has a very mainstream audience, not just a Jewish audience. When you go to bookstores, people are very okay to talk, and especially when you go to my meetings, it’s okay to disagree. At my meetings, you can be pro-Palestine — you’re welcome. You can be pro-Israel — you’re welcome, and you can know nothing and you’re welcome also.
I’ve been dealing with Arab and Jewish topics for more than 30 years, and I have a huge amount of readers in France. The Arabs and Jews of my age know what they lost, in the real brotherhood and friendship we had fighting against the extreme right party. We have political history together, and many people remember that. I have a lot of hope, but we need to stay vocal.
Since the book was written in 2023, are there any moments that feel surprising or strange for you to read today?
One thing which is really surprising is that October 7 is less than three years ago, and it’s almost as if everyone forgot. Somehow, people have made political use of this slaughter by any means. The historical moment is almost forgotten. If my book is worth something, it is as an immediate report on the immediate aftermath of October 7 on site. I was in the south of Israel, I was with kibbutzniks, I was with the military, I was with Arab people. One thing we risk is to forget what occurred on October 7, and then forget what occurred during the Shoah, because in France today all the memory sites for WWII are being attacked as pro-Israel. So, we need to keep our memory. Without memory, there’ll be no peace.
One moment in your book that I found very powerful was when you parallel a famous image of Jews being shot in the Holocaust to one of two teenagers being killed on October 7. I’d love to hear more about your thoughts connecting October 7 to previous tragedies, especially with how you refer to the events as a pogrom.
In France, most of the people don’t know about the Jewish oppression in the Arab world, how many of us had to leave the Arab countries after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. When October 7 occurred, in many Sephardic families and Jewish families from Israel, it recalled what occurred in many oriental countries. There’s a history of killing Jews in the Arab world, and it’s as if people awake to that. We have memories — nothing is the same — but we have a history. Amongst the things that really terrify me today is the dislocation of the link between Israeli Jews, American Jews, and European Jews. I was sad to see how many young American Jewish readers have no connection at all to Israel. You can criticize Israel, it’s okay, but pretending you have no connection to Israel is a lie to the face of your family.
In your opinion, why do you feel like this is the case for so many American Jews? Is there a way that you feel like this changes?
I would say Israel is also to blame because Israel has taught the diaspora Jews that it should be a constant exchange. You cannot raise a child making him guilty about not being pro-Israel enough. I’m not asking anyone to be pro-Israel — it’s a very dysfunctional country with an extreme right government. But the connection exists through your parents, your grandparents, their history. Pretending there is no connection is a lie. In the Jewish story, every moment a Jew tries to pretend he’s not part of the Jewry is going to be the first to be slaughtered. I’m not an Israeli, but I’m part of this history and I’m really proud to be part of this history.
Throughout the book, you imagine many conversations with your late grandfather, and I was interested in why this was something that felt so connected to you at this time. Why did you want to include this dialogue in your book?
He really raised me, and everything I do or say is considering what my grandfather would have said. He did not believe in any narrative. He was not a nationalist; he would not believe in all the right wing crap about pride, country, anything. It was only about survival. Regarding Europe, he was very pessimistic. He was saying that we’ll have some decades of peace after Auschwitz, and then it’s going to go back to normal Jew hatred. I’m afraid to say he was right.
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Christian lawmakers want Trump to fast-track Jewish Canadians to the U.S. Tulsa says it’s ready.
Eitan Israelov, 34, was noshing on bagels and coffee at a co-working space in downtown Tulsa, when he met the city’s mayor, Monroe Nichols.
Israelov and his family — wife, Nicole, 31, and their two children, Liam, 10, and Melody, 8 — were among nearly 50 Canadian Jews who traveled to Oklahoma in February, part of an audacious recruitment trip to lure Jews worried about rising and often violent antisemitism north of the border, to leave Canada and move to the U.S.
Nichols greeted the group like a host welcoming guests into his home. “As a Black man in America,” Nichols said, “I can identify with some of the hate that you all have felt.” Then he used a word that landed differently in a room full of people who’d begun to wonder whether they still belonged where they came from.
“Tulsa,” he said, “is a refuge.”
For Israelov, the words spoke volumes. “For us,” he said, “it’s a piece of heaven.”
Six months later, it sounds prescient.
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt sent a letter to Trump in July, pledging that “Oklahoma would proudly welcome” any Jewish families who “lawfully come to the United States in search of safety and opportunity.”
Now a group of Christian lawmakers are appealing to President Donald Trump to fast-track immigration for Jewish Canadians, touting Tulsa as a destination of choice. “These individuals and families should not be viewed merely as people fleeing hatred,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter last week. “They are prospective neighbors.”
Trump shared the letter in a social media post on Sunday, signaling his support, but did not commit his administration to anything specific — no order, no directive, no timeline. But for Canadian Jewish communities that have spent three years watching antisemitism intensify with little response from Ottawa, the presidential spotlight was still notable.
Since the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, Jewish schools, synagogues and businesses across Canada have faced harassment, vandalism, bomb threats and violence. B’nai Brith Canada counted 27 violent antisemitic incidents in just the first six months of 2026, nearly triple all of 2025.
In early August, an arsonist gutted Nöam, a kosher restaurant in Montreal. Even Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has acknowledged the scale. Jews, he’s noted, are roughly 1% of Canada’s population but the target of two-thirds of its religiously motivated hate crimes.
“Canada’s civic compact,” he said, “is failing Jewish Canadians.”
The letter Trump shared was drafted by Jason Rapert, founder of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, asking Trump to “establish an appropriate lawful immigration and humanitarian pathway for Jewish Canadians who are experiencing persecution.”
Fifty-four people signed it including sitting state legislators from across the country, as well as Sam Brownback, the former U.S. ambassador for international religious freedom.
The letter cited Tulsa as an example of where a “willingness already exists,” and which has spent the better part of a decade building exactly the kind of pipeline that letter is describing.
Tulsa Tomorrow is a Jewish community-run recruitment program that started in 2017. It flies prospective transplants in for a weekend of house tours, meet-and-greets and a pitch for why they should relocate. So far, 144 people have come through, and 113 have stayed.
Lately, more of them have been Canadian. Of 52 people on a trip in February, 41 came from Canada, and organizers expect the roughly 50 people signed up for another trip in October to skew just as heavily north of the border.
Two people helping with that pitch are Canadian transplants themselves. Joe Roberts, who leads Jewish Tulsa — the umbrella organization overseeing the city’s federation, JCC and Jewish museum — moved there in 2024 from Ontario. Michael Sachs, senior director of the Jewish Federation of Tulsa, moved from Vancouver last year.
“Oklahoma is a state where these people can feel openly Jewish, and feel that as a Jew they’re valued,” Sachs said.
The families waiting
Getting there is another story. Israelov works in IT for a mining company headquartered in Canada, and he said the company won’t let him work remotely from the U.S. — closing off the route that would let an employer sponsor his visa. Another route, a visa that would require Israelov to invest $800,000 in a U.S. business, is out of reach financially.
Fear compounds the financial obstacles. In January 2024, someone was caught on the Israelovs’ home security camera cutting an Israeli flag off their front porch and fleeing into the night.
Later, a neighbor told Israelov, “I heard you’re Jewish,” and that “your kind is in the wrong place.” He belonged in Israel, the neighbor said, “but not here.”
Not everyone watching this unfold from inside the Canadian Jewish community is rooting for the exodus. Jesse Brown, a Canadian Jewish journalist who has spent years documenting the country’s rising antisemitism, says he fears “the next Bondi Beach massacre,” the December 2025 Hanukkah attack in Australia that killed 15 people, “is going to take place in Canada.”
But watching fellow Jews plan their departure unsettles him in a different way. “There’s a sadness,” he said. “I’m not enthused or compelled by what I see as a re-shtetling.”
A murkier picture
It’s hard not to notice the echo of last year’s program resettling white South Africans as refugees, which critics called selective and its architects called a response to persecution. Roberts sees Canadian Jews less as refugees than as candidates for what he calls “a legal humanitarian pathway that’s expedited.”
The timing also invites skepticism. The NACL letter and Trump’s post came in the middle of a trade war between the U.S. and Canada. Fifty percent tariffs on roughly $20 billion of Canadian goods took effect Aug. 22. Canada has announced a matching retaliation.
Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, visited Ottawa in early August and said: “You need to do better,” citing 788 antisemitic hate crimes reported to Canadian police in 2025, up from 492 in 2021.
Carney’s office said new laws and funding show the government is responding. A spokeswoman said officials want “a country where our differences are honored and where Jewish Canadians can live visibly, fully, and joyfully in public life.”
But Rapert, who is based in Arkansas, sees things differently. When Trump shared the letter on Sunday, Rapert was leading a delegation of U.S. elected officials on a tour of Israel. They had just visited the Ghetto Fighters’ House Holocaust museum, which has on display the glass booth used in the trial of Adolf Eichmann for his role in the Holocaust.
Canada’s climate, he said, is “not unlike what you were beginning to hear in the early days of Germany, that led to government decisions that brought forward what we now all know is the Holocaust.”
Rapert’s letter is far from his final push. He hopes to persuade U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and U.S. Rep. Marlin Stutzman of Indiana to hold congressional hearings on the issue. And he’s working on setting up a meeting with Trump.
“My prayer is that Donald Trump paves the way for the people that want to come, to come,” he said. “But what would be even better is if Prime Minister Carney apologized and repented.”
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